<<Guest, in death everyone is equal. No matter how did he/she lived.>>
Exactly! I don't cry when hundreds of 50 year old men die every day, so why should I cry for Michael Jackson? Heart attack is the most common form of death in the Western world, why aren't you crying 24-7?
Such a hypocrite! His music was good but that doesn't entitle him to a glorious death.
He was big when I was in middle school. I didn't get it then and I don't get it now. It was just plain old pop to me, not really my taste. And it's true; he hasn't done anything worth a crap in a log time.
As for his kids, I can't imagine him doing actual fatherly things like changing diapers or cleaning up vomit. I'm sure he had nannies to do all the dirty work. Those kids were probably more like pets to him. A guy who surrounds his environment with self portraits and statues of himself all over the place and gives his own name to all of his kids, even the daughter, has some serious identity issues and no doubt looks at his kids more as an extension of himself rather than as individuals in their own right. And the fact that he essentially married a surrogate mother and then hired another, after paying the first one off to relinquish all her parental rights, speaks even more to his identity issues. He wanted to be the only influence in their lives, rather than allowing them to grow up in a partnership of ideas and attitudes. Which ties in with everything else we know about him -- god knows he didn't seem to know how to have normal, appropriate relationships with people. I can't say if he was a pedophile or not, but I wouldn't have been surprised, given his Peter Pan syndrome, and I can't see him being much of a real father in terms of being a role model and instilling core values in developing little minds.
So to be honest, his death may be the one thing that allows them to have a healthier upbringing! So I have a hard time feeling sorry for them. But time will tell; one day they will be old enough to give us their own take on their situation, and maybe they will prove me wrong.
Arrested Development
The tragedy of Michael Jackson.
By Jacob Weisberg
Posted Tuesday, June 14, 2005, at 6:35 PM ET
I've never believed Michael Jackson was a pedophile. To begin with, he doesn't fit the profile. Child abusers tend to do the same thing again and again. According to one study, the average molester of boys commits 280 crimes over a lifetime. Yet despite the lure of getting rich by making accusations against Jacko, only two alleged victims have ever come forward with detailed allegations.
What's more, those two accusations, separated by 10 years, don't conform to a pattern. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the accuser in the recent case—the cancer victim—alleged groping by Jackson. Jackson's previous accuser, whose family settled a civil suit in 1993 for $20 million, accused the singer of more extreme abuse, including oral sex.
But the main reason I never bought the prosecutor's depiction of Jackson as a premeditating sexual predator "grooming" his victims is that it doesn't ring true in psychological terms. Whether or not he has ever touched a boy inappropriately, Michael Jackson seems too emotionally stunted to act in any grown-up way, including a deviant sexual one. Naive, juvenile, and terribly damaged, he seems pathetically incapable not just of criminal intent, but of adult consciousness.
People tend to throw up hands at Michael Jackson's multifarious bizarreness. But is it really so strange? The boy was forced to work by a cruel and physically abusive father starting at the age of 7. (If he'd been sent into a factory or coal mine, instead of onstage, we'd have more compassion for him.) As a boy, he was denied what even most abused and underprivileged children have: school, friends, and play.
Instead, Michael was made into a performing sexualized freak, a boy whose soprano voice kindled passion in grown women. He was made to witness adult sexuality at an age when it can only have been terrifying and incomprehensible to him. By 10, he was performing in strip clubs and hiding under the covers in hotel rooms while his older brothers got it on with groupies. At 11—the age at which his psyche seems frozen—he was a superstar. "My childhood was completely taken away from me," he has said. Almost everything that seems freakish about him can be explained by his poignant, doomed effort to get his stolen childhood back.
To describe the world Michael Jackson has created around himself as a childhood fantasy isn't quite accurate. Thanks to wealth and celebrity, he has been able to live as a superannuated child. With the help of plastic surgery and dramatic affectation, he has made himself look and sound pre-pubescent. He amuses himself with fancy toys, fantastic pets, amusement park rides, and a personal magician.
What emerged at the trial wasn't the picture of a man playing with children in order to seduce them. It was the picture of a man playing with children because he sees himself as one of them. He and his friends in the "Apple Head Club" stayed up all night playing videogames, watching television, and eating popcorn. In the absence of parental authority, they would sometimes drink wine out of Coke cans, make crank calls, look at dirty magazines, and try to gross each other out (head-licking, anyone?). A child in his own mind, Jackson sees all of his behavior as completely innocent. It was a sleepover party, not a seduction or even the sublimation of one. Hence his sincere-sounding admission to Martin Bashir, the British filmmaker whose 2003 documentary Living With Michael Jackson initiated his recent troubles, that sleeping with young boys is loving, and not sexual. Jackson appears not to comprehend adult sexuality enough to get why people might divine a more sinister intent.
There is, of course, a literary precedent here. "I am Peter Pan," Jackson told Bashir. Even without his cosmetic remodeling as Mary Martin, this identification would be hard to miss. At the Neverland Ranch, as in the Darling nursery, the boys all sleep in the same room. Michael, like Peter, casts himself as father, big brother, and ring-leader. He takes his lost boys on romps and adventures. Girls are not welcome. One of the few exceptions was his sister, whom he calls "Tinkerbell." But as Jackson knows, Peter Pan is not entirely a happy story. The boys will return from Neverland and grow into adults. Peter cannot.
A more interesting comparison may be between Jackson and the author of that fantasy, J.M. Barrie. Like Jackson, Barrie suffered from a kind of arrested development, brought on by the death of his beloved older brother when he was 6. According to Andrew Birkin's book J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys: The Real Story Behind Peter Pan, Barrie's marriage remained unconsummated, while his deepest relationships were with the Llewelyn Davies brothers, the five boys he met in Kensington Gardens in London who formed the basis for the characters in Peter Pan. Barrie performed tricks for the children, played with them, more or less moved into their home, and fantasized, in print, about sharing his bed with them. But there is no evidence of any physical involvement. The best guess is that Barrie was celibate or asexual.
Today we find the idea of nonsexuality more bizarre than deviant sexuality. But in Michael Jackson's case, it seems more plausible than any other explanation. All of Jackson's oddities seem to be reactions to what he suffered as a child. Manhandled by strangers, he became a mask-wearing, gloved germophobe. Tyrannized and abused by his father, he turned hyperbolically gentle and generous to children. Terrified by adult sexuality, he froze in pre-adolescent immaturity.
According to Lisa Marie Presley, they did have sex while married. And even an adult with the emotional development of a child still has the hormones and desires of an adult. So I ain't ruling anything out due to emotional immaturity. And he probably wasn't a predator -- just someone who occasionally made inappropriate overtures to boys who were too young for it.
"According to Lisa Marie Presley, they did have sex while married"
I may be cynical here but it was probably part of a deal she made with Jacko's producers. I never believed it for a second. Later development, with Debbie Rowe etc. confirms this imo.
We all remember MJ in our own way. IMO his gravestone should read "Great dancer, poor tipper".
Yeah!!! That's what we can say. Others which are going to judge him are just jealous. They just can copy paste newspapers articles and don't have any opinion.
<<Yeah!!! That's what we can say.<<
Laura, you can't say: "Great dancer, poor tipper". You were not there. LOL
Ah, nothing makes my day like a good fight with Laura. God bless you laura.
Thank you for your words.
btw: I did said <<<He will be forever in our hearts, because of his music and dancing. Rest in Peace, Micheal >>> guest you should read the article more carefully LOL
I promise to read more carefully if you promise the same, OK?