To Michael, On Independence Day

Mike,

Weird that just after I hung up the phone with you last week I heard the news about Michael Jackson. What a shocker, huh?

And yet, somehow not really, when you consider what a carnival of turmoil his life had become. My mother was stunned speechless when I told her all the cable news channels were reporting he had passed—all these years later she still thought of Michael Jackson as the button cute centerpiece of the Jackson Five, as though on some level unable or unwilling to comprehend or accept that Jackson had grown up and his life had become a great deal more complicated in the intervening years. Like a lot of fans, I go back a long way with Michael Jackson; remembering him with the Jackson Five is remembering my childhood; recalling the release of event records like Off The Wall and, of course, Thriller, the monster smash that ate popular music, is like looking at snapshots of myself (and Joe, and you) taking our first uncertain steps into our adult years.

Do you remember when Diana Ross Presents the Jackson Five came out back in ’69 and it was reported that she’d “discovered” the group and brought them to the attention of Berry Gordy, who signed them to the fabled Motown on the spot? That was PR bullshit of course; Diana Ross did no such thing. A number of other people helped the Jacksons in the early days; if anything it was the celebrated likes of Sam and Dave, Gladys Knight, Bobby Taylor and others who were most instrumental in getting Gordy to see the Jacksons’ immense potential.

Whatever—they were phenomenal. I’ll always remember the thrill of their performances, the close harmonies, Michael and Jermaine’s delightful call and response singing and, best of all, those electrifying, precision dance moves. Bubblegum soul. That was the memorably affectionate description of their musical style. The Jackson Five really were something new, something that had never before happened to African-American kids like us, the first black teen idols.

Maybe I should cap that: The Jackson Five Were the First Black Teen Idols. I was so proud of that, and of them. I loved their music, bought every new record the minute they hit the stores, semi-patiently taught the song lyrics to classmates. (Remember when it was imperative to know the latest Jackson Five songs?) And like my classmates I understood intuitively their importance to American culture generally and to Black America particularly; the Jackson Five were to popular music what Ali was to sports and Sidney Poitier to the movies: the supermen among us whose supreme talents not only lifted us up but also reached across racial divides. You knew that somewhere white kids were also watching Michael and his brothers on The Hollywood Palace and The Ed Sullivan Show, leaping off their parents’ couches to sing and dance along to the infectious beats of I Want You Back, The Love You Save and ABC, right along with us. Somehow, you just knew.

More importantly though, they were ours. Who cared whether the white kids liked them or not? Let the Tiger Beat teeny-bopper suburban girls shriek and swoon over the Dondi-eyed Donny and his Osmond brothers—we had the Jackson Five!

I remember in my moody adolescence barricading myself in my tiny closet of a bedroom, playing Maybe Tomorrow, Lookin’ Through The Windows and Never Can Say Goodbye over and over again on the disco ball shaped record player my mom gave me for my 13th birthday, haunted by the bittersweet lyrics and the yearning ache and keening wails in Michael’s young voice. There was a head shot of him on the record sleeve for the 45 single Ben—or maybe it was Rockin’ Robin or Little Bitty Pretty One—anyway, he is bright-eyed with a full-lipped grin, a newsboy cap is perched at a cocky angle on his Afro. For a long time, this was my favorite picture of him. I would play the record and gaze at Michael grinning back at me, wondering what in that very moment he was doing, thinking, feeling. Time inched forward, and Michael and his brothers got a little older, his voice deepened, and his face grew spotty, plagued like mine by aggravating flare-ups of teenage acne. I’d read somewhere that away from the stage Michael could be very shy, especially when meeting new people; I imagined the acne making it that much harder for him to endure being sought after and looked at, and I was sympathetic, knowing just how he felt.

Other pictures of Michael Jackson appear in my mind’s eye: Michael formerly dressed and in snazzy, pinched-looking shoes playing basketball on the court of the family’s new California home; Michael just a few years older, sweet-faced yet slightly ill at ease, sandwiched between the glamorous likes of Liza, Halston and Jackie O at some typically over-the-top Studio 54 shindig; a darkly handsome and tuxedoed Michael in front of a brick background on the Off The Wall album cover. Where did the time go? He seemed with effortless ease to evolve from cuddly child prodigy to precociously assured solo star to superstar powerhouse, the new young master of the realms of R&B and Pop.

Remember the Motown 25th anniversary special in 1983? Owned it! Didn’t he?! The medley routine with the brothers was as rousing as expected, Michael now as tall and lean as big brother Jackie. But when those first thumping strains of Billie Jean began—that funky, spooky base line—and he unleashed that blazing, landmark performance of moonwalk and attitude—Michael Jackson exploded onto a whole new entertainment plateau (if not creating it right on the spot) and became a New Age Astaire. It was breathtaking.

It was also, in a way I still can’t fully explain, the beginning of the end of my sense of connection to Michael, that feeling like he was one of us and I knew him. It wasn’t just your usual he-belongs-to-the-ages-now mingle of pride, awe and resignation. Okay, it was that, but it was something else also. By the time of Thriller’s release he was beginning to change in ways I didn’t understand; the seemingly never-ceasing process of altering his appearance had begun, along with the perhaps inevitable retreat behind layers and layers of lawyers and lackeys. It was also the start of whispers and snickers and less than flattering press scrutiny and speculation.

As time wore on I still loved Michael’s music—well, most of it, most of the time. And nothing could touch my Jackson Five memories. But about the rest—the mirror glasses, the thinned-out lips and narrowing nose, the weirdly childlike “Peter Pan” persona, the quasi-military uniforms—I have to confess I had become as skeptical--not really the right word, but I can't think of the right word; I never could--as everyone else. I was older now too, and beginning to observe Michael Jackson with an attitude of detachment, and with more critical eyes. Though I tried not to be as judgmental—or mean—as some, or at least not overly so, chalking up Jackson’s increasing strangeness to the vagaries of artistic temperament, every once in awhile I glimpsed something that made me wonder just what was going on with the “Gloved One.” Did Michael Jackson really live in a different universe or did he just expect the rest of us to think so and ask no questions?

Take the Emmanuel Lewis thing.

Now—there. I’m not even sure what I mean by that, exactly, but if you remember any or all those images of the two of them at a mid-eighties (’84? ’86?) Grammy Awards show—where reportedly they’d met for the very first time—you must have at least an idea where I’m going with this.

I mean, think back: there’s the then twenty-something Michael Jackson at the height of his fame and in all his glitter-gloved splendor, and there’s Emmanuel Lewis, the then—forgive me—pint-sized star of the popular Webster TV series. In all the photos of the two I have ever seen, Jackson is holding Lewis firmly in his lap or carrying him around on his hip as though he’s handling, I don’t know, his own child, or a baby brother, or a little Jackson cousin. The two only met, mind you, yet Jackson apparently thought nothing of literally picking up and carrying this moon-faced adolescent boy around for the benefit of the cameras, and maybe for the duration of the evening.

And remember, Emmanuel Lewis was an adolescent—though he looked every bit the cherubic tot he played on Webster he was in fact a showbiz veteran of 12, a fascinating peculiarity, similar to that of fellow actor Gary Coleman, that had been reported in a number of interviews—and how many 12 year old boys do you know who would want to be publicly carried about like an infant, no matter how they looked? Shouldn’t that have occurred to Michael Jackson? Shouldn’t it have mattered to him even, you know, a little bit? Age aside, there is such a thing as boundaries after all; respecting another’s personal space is more than a notion, or should be. Was Emmanuel Lewis such a bedazzled fan of Jackson’s that the indignity of being treated like a living toy simply didn’t register that magical night? Or was he too intimidated to object?

And by the way, what, I’ve always wondered, did Brooke Shields, Jackson’s supposed main squeeze at the time, make of it? There she is by his side, smiling her wide, beautiful, camera-ready, actress-model smile—what would you say that smile concealed? Unease? Consternation? Embarrassment? Was she even a little creeped out by the spectacle of Emmanuel Lewis as Jackson’s personal pet? Or was she as obtuse as her celebrated pretend-boyfriend? (Eventually Shields revealed in an interview that she ended the relationship with Jackson because she began to realize there would never be any there there; even after communicating that she was ready for things to go to the next level, apparently the romance never went further than chaste kisses.)

To this day I don’t know if any reporter or news publication or broadcast of note commented back then, in any kind of raised-eyebrow way, on that Webster-Jackson public cuddle. I didn’t go looking for snark. But whatever anyone else made of it, whoever did or didn’t say anything about it, for me it was unavoidably a brow furrowing, what the f**k is he thinking moment.

Then in '93 those shocking, sickening accusations of child molestation that began to unravel him--and I was shocked as everyone else, Mike. Shocked and dismayed—oh, Lord, no—not this! Not him! This was unreal, unbelievable! Michael Jackson? A child molester? It's a shakedown, it's a total misunderstanding! I didn't believe it!

And... yet…

There again, I don’t know how to finish that thought. You can be shocked by something but yet not really surprised, do you know what I mean? He was always surrounded by all those damned kids. And, beyond the customary phalanx of security forces, there never seemed to be any other adults in attendance; just all these shining, poignantly young faces gazing at Michael Jackson in adoration, thronging around him. You looked at images like that, youngsters everywhere, in magazines, in newspapers, on your television screen, and you couldn’t help feeling a tad uneasy. Where were the parents? Where in the hell was a parent?

Come to think of it, where were Emmanuel Lewis’s parents that Grammy night?

From the start, there were many people who simply refused to believe that any part of those nasty allegations could possibly be true. I admit I was tempted to join the Denial Brigade, at times longing to, at times even nodding my head in mute semi-agreement at the outrage and denunciations aimed, not at Jackson, but squarely at his young accusers and/or their parents.

This made me very uncomfortable as I’m sure it did you. Blaming the victim is always a revolting business, but who exactly were the victims? Were Jackson’s accusers the youngsters who had traveled and lived and played with him at his Neverland Ranch or the now furious parent-guardians kept at a distance during all that time?

And what about those parents, by the way? What on earth were they thinking in the first place, handing their precious children over to a stranger, no matter how famous, and leaving them with him without their at least occasional supervision? Where was their sense of responsibility?

I know--this was Michael, and they thought they knew him, could trust him. Everybody thinks that about celebrities; they come to us through the magic of movies, magazines, music, television (especially) and, increasingly, the 'Net--and we're seduced into believing that we know who they are. But even when convinced, as many obviously were, that they could trust Jackson completely, what did they know about the other people—the security, staff, assorted hangers-on—surrounding him? The parents who came forward, or were even just tempted to, with charges of abuse--how much of that fury was inverted embarrassment and guilt for having been so stupidly negligent with their children in the first place? How credible were they—and how many were truly credible? When a celebrity scandal, especially one involving a star of the magnitude of a Michael Jackson, explodes into the news, all sorts of slippery, unsavory types come from out of nowhere, looking for a payday, 15 minutes of face time, something. Things got so ugly so quickly.

On the other hand, I remember thinking uneasily there's something to this. Somewhere. Somehow.

There were so many kids around Michael Jackson, and of the ones who participated in the sleepovers a significant number seemed to have been very young (and pretty) boys, with Jackson alone calling the shots and the parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, whoever, conveniently “disappeared”—was it possible he behaved in an inappropriate way with any one of those boys? Several of them? Many? And how “inappropriate” did things get? It was awful to contemplate—this was Michael Jackson! Your mind didn’t want to go there! But he didn’t help himself with the things he eventually admitted to doing--or allowing--and then tried to defend, so that the more Jackson protested his innocence, the more impatient, and finally disgusted, I got with him.

I know I keep coming back to this, but there's no getting away from it: he surrounded himself with underage kids--overwhelmingly, underage male kids--and took them with him when he toured and brought them back for extended stays at his ranch. He did this on the condition that parents and all other adult guardians—some, probably many, of whom were themselves long time MJ fans who would have been delighted to accompany their lucky youngsters to anything involving Michael—stay away, reportedly resorting to what could only be perceived as varying levels of bribery to ensure their cooperation in that request.

Most damning, he allowed these kids to sleep with him in his bedroom, an inner sanctum he reportedly protected with the installation of an elaborate motion sensor alarm system that would sound some kind of warning whenever anyone approached the door and reached for the knob, giving Jackson time to—well, what, exactly? Throw on a robe? Pull up his pants? Cover the kid? I know, that's ugly—but that’s how it looked! Could he really not see that that’s how it looked?? (And if this were anyone other than Michael Jackson we were talking about by the way, if, say, it was Donny Osmond-- would we be tiptoeing around the subject like this?)

And it’s not as if there was at that time a Special Lady on the premises, for appearances sake if for no other reason. Indeed it seemed not have occurred to Jackson that he should have that kind of cover (not that I mean to be offering any sort of playbook for pedophiles here). He was Michael Jackson, King of Pop, after all. Who would dare to question his actions? Besides the long since departed Ms. Shields, the most visible women making what I couldn’t avoid thinking of as Guest Appearances in Jackson’s life seemed to be stunning but aging icons of another era such as Sophia Loren—I think MJ was photographed squiring her to some glam function, once or twice—and, most notably, Elizabeth Taylor, who was actually a Jackson BFF. (The choice of La Liz is in itself ironically revealing—Monty Clift, James Dean, Rock Hudson, et al., anyone? And as for the gorgeous Sophia—two words: Cary Grant.) I’ll bet you if Marilyn Monroe was still alive and halfway decent-looking Jackson would have made sure to be seen attending some soiree with her, too. It’s that classic closet impulse toward over-compensation: Not only am I perfectly normal, but just look who I can attract! Quite the stud, wouldn’t you say?

It was stupid-ridiculous, Mike. If Michael Jackson wasn’t guilty of improper conduct with a minor, then he was at the very least the biggest fucking fool on the planet. How could he be so reckless? How could he place himself in such an exquisitely dangerous position? Didn’t it ever dawn on him what could happen if only a few of the details emerged, how things might appear, however innocent it all was?

But how innocent was it actually? There was MJ in that jaw-dropping Martin Bashir interview conceding that, yes, he did allow kids, many kids in fact, to sleep with him, not just in his bedroom but in his bed, sometimes with him, yes--but we can all take his word for it that it was completely honorable and above board, nothing remotely improper ever happened. We can believe this because he loves children, all children, all the little children of the world, and because, well, look he’s Michael Jackson, and he says so. End of discussion, okay?

What! WTF????!!

Do you remember that? What did you think? Myself, I sat there slack-jawed, thinking: that’s it, he’s done.

Yeah, I remember—the fall-out from that interview was so devastating for Michael Jackson that another, alternate version was released by him and his personal cameraman (Take Two: The Footage You Were Never Meant to See, also known as “the rebuttal interview”) showing interviewer Bashir being much more positive in his remarks toward and coverage of Jackson, as well as other omitted or additional interviews that were, of course, complimentary to Jackson. I suppose you could make the argument—and plenty of folks have—that the footage in the rebuttal version negates the former, or at least makes a case for doubting the whole concept of journalistic integrity. Especially seen back to back, the contrasting interviews probably do make Bashir seem disingenuous, if not Machiavellian, just another ambitious reporter ready in a heartbeat to sell out a famous, albeit naively trusting, subject to make his own name--or so the Michael loyalists sneer. I say "probably" because I don't remember ever having watched Take Two and, truthfully, I have no plans to do so now. Given the opportunity I don't particularly want to see the original again either. Too depressing, especially now.

I’ll leave it to you and others to argue Martin Bashir’s merits, or lack thereof, as a journalist. But even allowing for Bashir’s methods or intentions, there is no getting away from the fact—the fact, Mike—of Michael Jackson’s catalogue of bizarre behavior, and most seriously his (alleged) troubling impulses towards certain adolescent kids and fatal inability to comprehend that certain societal rules apply to him, too. Regardless. Regardless of his intentions, regardless of his probably very genuine love for his young fans (including the most heartrendingly vulnerable of them, the cancer sufferers whose miseries, reportedly, were eased by their Neverland visits), regardless of his kindness and generosity to his friends and family members, regardless of his global fame and (once) great wealth, and even regardless of his superlative gifts and indisputable legend as one of the most iconic, and beloved, entertainers of our time.


Happy 4th; call me when you get this,
L