Michael Jackson may have sold a lot of records, but he was still able to commit on of the most heinous of all crimes, pedophilia, repeatedly (allegedly, but come on, even he knew he was doing wrong), and escape from jail because of his wealth and fame.
Bob Herbert has a theory:
In many ways we descended as a society into a fantasyland, trying to leave the limits and consequences and obligations of the real world behind. Politicians stopped talking about the poor. We built up staggering amounts of debt and called it an economic boom. We shipped jobs overseas by the millions without ever thinking seriously about how to replace them. We let New Orleans drown.
Jackson was the perfect star for the era, the embodiment of fantasy gone wild. He tried to carve himself up into another person, but, of course, there was the same Michael Jackson underneath — talented but psychologically disabled to the point where he was a danger to himself and others.
Reality is unforgiving. There is no escape. Behind the Jackson facade was the horror of child abuse. Court records and reams of well-documented media accounts contain a stream of serious allegations of child sex abuse and other inappropriate behavior with very young boys. Jackson, a multimillionaire megastar, was excused as an eccentric. Small children were delivered into his company, to spend the night in his bed, often by their parents.One case of alleged pedophilia against Jackson, the details of which would make your hair stand on end, was settled for a reported $25 million. He beat another case in court.
The Michael-mania that has erupted since Jackson’s death — not just an appreciation of his music, but a giddy celebration of his life — is yet another spasm of the culture opting for fantasy over reality. We don’t want to look under the rock that was Jackson’s real life.
As with so many other things, we don’t want to know.
[Click to read more of Bob Herbert – Behind the Facade – NYTimes.com]
I don’t want to know because his crimes sickens me, so I opt to ignore all hagiography of Jackson.
This article was interesting everyone knows MJ was a bit odd.