The Michael Jackson coverage is vile.
Ellie wrote a great post today about Jackson as an addict, and the rest of us as his enablers. The media, the general public, every story that speaks of his great gift ignores the hard, simple truth: he was a man who destroyed himself. Who self-medicated with the drugs they use to put people under general anesthesia. A man whose vision of himself was so contorted and sick he could not see what the rest of us saw … and he sold a lot of us on not seeing it, either.
But far worse, Jackson hurt others. And the more we venerate him, the more we perpetuate that offense. U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) said at his memorial: “We know that people are innocent until proven otherwise” — a veiled reference to his arrest and trial on charges of child molestation.
But her support of him, her hero-worship and unwillingness to hold him accountable for his choices represents a guilty verdict for the children he was accused of harming. If Jackson is innocent, then they are guilty: of making accusations, of speaking ugly truths or untruths. Somewhere out there they are listening and condemned by everyone who celebrates his talent and ignores his actions.
Michael Jackson was never convicted of child abuse. But he acknowledged that he liked to share his bed with adolescent boys, and he saw nothing wrong with it. The specialists who evaluated him for trial called him less a pedophile and more a regressed 10 year-old.
Let me just take a deep breath through my mother-outrage here: it doesn’t matter whether Jackson thought it was innocent. It doesn’t matter whether the boys thought it was what they wanted at the time. The distinction between pedophile and regressed 10 year-old may be valuable in terms of Jackson’s treatment, but it is meaningless in terms of outcome — he was a grown man seeking out adolescent boys to share his bed. We don’t gauge the relative seriousness of an offense by asking the victim, “How much did this bother you?” We gauge it based on whether the action was wrong.
Unequivocally, unforgivebly, it was.
Cute Husband and I both feel strongly that kids go through phases of needing the extra support of sleeping in a parent’s arms. We share our bed with our children in these times as part of our work as parents — providing for them throughout the night when it’s needed.
Jackson slept with adolescent boys to feed his own intimacy needs — a sick use of children to his own purpose.
Jackson was a man of great talent, and so what. He was born with the gift. But his actions were that of an addict who habitually violated boundaries with children. That he had kids of his own and a grieving family does not exonerate him — and should not condemn his victims to guilt.
As a mother, this pisses me off. Any adult who seeks to sleep with my children can expect my merciless pursuit regardless of whether “anything happened.” Jackson was not a victim, he was a victimizer who neglected to get treatment for his addiction and his inappropriate interest in children.
That he made great music is incidental.
Well said, Elizabeth.
As always, you have written with heart and insight, clarity and compassion.
My heart goes to his children, and the children (some now adults) he was involved with. Please God, maythey find some support to live well despite all of this. His former constant companion, the bonobo, is in a reserve for former pets. It seems to me his needs are being better met than the kids’.
Rock on Damomma! Excellent, excellent post!
This is great conversation!
Something that niggles with me is that if the victims family truly wanted justice– and not dollars– would they not have refused to settle for $22 million but pursued it in a court of law to put him behind bars? Or WAS it a money grab?
Again, I absolutely do not condone his behaviour or that of any pedophile BUT to dismiss him in one fell swoop after a long and storied career in the entertainment industry doesn’t sit well with me. The world is mourning the entertainer, not the man.
I cannot help but see him as a little boy who was terrorized. (And I CAN see the irony in that he went onto harm other children).
Off to click the Bush link, Damomma.
Cheers!
I do agree with your post Liz, and a note to everyone who thinks we are not allowed to judge the man: it could have been possible to have a (for lack of a better word) dignified funeral for MJ. It could have been possbile to acknowledge his talent as well as his flaws–but we didn’t get that, we got a circus. A grotesque circus that throws a very unflattering light on celebrity worship and the capacity for willful blindness. You can be nostalgic for your youth, you can remember his ability–and regret the waste of talent and deplore his private life.
couldn’t have said it any better. great post!
Well said Cathy J. I find the whole phenomenon around MJ fascinating. We have such an odd relationship with celebrity – he was a man, pure and simple. We over-identify (I do it, too) with his successes, sins and failures because it touches us on a personal level. When all is said and done, we didn’t live his life and we will never know the full story. I believe, however, that we need to be held accountable for all our actions – I’m not here to judge or to presume I really know what-all went on in his life. But just like I would with any other person in my life – I respond to his actions, to his words. If he were a family member, or someone in my town, or just an average guy, he wouldn’t have the loophole of celebrity to give him leeway – if someone who lived next door to me, just a regular guy, behaved the way he did I would respond to what I saw – my kids would never be anywhere near him.
We all think about the legacy we will leave behind – celebrity or not. It is naive for the public to idolize or demonize him just because of his celebrity. In the end, it is his children who inherit his legacy – this would be true even if he were a regular guy. Sadly, children who have been abused, neglected or lived with addiction in their family feel the same pain as children of celebrity. They just don’t have to hear the world’s opinion. But it doesn’t change the their truth.
As usual, well written and I completely agree.
yup.
Amen Liz. I am so sick and tired of seeing everyone – from the media to Facebook friends – suddenly taking his death and making it like it was a great loss to the world. The only people who have lost out are his children, and who knows that they may not get a more ‘normal’ upbringing now that they aren’t living with MJ’s paranoia. With his death it seems all the charges of molestation have been conveniently forgotten. What he DID confess to was wrong enough, and if there was anything else beyond that then the man deserved to rot in jail, not a 2 million dollar funeral and memorial.
Amen. Your first line drew me in. I will never, and I mean NEVER, celebrate a pedophile. I’m sorry he never got a childhood of his own but that is the fault of his family and their decisions.
I’m still pissed that they canceled the Price is Right for the pre-coverage of the insane event that was his memorial service.
As a mother of two and a child and family therapist who has worked with many abused children and their families, I can say I have found this whole MJ scene to be bizarre, disturbing and plain sad. One thing I would say about his tragic childhood, it is no excuse. Almost every abusive parent I worked with had, almost without exception, a tragic childhood story of their own, and usually it spanned two, three or several generations… these behaviors usually come from somewhere. I felt for them, and empathized, but also worked with them to make clear that now that they were adults with children of their own, they MUST work on figuring out ways to not pass this legacy on to their own or other children, and if they had impulses born out of their own childhood, they had to learn to stop themselves and work through the root of the issue. Once one reaches adulthood, one needs to GET HELP, and extended family counts, too, in terms of helping to protect children from someone in the family who needs help themselves. I can’t pretend to know or understand this man or his story, and I do wish the media would let the whole thing go, and I am most sad for his children, because, whatever he was, he was their father, and so it is a very strange and public loss for them (the children I worked with, of course, grieved deeply for their parents when they had to be removed, no matter what the story of abuse or neglect might have been). And in terms of bizarre, I heard a woman interviewed on NPR after the funeral say, “I cried more at this funeral than at the funerals of my own family members.” WTF?!! This hero-worship in our culture is so very strange….
Hi Liz,
I have been a long time reader and commenter. I think this is truly the first time I have disagreed with you on any of your entries.
I am an MJ fan have been since the age of 10. He was my first true glimpse of talent. Anyway, that isn’t where I want to go with this comment.
The problem that I have with MJ being a child molester is this…
As a Mother of 2 little girls I know and believe that if ANYONE was to touch one of my children I would not take any amount of money to just shut up and walk away. I would do everything in my power to make sure the Bastard who harmed my child/children would be punished to the fullest extent. Certainly not able to live comfortably. This is where I have a hard time saying the man was guilty.
Thank you for giving us a platform to speak our minds without all the back lash that comes along with it. You can’t find many of those places on the web:)
QUOTE Jessica:
“Thank you for giving us a platform to speak our minds without all the back lash that comes along with it. You can’t find many of those places on the web:)”
Ditto for me. This has been great!
Here were the choices facing the parent: 1) put your child through a humiliating court experience facing his abuser in front of the world, having his integrity and sexuality questioned, watching lawyers rip himself and his parents apart; 2) avoid all of that and have your child’s education, health care, housing, food and that of his children covered for the rest of his life.
I don’t think you can successfully argue that only an extortionist would take that deal. I think a frightened, powerless parent of little means going against a superstar would, too.
Thank you, too, Jessica. I have great readers and I love you all for it.
As a parent you would/should be enraged not frightened and powerless.
Again just my opinion.
My mother died of a massive brain bleed on June 2. She grew up listening to the Jackson 5, and we still have her LPs & 45s. In the few days she was in the hospital, before she died, we had ABC spinning continuously, knowing she could hear it, even if she couldn’t dance or sing along. Knowing how much she loved his music, how much it meant to her and how much it defined her childhood, I couldn’t watch the memorial & I’ve avoided as much media coverage of his death as I can. It’s too painful to know that one of Mom’s faves is gone so soon after she went.
jen… so sorry about your mom.
Jen,
I am so sorry about your mother. You must be so sad. I’m thinking of you.
DaMomma
The media constantly spins yarns for its’ viewers. Take everything you view and read with a grain of salt. This whole saga is sad however you look at it. It is also filled with sensationalism and personal judgments ( by both the networks and the anchors etc). In other words “let him who is without sin cast the first stone!”
One of the commentors stated that the boys father didn’t coerce him BUT the boy just came out and said that now that MJ is dead he can’t live with a lie anymore and that he never touched him and that his dad indeed made him say it. But of course that part the media doesn’t cover nearly as much. Personally I think the media is biased and you can’t believe everything on tv. He was completely wrong for having those weird relationships with those boys, but its never been proven that he’s a pedophile and I think its wrong to accuse him of that….esp when one of the victims has just said it never happened.
From what I can tell, it is only rumor that Jordan Chandler spoke to the press. I can’t find what press he supposedly spoke to.
First: Jen, I’m so sorry to hear of your loss and the connection to this music which I am sure is very emotional. I know how hard it is to lose your mom and I am thinking of you.
I was on vacation from June 27-July 11. We had TV and internet, but only turned on TV for kids shows and I only used Internet to check email. We did have the WSJ and the Phila Inquirer delivered to the beach house daily, and I enjoyed a long slow paper read on many a day. Here’s the thing. Virtually no attn paid to MJ in print media (ok, a few articles I ignored), I gloriously missed all this vacuous coverage. So knowing what we know about the media and how they cover such events, I strongly recommend that next time you see the tidal wave coming, escape to higher ground and disconnect from the electronic media!
Great discourse here though. Thanks to Liz and all of you I feel totally up to date!
Interesting comments here. Not judging=enabling. Compassion=naive. I’m just waiting to read that maybe he staged his death to sell more records. From what I can tell, some of you seem to believe the morbid fascination of the media about his death, children, etc are actually his fault. Yeah, because it’s so obvious from the reclusive way he lived that he was courting this media circus… Want to protect your young? Don’t drop your kids off at playdates and birthday parties with people you barely know. Your kids are more likely to be molested by the “nice neighbor” than an addict celebrity. None of us have a snowballs chance in heck of being invited to the Neverland Ranch, so you can exhale and go watch your kids riding their bikes in the neighborhood. He was an addict; he was a genius; he was a sick man–in all senses of the word.
I will buy his new album when it comes out, and celebrate his musical genius. I will also hang prints of artists on my walls that were mentally ill. I will also visit my stepdad who molested me and treat him with as much kindness as I can. I will make sure my daughter sleeps next to me; I won’t leave her alone with him. But I will look at him as a man who is not all bad, and I will celebrate the goodness in him. Michael Jackson didn’t ask for your help, nor mine. But reserving judgement and feeling compassion for a twisted soul while allowing people to celebrate his goodness is not enabling; it’s treating someone as a fellow human being.
I cannot agree more!
Katy,
I have been trying to think of a way to respond to this post, which, with respect, I completely disagree with. You said it better than I could. Thank you.
Jen, I am so sorry for your loss. I too, grew up with the Jackson 5. In fact my very first live concert was the Jackson.
MJ will answer to God for whatever misdeeds he may have been guilty of, as all of us will eventually.
The real guilty people in this story are the parents for ever allowing their children alone with him. And I always thought he was guilty – until I myself became a parent. No way in Hell would I ever allow someone to pay me off and not want the man to burn! Something is up there – bad parenting all-around! Just money-hungry people wanting some of his $ is all.
I never thought the man was that great. Every time I saw or heard him it gave me the whillies. I’m sick to death of hearing about him already.
The man was a sicko. Good riddance and I personally hope he pays for an eternity for what he did when he was on this earth.
Elizabeth’s quote:
Here were the choices facing the parent: 1) put your child through a humiliating court experience facing his abuser in front of the world, having his integrity and sexuality questioned, watching lawyers rip himself and his parents apart; 2) avoid all of that and have your child’s education, health care, housing, food and that of his children covered for the rest of his life.
I agree….until you have been put in this unfathomable situation, you don’t know how you’d respond.
Liz, whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? I think Sheila Jackson Lee made a fair point here.
“If Jackson is innocent, then they are guilty: of making accusations, of speaking ugly truths or untruths”
It does happen you know, false accusations.
I am not a fan of MJ, and I do think he was an addict. But I can’t judge him, that is not up to me
Karin — If Jackson is innocent, his accusers are guilty. So by saying “innocent until proven guilty” about Jackson you are saying “guilty until proven innocent” about the kids.
No, I disagree, I never said or thought that about the kids. Its not that black and white, there is the grey area.
Am not judging MJ and I am not judging the kids. That is not up to me.
Your view is a bit like “he who is not with me is against me.” You are turning it around the wrong way.
@ Karin….thank you!
Yours is a valid point. This is what I was trying to say by the “cast a stone ” comment.” This is not a black-or-white issue and it bothers me (but I digress) that there are some literally foaming at the mouth to sling shots . Do adults lie? yes! Do kids lie? yes! since when has not judging being equivalent to enabling as Katy put it? If I were a juror and had ALL the facts of this case, then I would cast a vote-guilty or innocent! Right now, we’re all going by what the media has fed us and let’s not get into the bias involved-we don’t have ALL the facts . Let’s restrain ourselves like civilized human beings, this mob-justice mentality is wrong-it borders on mild hysteria. Refraining from casting judgment without facts does not mean we are condoning the act.