Now, at first blush that seems off-the-wall bizarre, and certainly those feathered masks are outre, but given the life he’d led I can see why MJ would want to keep his children’s faces from being plastered all over the print and online media, give them that degree of anonymity at least.
It seems like they attract MORE attention by putting horrible masks on them, though. There are a lot of other celebrities that manage to avoid people knowing about their kids’ lives without resorting to masks and so forth. Plus, it seems like most of this is self inflicted. Like, if he didn’t dangle his baby out of a window or talk about how he rushed his baby home from the hospital as soon as it was born, would people really have been all over him?
More attention to unidentifiable faces.
And what is so “horrible” about masks or veils? You must be a lot of fun at Halloween.
So? Why must every celebrity adhere to the same practices to maintain some anonymity for their children? I still don’t see why masks and veils are so horrible.
I think MJ’s celebrity was due to some other reasons besides the way he treated his kids. He could be Ward Cleaver with them, and people/media would still be all over him; he was a musical superstar.
There’s nothing horrible about them inherently but wearing them all the time would be awful. Hot and no peripheral vision and uncomfortable. He was even draping something over the baby in that interview he did with Bashir at one point–what is the point in that?
They don’t all have to adhere to the same standards of anonymity. But I really think that most of the media obsessing over him was self inflicted–they wouldn’t have gone after him if he wasn’t just so weird. There are other musical superstars who somehow manage not to make their kids walk around with masks on. If I hadn’t known about the weird masks, I would have thought, whatever–now it’s just one more insane thing about him.
What makes you think MJ made the kids wear masks anywhere except in public? We know about the masks and veils because the kids were photographed in them – in public.
ETA: For all we know, MJ made it a fun game to wear the things – “Hey, kids, let’s fool the crazy people with the cameras again! Into your disguises! Do you want to wear the fancy veil or the pink and purple feathers today?”
I don’t. I just think it’s creepy to make your kids wear masks in public at all.
I think it’s creepier to sell pictures of your kids exclusively to People Magazine, even if you give the money to charity.
But what if they said, “Hey Dad, I don’t want to wear either today?” (There’s one of them wearing full on Spiderman hoods.)
I just think it would have made them less of a target, if he had let the press seen them, once or twice. I can’t imagine the complexes those poor kids have.
Yeah. There are other superstars out there besides Michael Jackson. Selling your kids’ photos to People for charity may not be the best thing in the world, and we can criticize Brad and Angelina and Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes all we like for letting people see their kids, but I don’t think they have the same negative connotations that his kids have. And I think the masks are just a symptom of the general weirdness, to be honest.
This settled it for me a long time ago: (links to video)
http://www.videosift.com/video/Triumph-the-Insult-Comic-Dog-at-the-Michael-Jackson-Trial
This might be a silly question, as I don’t know much about Michael Jackson and maybe it’s well-established that he’s really the biological father of his children, but why do they look white as hell?* If I recall correctly, in that big TV interview a few years ago he even said that the youngest one’s biological mother was also black. It makes no sense, and of course nor did his wacky account of the birth of the child.
*Being the parent of a biracial child and having known and seen many biracial people in my life, I fully realize that genetics produce surprising results sometimes, but all three of them looking so white seems very improbable to me.
So is the most vicious person that I have ever known personally.
I don’t take any position on Michael. I loved to watch his early videos and it hurt to watch him just disappear. But there is one thing that I noticed when there was a film on television about him. It showed him giving out Christmas presents to children. There didn’t seem to be any genuine interaction between Michael and the children. It’s as if he were going through the motions. I was genuinely surprised.
I am really tired of the coverage on television. Didn’t you just know the moment that you heard that he was dead that he wasn’t going to be allowed to just die peacefully? There would have to be a big commotion and an investigation and suspicion. It’s as if his death is his final performance. I’m not blaming him for that, but it comes from some sort of mindset in that family or business.
To put his age in perspective, Michael is only three years younger than Al Sharpton.
(I’m sorry if I’m repeating what others have posted; I just couldn’t bear to read the entire thread.)
One kind word in closing. Fred Astaire said that Michael was the best dancer he had ever seen.
Good Lord. There’s so much conflicting craziness and it’s all equally nutty so it’s about impossible to know what to believe.
In any case, those poor kids. I wonder who will end up with them.
Depictions of genuine interaction between Michael Jackson and children would be forbidden under the child pornography laws.
Regards,
Shodan
For this he is being given a pass by millions. We are so enamored of our celebrities that we project the kind of personalities and attributes on them that we wish them to have instead of seeing them for who they were. As I posted elsewhere, at what point does art become so important that we are willing to sell our morality and look the other way?
He admitted to sleeping with young boys.
Yet still no outcry.
I saw a news report on Papa Joe’s attendance at the BET awards show last night, in which he was quoted to the effect that he is “firmly in control” of both the estate and the kids.
Whether he stays in control of either or both, of course, will all depend on the outcome of the inevitable court battles. But great googly moogly, can you imagine what horrors would await those children under Papa Joe’s thumb?
I actually read something the other day that finally made the masks make sense to me and made me go, wow, MJ was kind of smart.
Sure, the kids wore masks when they were with him because when they were with him, everyone knew they were his. But if they went out without him, no one could recognize them and they could have a perfectly normal happy childhood.
He knew there was no way getting around that he was Michael Jackson, but that seems like the best way to insure the kids can have a normal life when he’s not there.
Not established at all. Rowe has said he had nothing to do with their birth except money.
No biological input.
Did she really say that or was the interview completely fabricated like the one with his nanny, who has now finally done her first stuff with the press, explaining the quotes about her saying she pumped his stomach are absurd?