I had the misfortune of landing at Los Angeles International Airport
the day Michael Jackson died. I called a friend and told her I’d be
there in an hour. She said, “I doubt that. Michael Jackson died. People
are pouring into the streets.”
When people in Los Angeles “pour” into the streets, they do it in
cars. One poor chap, boogying to “Billy Jean,” no doubt, overturned his
Mazda on the 405. It did cause a slow-up.
I’m not someone who doesn’t appreciate Michael Jackson’s talent.
I’ve got Thriller on vinyl, and back in the day, I listened to
it dozens of times. As a little kid, he was cute, precocious and black.
I don’t doubt that he had a hard life, and I understand that his father
was a brute, and his mother a knucklehead. (Calling your own son a
“faggot” is pretty cold.) What I object to in this massive postmortem
adulation is the eclipsing of the fact that whether he knew it or
not—and regardless of his psychological denial being so thick
that he seemed to have convinced loads of people that it wasn’t the
case—Michael Jackson was a pedophile.
He was accused of child molestation in 1993 and wound up paying his
accuser $22 million so the case wouldn’t go to trial; even though he
was acquitted of charges of molesting another boy in 2005, he admitted
to having young boys sleep in his bed, was known to have given them
alcohol, scanned porn sites with them and even gave them lessons in
masturbation.
The fact that this stuff came out strikes me as the tip of an
iceberg that, even with all his money, must have been almost impossible
to hide. If any noncelebrity had done these things, he would have been
condemned, imprisoned and forced to register as a sex offender in any
community he lived in afterward.
But we already know that the rich and famous don’t have to go to
prison.
What steams my biscuits is the general public’s ability to overlook
dastardly criminal behavior in individuals possessing a superior
ability to entertain them—particularly when that criminal
behavior is directed against women and/or children.
The Caesars were right: Give the populace bread and circuses, and
they’ll swallow anything.
I used to be a huge NBA fan. During the ’90s, when the Chicago Bulls
were winning everything that wasn’t nailed down, basketball was pure
pleasure. Yeah, Michael Jordan had personal flaws, but he was grace
personified on the court, and there will never be another player like
him. There were some hellishly good games back in those days, and I was
able to ride the fever for a long while.
Then Kobe Bryant happened.
I never liked him. He was a snob, a brat, intolerably self-absorbed.
Shaq couldn’t stand him, and almost none of his teammates liked him,
for reasons including his refusal to travel or socialize with them.
Then one day, a hotel clerk in Denver made the mistake of going back to
his hotel room with him. When it was over—and these facts are not
in dispute—the front of his T-shirt had blood all over it, and
the hotel clerk had a giant bruise on the back of her neck. It was
exactly the size and shape of Kobe Bryant’s hand.
It doesn’t and never did sound like consensual sex to anyone who
paid attention.
After that, whenever I saw the Los Angeles Lakers, I felt like
puking. This year, when it became clear they were going to go all the
way, I gave up on NBA ball altogether. One night, I simply realized
that if I had to watch TNT’s Kenny Smith cream himself about Kobe
Bryant one more time, I was going to smash my TV screen with a baseball
bat.
The news did deliver one nugget of positive news in the Michael
Jackson death circus: Bubbles the chimp is alive and doing well in an
ape sanctuary in Florida. At least Wacko Jacko got something right.
Regarding the rest … well, maybe in his next life, he’ll be
reincarnated as a dirt-poor kid lost in a wonderland of carnival rides
and all the candy he can eat. When he looks up, he’ll see a snake in
the tree staring down. It will have a face as white as death, and eyes
like a fiend from his worst nightmare.
This article appears in Jul 9-15, 2009.
“It will have a face as white as death, and eyes like a fiend from his worst nightmare.”
Nice. Very nice.
In this country you are innocent until proven guilty. So your opinion does not really count. i am very glad you do not watch the NBA as I would hate to think a prick like you was watching it. In the book of Job Job was told by his friends that he must be sinning for all the bad things to happen to him and he told them he was not and they didn’t believe him. God reprimanded his friends. You do not know Michael and you obviously do not trust the courts if they do not match your opinions. Obviously you value your opinion over everyone else’s. Maybe you should put down the magnifying glass and pick up a mirror. rweygint@hotmail.com
Isn’t it mostly blacks who worship this pedophile who hated being black so much he turned himself white? And bought white children.I agree with you about Jackson and Kobe and think they and others, no matter what their color, who rape and molest belong in prison. Money and fast footwork should not excuse their crimes. Is it only in America that sex criminals are worshiped?
I’m glad to finally see this sentiment expressed amidst all the grief and nostalgia in the media over the passing of an icon of pop culture. He was a great performer but he was not a great person – he was a sociopath who abused children.
Innocent until proven guilty…please. If you have enough money and celebrity status in this country, you can freely rape, abuse and murder (does the name O.J. ring any bells) women and children and not incur the penalty. This was a fair commentary and the analogy to Kobe was accurate.
Actually, Ian Halperin who recently published “Unmasked: The Final Years of Michael Jackson (in press BEFORE M.J.’s death) said, in an interview with Meredith Viera, that he had been so infuriated by Jackson’s acquital that he set out to prove the man’s guilt — and as Halperin did more and more research he became more and more convinced of Jackson’s innocence! Halperin knows more than we do. Might be worthwhile to consider his evidence? Pallas p.s. I neither played his music nor watched his videos – so I can’t say about his talent.
Just get a life! The more you people talk about it, the more it’ll be out there! None of us were there and we just don’t know no matter what we think! Why aren’t you guys still talking about all those WHITE PRIESTS that was raping and molesting the kids that did get convicted? There are good and bad in all races, so what the devil does that have to do with anything!
Pallas, do you know if Jackson paid Halperin to write this book?
Who published the book?
When the motive isn’t clear, look for the money trail.
Do you know who is Ian Halperin? What else has he written? I just don’t know who he is and don’t know if he is a respected professional writer. Did he look at court records or where they sealed when Jackson paid off? Why would Jackson pay $22 million to quash a child molestation case against him? Innocent people don’t do that. Rich, quilty people do that. Court records show Jackson admitted watching porno movies with young boys and teaching them to masturbate. That sounds like a sex pervert to me, a child molester. Jackson was a freak show, that much is obvious.
It is easy to defame the dead, and those public figures who are so famous that their lawyers would not have the time to sue all those who libel them. We are a country of laws, not of men. Settling out of court is hardly an unusual action, and should never be considered evidence of guilt. No convictions = officially innocent. To so casually dismiss a jury’s verdict when one has not been privy to all the evidence is indicative of a lack of respect for what the rule of law really means, and is certainly unbecoming of anyone who claims to be a serious journalist.
Good column, Catherine. As for littlericky’s “In this country you are innocent until proven guilty. So your opinion does not really count”, that’s seriously flawed logic.
Of course, littlericky probably wouldn’t mind his young BOYS sleeping with a grown man. A grown man who admits he sleeps with young boys is NOT NORMAL. In fact, everything about MJ’s behavior bespeaks not just pedophilia, but predatory pedophilia. And the thing about predators is, THEY DON’T STOP ON THEIR OWN.
She’s entitled to her opinion, just as you are to yours, littlericky. Just because he was acquitted in ONE case and PAID OFF millions to avoid going to court in other cases, doesn’t make him innocent. Oh, but then I suppose if littlericky were accused of such heinous acts, he would just pay them off and not protest his innocence to the end. Hell, if it were me, I would make SURE that my innocence were proven in a court of law! To think that to pay someone for their silence is a mark of innocence, well, that’s extremely naive!!!!
Bryant did the SAME thing in Colorado, except he didn’t pay her. He frightened her so much with things that his side leaked to the press that it was impossible to prosecute him. And I’ve seen some of the documents that never made it into court. It was an extremely brutal attack and in no way consensual. It wasn’t the first time he’d done that, either, and since he got away with it, I’m sure not the last.
Very sad all around. But go ahead and make him your hero, littlericky. Says more about you than it does about him.
As I’ve been saying, MJ was a talented entertainer. TWENTY YEARS AGO. In the past few years, he became a freak and a predatory pedophile. Just because he wasn’t caught doesn’t mean it ain’t so.
Ms. O’Sullivan, please keep in mind that all of your irrefutable ‘evidence’ against Michael Jackson is little more than tabloid rumor. What bothers me is that so many people will take rumor and hearsay about a celebrity and accept it as fact. We do know that Michael Jackson was unusual due to growing up in unusual circumstances. We do know that the prosecution in the 2005 trial was a sham, a clearly, and poorly executed attempt at extortion. The rest is just speculation. How does this leave you with such moral certainty about who Michael Jackson was? This goes along with illogical claim that all celebrity trials are the same, and all celebrities are found innocent simply because they are rich. This is clearly not true if you examine them on a case to case basis. The evidence overwhelmingly pointed towards O.J. being guilty, yet he was judged innocent. MJ was judged innocent as well, but this time for good reason, as anyone that paid attention to what actually happened in the trial can tell you. Let’s stop propagating tabloid myth, that has made celebrity even larger than life than before, as a major blight on our culture of simplistic judgement. Perhaps if we saw celebrities as the simple humans they are, with complex problems magnified by their monitarily complicated lives, we could learn something, and then turn our attention to more important subjects.
Ms. O’Sullivan, please keep in mind that your insticts towards moral superiority are not always right – I’d appreciate more nuanced columns from someone that has a pedestal to speak from, such as yours.
You said
“even though he was acquitted of charges of molesting another boy in 2005, he admitted to having young boys sleep in his bed, was known to have given them alcohol, scanned porn sites with them and even gave them lessons in masturbation.”
Ever been on a jury? Have to weigh the evidence presented , that is. Guilt or Reasonable doubt based on the evidence. Basta! Hasta!
In the grand scheme of things MJ did get the tributes he deserved. Ms Sullivan will get only a few comments upon her passing once the article “Because of the never quite proven talent, Ms Sullivan will get one little article in a local weekly and nothing more” is posted.