#0 · Feb 05, 2003, 23:33 · PeacefulWarrior
Michael Jackson, Too Close For Comfort
By Teresa Wiltz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 6, 2003; Page C01
We could sit here and analyze the effects of stardom on a person's psyche, on the role of celebrity vis-à-vis the public obsession with wanting to know. We could do that. But most likely, you're reading this not for a scholarly treatise on narcissism and the public gaze, but because you'd like to know if Michael Jackson could be any freakier than what we already believe him to be.
We've seen the much-hyped and much-fought-over "Living With Michael Jackson" documentary (airing tonight at 8 on ABC's "20/20"), so we'll spare you the faux psycho-social analysis and just tell you:
Yes.
In an unprecedented gesture of candidness -- or was it desperation? -- Jackson opens the proverbial kimono to Brit journalist Martin Bashir, who spent eight months trailing Jackson from his home in Neverland to Las Vegas to the singer's famously ill-fated trip to Berlin. And the result is we wish he'd kept it shut.
All the more reason, many might think, to tune in tonight. Some 15 million Brits watched the documentary when it aired in the United Kingdom on Monday. ABC, not one to underestimate the American public's fascination with celebrity weirdness, reportedly paid somewhere between $4 million and $5 million for the rights to air it stateside. If it was weirdness they wanted, we'd say the suits at ABC got their money's worth. Here are a few tidbits from the prime-time freakfest:
• There's Jackson confessing that his favorite things to do are "water balloons and climbing trees." Michael tearfully recounting his father's sadism and how he'd "regurgitate" at the sight of his dad. Michael, after claiming that his youngest child's mother was someone he "had a relationship with," later admitting that she was a black surrogate mother who used his "own sperm cells."
• There's Michael joyfully recalling the day his 4-year-old daughter, Paris, was born. He was so excited, he said, he grabbed her as soon as the umbilical cord was cut, dashing out of the hospital without bothering to clean her first -- leaving his then-wife, Debbie Rowe, behind.
• Then there's a very agitated Jackson, shoving a bottle in baby Prince Michael II's mouth. The child, whose face is covered in a green chiffon scarf, whimpers as Jackson -- his leg jiggling up and down, up and down -- angrily defends dangling the child from a balcony: "Why would I put a scarf over the baby's face if I was trying to throw him off a balcony? We were waving to thousands of fans below and they were chanting to see my child, and I was kind enough to let them see."
This makes for good television, if you consider good television watching an apparently troubled individual reveal things about himself that are profoundly disturbing. One television exec, perhaps referring to Jackson's admission that he would throw himself off a balcony if the world's children suddenly disappeared, described the show as "the longest suicide note in history."
There is obviously a prurient quality to all this. Jackson's career may be careering off course, but there's money to be made exploiting the spectacle of the car wreck. It's one thing to joke about Wacko Jacko, quite another to witness a man's disturbances and his justification for them. Even Bashir -- the journalist who scored the famous interview with Princess Diana -- is at first sympathetic to Jackson, then seems to grow increasingly discomfited, admitting in a voice-over, "Jackson's behavior was beginning to alarm me."
Perhaps most alarming is his relationship with children: Children, his and everyone else's, seem to be props in his elaborate fantasy life. His first two kids, Prince, 5, and Paris, he says, were a "gift" from his wife. He wanted children so badly, he explains, that he was walking around the house all the time, playing with "baby dolls." And so his "gifts" are paraded around Neverland, docile and complacent, wearing elaborate masks that completely cover their faces. You can't see their faces, but you can see Prince's bleached hair -- with tell-tale dark roots -- peeking out from around the mask. He takes them to the Berlin Zoo, shortly after the baby-dangling episode, as a massive crowd of fans and paparazzi gather around them, shoving and pushing. The kids appear terrified. Michael appears oblivious.
Later, when an incredulous Bashir tells Jackson that Prince told him, "I don't have a mother," Jackson beams.
Then there are other people's children, like Gavin, a 12-year-old cancer survivor who sits cuddled up to Jackson, his head nuzzling against the entertainer's shoulder. Gavin clutches Jackson's hand as he cheerfully recounts spending many a night in the 44-year-old man's bed. Jackson, he said, slept on the floor. (The Santa Barbara, Calif., district attorney who prosecuted Jackson in a 1993 child sexual abuse case is reportedly showing an interest in the documentary.)
"Why can't you share your bed?" Jackson asks. "The most loving thing is to share your bed with someone." He's slept with plenty of kids, he says, including the Culkin kids, but the sleepovers were never sexual, more like milk-and-cookie deals in which he tucked the kids in.
"I am Peter Pan," Jackson tells Bashir.
"But you're Michael Jackson," counters Bashir.
"I'm Peter Pan in my heart."
And therein lies the rub.
Peter Pan, famously, never grew up. And Jackson appears like a case of severely arrested development. There is little talk about the man and his music. Instead, he comes off as the idiot savant of the pop music world, a man who can't articulate his prodigious singing and dancing talents, a man who dismisses criticisms of him as "the dumbest, stupidest thing I ever heard."
Here is a man who grew up in the public eye, and both loathes the attention he gets at the same time he feeds on it, like a vampire.
In the documentary, he confesses that his father rehearsed him and his brothers with a belt. As a teenager, when Jackson's face was stuck in the acned limbo between adulthood and childhood, his father taunted him about his looks, telling him that his nose was "huge" and that he didn't get his features from his "side of the family."
Still, when Bashir at first questioned him -- gently -- about this, suggesting that perhaps this was why he'd sought out plastic surgery, Jackson vehemently denied it, insisting that he'd had "no plastic surgery" on his face beyond "two operations" on his nose. The nose surgery, he said, was to help him breathe better so that he can hit the high notes.
Perhaps most poignant is the scene where Michael sits with Bashir in his movie screening room, watching old television of himself performing "I Want You Back" with the Jackson 5. The camera jumps from the young Michael -- cute, brown, innocent -- to the middle-aged Michael -- ravaged, white and clinging to the illusion of innocence, and that moment says more than nearly two hours of shock TV that comprises "Living With Michael Jackson."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
------------------------------
A Neverland World of Michael Jackson
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
artin Bashir, the British television journalist who followed Michael Jackson for eight months, should have introduced his interview floating face down in a swimming pool and speaking in a voice-over, like William Holden in "Sunset Boulevard."
Ethroned behind the gates of his private amusement park, the Neverland Ranch, Mr. Jackson comes off in this two-hour ABC special as the Norma Desmond of Motown: creepy, but almost touching in his delusional naïveté: a victim of an abusive father, of his own psyche and also of his interviewer's callous self-interest masked as sympathy.
ABC paid Granada Television of Britain about $5 million to broadcast the documentary on "20/20" Friday. If this was an effort to atone for Diane Sawyer's memorably bungled 1995 interview with Mr. Jackson and his soon-to-be ex-wife Lisa Marie Presley, the money is well spent.
Barbara Walters introduces the interview, but that is the extent of her contribution.
Mr. Bashir brings forth an older, sorrier Michael Jackson with fantasies intact but stripped of his publicity fog of marriages and platinum-selling CD sales. After assuring Mr. Bashir that he has had romantic relationships with women, Mr. Jackson later admits that surrogate mothers had his children, though he called their surrogacies "a present," and Mr. Bashir did not press him to find out how they were compensated for their gifts.
Mr. Jackson explained that he frequently invites young children on sleepovers in his bedroom and looked injured when Mr. Bashir suggested that could seem inappropriate. He denied repeatedly that his obsession is in any way sexual.
He even claimed he has had only two surgical procedures on his tip-tilted, Mitzi Gaynor nose. The ferocity of his denials, even when confronted with the entirely different face he had as a 20-year-old, was persuasive in at least one way: like the child he claims to be, Mr. Jackson seems to think that saying something makes it so.
"I am Peter Pan," he says in a soft, fluttery whisper belied by the 5 o'clock shadow creeping up his cheeks. Mr. Bashir rather boorishly corrects him, pointing out that actually he is Michael Jackson. "No," Mr. Jackson replies. "I am Peter Pan in my heart."
Whether his denials could provide fodder for future lawsuits, as they did when he told Ms. Sawyer that all the allegations made in a sex abuse case that ended in a $25-million settlement were false, is unclear. But as a public relations move, Mr. Jackson has done himself more good than harm with this latest interview.
People began to suspect there was something amiss long before Mr. Jackson dangled his baby from a balcony in Berlin last November. He may strike viewers as crazy, but insanity is a defense.
Mr. Jackson was interviewed while strolling through his private amusement park, seated before a portrait of himself as a Botticelli-esque male Venus surrounded by winged putti, and on a shopping trip for $250,000 Empire vases at a boutique in the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino in Las Vegas. However pathetic or repellent his life may seem to some, he is shown as he wishes to be viewed: as a little boy trapped in the body of Michael Jackson.
He does occasionally show glimpses of a flintier adult self. "Everybody in Hollywood gets plastic surgery," he retorted after yet another question about his nose. "Plastic surgery was not invented for Michael Jackson."
ABC is hoping that its coup will draw huge ratings, even though it is competing with special hourlong episodes of "Friends" and "Will & Grace."
In Britain, where the interview was shown on Monday, it got a peak audience of 15 million — more than watched England play against Denmark in the World Cup, and more than the Queen's Jubilee Concert. Later this month, NBC's magazine show "Dateline" plans to devote an hour to whatever happened to Mr. Jackson's nose.
Society's fascination with Michael Jackson may be unhealthy, but it is hardly baffling. Like junk bonds or fen-phen, Mr. Jackson is one of those phenomena that seem destined to be yanked from the public at any minute but are irresistible while they last.
Most celebrities have at least one disgrace that can win them a spot on a television magazine show. Last December, 21.3 million viewers watched Whitney Houston deny crack use to Diane Sawyer. ("First of all, let's get one thing straight," she told Ms. Sawyer. "Crack is cheap. I make too much money to ever smoke crack.")
Mr. Jackson talks about his a gruesome childhood: if true, it explains a lot. He describes how his father managed the Jackson Five through fear and beatings: "He practised us with a belt in his hand."
Mr. Bashir, who is most famous for interviewing Diana, Princess of Wales, about infidelity and bulimia in 1995, casts himself here as a character in a Michael Jackson reality show, cutting to himself driving pensively across city streets and country highways.
After Mr. Jackson denies having extensive plastic surgery, he mused, "I knew I had to return to the subject of his face before we were through."
He was in the hotel room during Mr. Jackson's baby dangling gesture, which was so reckless it made the front pages of newspapers.
"His behavior was beginning to alarm me," Mr. Bashir confided in a voice-over. He seemed less alarmed by the way Mr. Jackson traveled with his two older children, Prince Michael I, 5, and Paris, 4, who always wear masks in public.
The show weaves Mr. Jackson's famous hits "Billy Jean," and "Thriller" around the interviews as a kind of musical score of his arrested development.
Perhaps in a reflection of how much of a pariah Mr. Jackson has become, the show did not include any testimonials from his many celebrity friends, though he mentioned buying jewelry for Elizabeth Taylor.
The main signs of support are found in the weepy adulation of autograph-seekers in malls and hotel parking lots. And also in a defense laid out by one of his young protégés, Gavin, whom Mr. Jackson befriended when the boy was being treated for cancer. The two hold hands, and Gavin explains to Mr. Bashir that society cannot dictate when people must act as grown-ups.
As Mr. Jackson listens admiringly, Gavin explains, "You are an adult when you say you are."
#1 · Feb 06, 2003, 07:26 · boomyboomy
#2 · Feb 08, 2003, 09:32 · Lysear
I got this enormous ammount of respect for the man after watching. He seems to be one of the most genuine and thoughtful people I have seen. Although it seems he may have major issues with his childhood I dont believe this man is capable of assault on any children as he loves them too much.
My dislike of journalism and the media niggles at my mind constantly reminding me of how much programs are edited in this day and age. keep this in mind when judging Mr Jackson.
He has gained at least one more supporter from this program in me.
#3 · Feb 09, 2003, 06:20 · Parmenion
#4 · Feb 09, 2003, 11:14 · Frank
Yours,
Frank
#5 · Feb 09, 2003, 13:48 · James S
Martin Bashir had an agenda - to prove M.J. to be a child molester. He could not get away from that line of thinking. No matter what the evidence was that showed otherwise, Bashir was completely closed minded, and only interested in pushing his theories on people. Jackson had every right to be angry at this guy when he saw the documentary released.
James.
#6 · Feb 09, 2003, 21:52 · Leftypilot79
aaron
#7 · Feb 09, 2003, 22:23 · PeacefulWarrior
He settled out of court in a child-abuse lawsuit for $25 million dollars. I can tell you this much, if I were rich and someone accused me of sexually abusing a child and I were innocent, that's the LAST thing I would do.
#8 · Feb 11, 2003, 00:08 · gerble king
#9 · Feb 13, 2003, 06:51 · skips29
][
][
][
][
] and thought better of my post.
#10 · Feb 13, 2003, 12:17 · Frank
Yours,
Frank
#11 · Feb 15, 2003, 03:24 · skips29
I'm posting this ONLY as A JOKE I hope noone gets offend by this
I have a INSANELY [}:)] WICKED [}:)]sence of humor and it may not suit everyone. [
][
][
][
][
][
][
][
]
"Smooth Criminal"
As He Came Into The Window
It Was The Sound Of A
Crescendo
He Came Into Her Apartment
He Left The Bloodstains On
The Carpet
She Ran Underneath The Table
He Could See She Was Unable
So She Ran Into The Bedroom
She Was Struck Down,
It Was
Her Doom[xx(]
Annie Are You Ok[?]
So, Annie Are You Ok[?]
Are You Ok, Annie[?]
Annie Are You Ok[?]
So, Annie Are You Ok[?]
Are You Ok, Annie[?]
Annie Are You Ok[?]
So, Annie Are You Ok[?]
Are You Ok, Annie[?]
Annie Are You Ok
So, Annie Are You Ok, Are You Ok, Annie[?]
(Annie Are You Ok)
(Will You Tell Us That You're
Ok)
(There's A Sign In The
Window)
(That He Struck You-A
Crescendo Annie)
(He Came Into Your
Apartment)
(He Left The Bloodstains On
The Carpet)
(Then You Ran Into The
Bedroom)
(You Were Struck Down)
(It Was Your Doom)[xx(]
Annie Are You Ok[?]
So, Annie Are You Ok[?]
Are You Ok Annie[?]
Annie Are You Ok[?]
So, Annie Are You Ok[?]
Are You Ok Annie[?]
Annie Are You Ok[?]
So, Annie Are You Ok[?]
Are You Ok Annie[?]
You've Been Hit By[B)]
You've Been Hit By-[B)]
A Smooth Criminal[8D]
So They Came Into The
Outway
It Was Sunday-What A Black
Day
Mouth To Mouth Resus-
Citation[
][:X]
Sounding Heartbeats-
Intimidations
Annie Are You Ok
So, Annie Are You Ok
Are You Ok Annie[?]
Annie Are You Ok
So, Annie Are You Ok
Are You Ok Annie
Annie Are You Ok[?]
So, Annie Are You Ok[?]
Are You Ok Annie[?]
Annie Are You Ok[?]
So, Annie Are You Ok[?]
Are You Ok Annie[?]
(Annie Are You Ok)
(Will You Tell Us That You're
Ok)
(There's A Sign In The
Window)
(That He Struck You-A
Crescendo Annie)
(He Came Into Your
Apartment)
(He Left The Bloodstains On The Carpet)
(Then You Ran Into The
Bedroom)
(You Were Struck Down)[B)]
(It Was Your Doom)[xx(]
(Annie Are You Ok)[?]
(So, Annie Are You Ok)[?][:O]
(Are You Ok Annie)[?]
(You've Been Hit By)
(You've Been Struck By-[B)]
A Smooth Criminal)[8D][
)]
Okay, I Want Everybody To
Clear The Area Right Now!
Aaow!
(Annie Are You Ok)[?]
I Don't Know!
(Will You Tell Us, That
You're Ok)
I Don't Know!
(There's A Sign In The
Window)
I Don't Know!
[?]
(That He Struck You-A[:O]
Crescendo Annie)
I Don't Know![?][?][?]
(He Came Into Your
Apartment)
I Don't Know![?][?][?]
(Left Bloodstains On The
Carpet)
I Don't Know Why Baby![?][?][?]
(Then You Ran Into The
Bedroom)
I Don't Know!
(You Were Struck Down)[xx(]
(It Was Your Doom-Annie!)[xx(]
(Annie Are You Ok)[?][?][?][?][?]
Dad Gone It-Baby!
(Will You Tell Us, That
You're Ok)[?][?][?][?][?]
Dad Gone It-Baby![
]
(There's A Sign In The
Window)
Dad Gone It-Baby!
(That He Struck You-A[B)]
Crescendo Annie)
Hoo! Hoo![
]
(He Came Into Your
Apartment)
Dad Gone It!
(Left Bloodstains On The
Carpet)
Hoo! Hoo! Hoo![
][:O][
][
]
(Then You Ran Into The
Bedroom)
Dad Gone It
]
(You Were Struck Down)[B)]
(It Was Your Doom-Annie!)[xx(]
Aaow!!![:O][:O]
and this is what he wrote for the song makes you wonder dont it?
[
][
][
][
][
]
I told you that I had a very [}:)]wicked [}:)]sense of humor. EVIL LAUGH j/k
#12 · Feb 15, 2003, 15:03 · Frank
I thought you were going to tell some in-European joke along the lines of, "What does NASA stand for?"... Need Another Seven Astronauts... or something to that effect.
Yours,
Frank
#13 · Feb 17, 2003, 10:15 · clandestino
unfortunately I deleted it last week ... Its a photo of him holding a blanket over his kids' head, superimposed in front of a bull in a bull-ring...hee hee.
#14 · Feb 17, 2003, 18:09 · panabelle
I don't get it either...
What language is good-on-ya in and what is the translation? Just curious...
#15 · Feb 18, 2003, 00:04 · PeacefulWarrior
Man in the mirror
By Chris Willman
Entertainment Weekly
Thursday, February 13, 2003 Posted: 12:31 PM EST (1731 GMT)
Smother's day: Jackson holds baby ''Blanket,'' whose face he covers in public.
Thrilling achievements: 1982 album "Thriller" became the best selling album of all time, selling more than 25 million copies. The album produced seven Top Ten singles and won Jackson eight Grammy Awards
Bad is good: 1987 album, "Bad," became the first album to produce five No. 1 hits. The supporting world concert tour was the highest-grossing tour ever to that time
Trouble in Neverland: In 1993, Jackson was accused of molesting a 13-year-old boy on his Neverland Ranch. Jackson denied the allegation, and no charges were ever filed. Jackson and the boy?s family settled out of court in 1995
Wedding stories: Married Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of rock legend Elvis Presley, in 1994; marriage lasted 19 months later. Married nurse Debbie Rowe, who is the mother of two of his children, 1996; couple divorced in 1999
Hall of Fame: Jackson was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001
Source: AllMusic.com
(Entertainment Weekly) -- The first logical impulse while watching ABC's ''Living With Michael Jackson'' was to suppose that some sort of intervention is in order. The second was to wonder what sane people left in his circle could enter the gates of Neverland to intervene.
There are a lot of horror movies left to come out in 2003. But there may be no shot of a victim quite so terrifying as the close-up of the infant Jackson has dubbed ''Blanket'' being literally, as well as figuratively, smothered by his father, the baby's wide eyes peering out from underneath a veil as if to silently cry for help, his father trying to stick a bottle in his mouth with one hand while holding a veil over the baby's nose with the other.
Later on in the show, Jackson defended himself against charges that dangling Blanket over a hotel balcony rail in Berlin was reckless, insisting that the infant enjoys these kinds of ordeals. ''Why would I throw a baby off a balcony? That's the dumbest, stupidest story I've ever heard,'' said Jacko, deflecting criticism by suggesting that his detractors are accusing him of attempted infanticide instead of just idiocy. ''We were waving to thousands of fans down below, and they were chanting that they wanted to see my children, so I was kind enough to let them see. I was doing something out of innocence.'' And poor Blanket? ''He was responding. He started singing....'' Or maybe it was a scream.
A slightly sympathetic aside here: I've been to Neverland. Back in 1993, I tagged along with an MTV crew and a handful of contest winners to spend a day gallivanting around Jackson's home-release-theme park. I rode on his Ferris wheel and bumper cars, ate popcorn and Moonwalker-brand chocolate bars, toured his private movie theater (which includes a bed next to the projection booth -- for sick kids, supposedly), walked around beautifully manicured grounds in which Disney songs are pumped out of speakers disguised as rocks.
Scrambled brains
And much as interviewer Martin Bashir mocked the idea of a grown-up enjoying this child-centric environment, it WAS seductive. Like Jackson, probably, I grew up thinking that Disneyland's safe, sanitized Main Street USA was more heavenly than any biblical street paved with gold. Stronger souls than Jackson's might find their development pleasantly arrested in this hermetically sealed of an environment. I can also vouch that he has the greatest amusement park ride of all time in his park, the Zipper, and that, wonderful as it is, it will definitely scramble your brains, which could explain a lot.
The childhood abuse Jackson reportedly suffered as a kid, as detailed in the special's first hour, explains a lot, too. But not enough, because everyone ultimately is responsible for breaking cycles of abuse. Jackson seems to be repeating the cycle, not by beating and berating his kids, but by ''loving'' them too much. If he only wished he could wear a mask while he was growing up, well, by golly, his children will get to, even if it makes them look like they're starring in a G-rated version of ''Eyes Wide Shut.''
And the smothering started literally at the moment of birth, we found out: As his second child was delivered into this world, he related, ''I was so anxious to get her home that after cutting the cord, I hate to say this, I snatched her and just went home with placenta all over her.... Got my child and ran... I got her home and washed her off.''
Legal issues
In California, attorney Gloria Allred has begged the child protection agency in Santa Barbara County to investigate Jackson further. We'd all like that, but -- the old allegations of sexual misconduct aside -- his actions may fall short of what the law would consider actionable abuse.
Is it against the law to spirit a placenta-covered infant away from its mother and into a limo? Probably not, if the mother is dumb enough to agree. Is it a crime for someone who grew up admittedly wishing he could wear a mask to brainwash his kids into thinking that every day is Halloween and that it's normal to wear a Mardi Gras mask every time they leave the house? Unfortunately, maybe not. It seems legislators never thought ahead to someone like Michael Jackson.
With apologies to Allred, what Jackson needs is some true friends, not the law, to step in for that intervention, formal or otherwise. (The same thing might have helped another of pop's infamous isolationists, Phil Spector.) Liz Taylor, Uri Geller, Al Sharpton, sister Janet, anybody... please, help get that smothering blanket off Blanket.
#16 · Feb 18, 2003, 00:10 · PeacefulWarrior
GO to:
http://anomalies-unlimited.com/Jackson.html
Please excuse the language of the site, I was a little offended by a few things...
#17 · Mar 25, 2003, 19:12 · Leyla
People might still talk, but at least I'd have a "not guilty" verdict to wave under the nose of my detractors.
Court may be expensive, but it'd be a heck of a lot cheaper than 25 million.
Plus I wouldn't want a con artist to take one thin dime of my money, I'd fight 'em tooth and nail, even if would cost me more money in the end.