The Stages of Michael Jackson
Saturday, July 4th, 2009 | Posted by: Henry Baum
I’ve become fairly obsessed with the Michael Jackson story. At first I was totally puzzled by the outpouring. As a father, even if someone has the hint of abusing children that should be a major part of the person’s story. Though I have to admit, writers like Woody Allen and Dostoevsky have gotten away with certain types of sickness: the art really does seem to outweigh the behavior. Mostly, I was perplexed because Michael Jackson never moved me like he does some people. His legacy as an artist – N Sync, Britney Spears et al. is in some way what’s wrong with popular music. I love “Off the Wall” and he informed my adolescence (in the eighties) because he was everywhere, but I was never a fan.
But the more I’ve looked into the story, the more fascinated I’ve become. It encompasses everything that interests me: Hollywood and religion. My first two novels – The Golden Calf and North of Sunset – are both products of my upbringing in Hollywood. Both my parents worked in the industry. Not hugely successful or anything – but my parents sometimes touched on some pretty strange inner circles: my mom’s strangest experience in Hollywood was being in a trailer with Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor, and Bubbles, as MJ showed ET his new video. They ignored my mom.
That’s mostly off the subject. The point is my novel, North of Sunset, is about a movie star who is driven insane by celebrity. He doesn’t cut his face away like Michael Jackson, he starts killing people (both done with a knife). My next novel, The American Book of the Dead, is about fundamentalist American Christianity and the potential for the evolution of human consciousness. I was not raised with any kind of religion – in fact with total antipathy towards religion – but my family had a religious-like devotion to Hollywood. And to my mind, Hollywood is America’s other major religion. Which is why I think I’m so interested in religion - I don’t follow any religion, but I’m pretty mystically inclined.
The Michael Jackson story is part of this same fabric. I really think it’s one of the more important moments in world history – not just his death, but how people have reacted to both his life and death. I do not understand the impulse to weep in his presence as so many do – it’s as if he brings out both a profound happiness and profound sadness. People seem almost possessed in his presence. See this girl here – she needs to be consoled after hugging him. People call him a God. There is most definitely a religious-like devotion to Michael Jackson. He fostered some of this. And I wonder what the relationship is between this type of devotion and devotion to modern religion. I don’t have that answer, but it’s a question vitally worth exploring to understand human nature.
So I’ve been digging into the Michael Jackson story. The Martin Bashir interviews are a most amazing window into MJ’s motivations. It’s also a window into the fans who says things at Youtube like “Martin Bashir will burn in hell for this interview.” Bashir’s definitely cynical and wants to reveal MJ’s faults, but Michael Jackson reveals a lot all on his own, unedited. I recommend watching all 9 parts on Youtube. But part 1 and part 9 put together offer the most interesting narrative. In part one he describes his father’s abuse:
In part 9 he describes why he invited kids over to stay in his house and in his bed:
What a total mess. The singer who’s treated like a God is raised by a father who acted like Satan. People fell to their knees weeping in MJ’s presence. He wanted to take this power and help children to make up for his lost childhood. He wanted to cut away his face which his father criticized. And because he has lived a life like no one on earth, his reasoning makes some sense. The fact is, kids were sleeping in the same bed as him, that’s not a fabrication. The molestation charges may very well have been a way to extort him out of money, but him dangling the baby out the window and offering Jesus juice show that his sense of boundaries were very skewed.
But now I’ve got enormous sympathy for him, whereas before I had anger about people’s indifference to what he’d done wrong. I got in arguments about it with supporters. There’s something tremendously sad about his story, which is why people may be responding to it like they are. It’s a case study into what fame can do to a person, as well as what fame reveals about people’s sense of devotion and belief. It encompasses everything I’ve written about in my fiction and will continue writing about, so I can’t look away, along with everyone else.
Actually no, he slept on the floor. There was never any evidence that he slept in the bed with that kid. There may have been some situations where he and a bunch of kids were piled in a bed and one or more of the people involved fell asleep while watching TV or something, but there was never a situation where one kid and MJ shared a bed together. (And that kind of thing happens a lot. Yes these kids weren’t related to him, but people conveniently forget about incest in times like these. The majority of child molestation cases are cases of incest.) MJ was trying to say he didn’t think such a thing was wrong, that sleeping was different than sexual touching, but he STILL made it clear he slept on the floor.
But people latched onto MJ not thinking that was wrong. *I* don’t think it’s wrong either. But I recognize because our culture is so sick and twisted and hysterical about child molestation and looking for it behind every bush, that you don’t do anything that anyone can construe this way even if it’s totally innocent. MJ didn’t totally get that.
You have to remember he was raised in a household with 8 other kids and they started off in a two bed-room house. These people were ALL sleeping piled together. It was normal according to the way he was raised.
Secondly you get a better view of MJ if you watch: “Living with Michael Jackson Take Two” it’s on Youtube. It shows a lot of stuff that was cut out of the interview caught by MJ’s own cameras. It also shows Bashir LYING like a freaking dog to MJ, saying one thing TO MJ, praising him on what he does at Neverland for the kids, and what a good father he is, and how he’s not weird, etc. And then of course he says totally different things in his smear documentary.
Also watching: “Michael Jackson’s Private Home Movies” (also on youtube) would give you a clearer picture of MJ as well.
Sure, dude had a drug problem. I’m a fan and I can even tell that. But he was addicted to pain medications that likely were originally prescribed for legitimate things, such as when he got second degree burns when filming the Pepsi commercial, and when he got plastic surgery.
As for the “jesus juice” which I’m assuming is alcohol, that was disproven in court as well. You have to remember that a lot of testimony against MJ came from disgruntled former employees who didn’t seem to think it was necessary to call the police and protect the children BEFORE they were fired. Only after, when tabloid journalists were paying them tens of thousands of dollars for their stories. That’s not credible witness testimony.
And we’ve discussed the “dangling baby” issue. I say if you only have that ONE incident to prove what a bad parent he was, with the way the media hounded him, then he was doing pretty good. Most parents followed by media and scrutinized like this, would likely have a story about what bad parents they are too.
And yes, I think his story is VERY sad. Was he perfect? No. But he did the best he could in the circumstances he was presented with, and not only that, but he did it with an amount of grace and kindness most people can’t muster even treated normally.
It’s also important to note that Tom Sneddon, the DA that prosecuted him, hounded and stalked and obsessed about him for 10 years, ACTIVELY seeking people who would accuse MJ so he could re-open the case. I find it just BIZARRE that it took him 10 years, he used Martin Bashir’s documentary as a catalyst, and THAT boy in the documentary just HAPPENED to be the second accuser. That family was a family of con-artists which was proven in court. They’d extorted money out of other celebrities and had filed a false sexual abuse allegation against JCPenney and gotten a settlement. The mother had even enrolled her kids in an acting class and wrote their testimony for them and made them practice.
They also claimed that the molestation didn’t happen until AFTER the documentary aired. So… you’re MJ… and a documentary airs which paints you as a child molester, even though you didn’t do it… you are around this child for a couple of years and never touch him, but only touch him AFTER the documentary airs and the entire world is speculating that you might be a child molester? And you have social services and such investigating at the same time? Seriously? THIS was what the indictment claimed… that MJ molested the boy only AFTER the documentary aired. It’s completely ludicrous.