Random Musings

The Matter of Michael Jackson

Although I've tried like hell to avoid it, (I keep wondering why it's still dragging on like it is. If it was anybody else...) like the proverbial train wreck, today I found myself drawn to the latest news on Michael Jackson.

If nothing else, I think the guy is sad. He's made a mess of his otherwise remarkable life and of his reputation, that last thing being hard to recover once it's been put out there for question.

I don't know if he's a pedophile or not. In my opinion and according to the research I've don on the subject, the signs all point to him fitting the bill, but I'm reserving my final judgement on that. I wasn't there in the room with him and those children, so I don't really know what went on. But I can say with conviction that, as a parent, no way in the world would I allow my child, girl or boy, to have private time with the man, any man- or woman, for that matter- while I was locked on the other side of the door or relegated to the guest house and not allowed to enter.

But then, I wouldn't have had to forbid it. My kids wouldn't have gone.

I had the kind of boys who wouldn't approach things that weren't logical, like Chuckie Cheese walking around talking and shaking kids' hands during the pizza party. That big shark at Sea World that puts its fin around the kids to take pictures with them.The Disney characters that walk around and dance on the Avenue. My boys would enjoy them from a distance, but forget about them getting real close. That wasn't happening. At the Renaissance Festival, my two year old was okay with the Kool-Aid Man, until he moved, that is. I can still see him scrambling out of his Daddy's arms and up around his neck and head like a tiny, frightened gibbon.

Pictures with the Easter Bunny and Santa resulted in comical studies of a big grinning whatever and my child looking back at the camera with this, "Can you hurry the hell up and get me away from this weird thing." look on his little face.

Michael's bizarre appearance alone should be red flag enough to make any parent hold a child close. He is scary to look at. An individual so insecure about his appearance that he'd pay to have himself altered to that degree, and then can't see how how clownish he now appears as opposed to his former natural good looks, does not inspire confidence in me. Then in public, he denies the extent of the plastic surgeries he's had, as if nobody can see through that for the all out lie it is. It says to me that he'll prevaricate, number one. And number two, he doesn't see reality for what it is. Therefore, the things he'd do to or with my child, outside of my presence, natural or unnatural in my eyes, would be whatever he made them or wanted them to be in his own.

I've heard him say in interviews that his sleeping in the bed with little boys is harmless; it's "charming" and "dear". First of all, what grown man uses those terms under any circumstances and in any context? And then, I can firmly state that neither of my brothers has ever slept in the bed with any one of my three sons. I can't recall an uncle, a close friend of the family, or any other adult for that matter, outside of my husband and myself and perhaps a grandparent at some time, sleeping in the bed with them. Even on those occasions, they were very small and they stayed only until they fell asleep, at which point they were taken back to their own beds.

I cannot conceive of parents taking their flesh and blood child, a son, and delivering him to a grown man who wants to keep them out while he closes up in a room to "play", and sleep in the bed with the child. If you think about it, in the house, the average man wants to be where the kids are not. If he is in the room with them, he's hogging the Playstation, the X-Box, or the computer and the kids are in there with you, complaining about him and begging you to come and get him out.

Most of us can probably identify with having that one relative with whom we don't let the kids be alone for too long. Why would someone allow an essential stranger to do that, even if he is an internationally recognized music icon? Especially since he's an icon who's been loudly accused in the press of shady behavior with kids in the past? Is it the fame? The money? Both? If so, isn't that a form of pimping, even if it is all as innocent as Michael says it is? I understand that the parents usually get paid in some way, often expensive gifts, trips, even houses, for affording Michael the child's company. Isn't that bartering in human flesh? I thought that was against the law.

Maybe I'm the one who's wrong.

But then, getting back to the not dealing with reality thing. It would seem to me that if Michael had been in trouble for this sort of behavior once before, and got out of it by paying out a large sum of money, he'd be careful to not put himself in the position to be accused of it, falsely or otherwise, again. I would think that he'd see kids and go in the other direction. If he was right, closing up with kids would be the last thing he'd want to do, but there he was doing it again in that Bashir interview for the whole world to see.

I don't know about anybody else, but I only have to step in dog doo-doo once to know that I don't want to do it again. On the second go 'round, I see the turds, know what they are, and I give them a wide berth, avoiding them completely. Not Michael. He went right back to it. He's either arrogant beyond words, supremely stupid, or he has a compulsion that he cannot control.

Way back in the early eighties, when he began proclaiming himself Peter Pan and professing his great love for children, I was questioning why we only saw him with boys. They were always boys of a certain age and look, a definite pattern. He'd carry them around on his hip like they were toddlers or pets. When the boy of the moment got too big or too old, he'd drop him, and then we'd see him with the next one; dressed like him, moving like him, dancing with him, etc. I can recall screaming way back then that if he were anyone else, people would be running from him with their kids tucked safely under thier arms.

In the matter of Michael Jackson, the lambs are delivered to him. I'm not sure if it's to the slaughter or not, but with my own children, I wouldn't take the chance. I think in this case, whatever it turns out to be, the parents, and the public's wholesale hero worship of someone who is gifted musically, athletically, etc, but remains underneath a mere human being with human flaws, is as much to blame as the individual.