Channel surfing today I heard Jackson’s interestingly maned defense attorney Thomas Mesereau recount for the 843rd time that the singer “was deprived of a normal childhood” due to an abusive father and being on-stage from just after conception, etc… This wouldn’t irk me so except that it’s the official 150,000th time I’ve heard the “he plays with monkeys and lives in Pee-Wee’s Playhouse and has boys sleep in his bed because he never had a childhood of his own” excuse.
I don’t know if Jackson’s a child molestor (I certainly couldn’t have voted to convict him beyond a reasonable doubt after most-recent-kid’s mom was given a seemingly-earned colostomy by the defense team) but get the fuck over it already. Some of my favorite people on Earth had childhoods that would make Jackson’s look like a lavish park side 3 BR brownstone on Sesame Street by comparison (abuse, neglect, incest, you name it) and they moved on with their lives. Hell, Janet is younger than Michael and seems to be doing okay (other than than the “Womp! Here’s my boob!” moment). Patty Duke was pretty much given away by her mother to abusive molesting control freak managers and is bipolar on-top-of-that and she’s doing alright (as long as she stays medicated). Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges are sort of pathetic but at least they don’t have NAMBLA potlucks in their home, and Shirley Temple, Jodie Foster, Sammy Davis Jr., Mickey Rooney and others were all acting before they could form permanent memories and while they may have had some issues down the line they didn’t get trapped in a Neverland. (Even Robert Blake, who was horribly abused by his parents and was acting from the time he could crawl, was almost 70 before he killed his wife [who sorta needed killin’ anyway].)
Do his keepers honestly think that this is the reason Jackson acts this way and that “well, he had an unhappy childhood, it’s only natural he should want to have sleepovers with adolescents” makes some sort of sense? The man is just simply barking mad, a narcissist and a pathological liar and in serious need of some high voltage to the temples in the hope of making his psychoses recede or his testicles descend or something that would make him grow the fuck up. But for God’s sake stop insulting my intelligence and that of other news watchers by offering this same old lamer-than-Tiny-Tim-after-a-run-in-with-a-Peterbilt excuse.
I was thinking more along the lines of a good bleach rinse for my brain and maybe boiling my eyes and middle ears in some hydrochloric acid. ANYTHING to get that out of my head.
Xploder
It seems your John Stuart Mill signature quote is very applicable to the website we’ve just ‘experienced’:
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things”
You do realize that that website has no actual connection to Michael Jackson, right?
It’s organized and maintained by Patricia Brown, who describes herself as “President of one of the largest Michael Jackson fan communities on the net, MJJForum.com.” MJJsource.com is an offshoot of MJJforum.
I managed about two lines and ran screaming from the room. I only came back after arming myself with suitable weaponry (Led Zeppelin–LOUD) and quickly clicked out of it.
Does anyone else find it bizarre as hell that the Victory/Peace gesture at the beginning is a white hand?
And whoever made the list of child stars–you forgot Shirley Temple, and Brooke Shields–hell, she was photographed half nude and also played a child prostitute and turned more than OK. McCauley Culkin seems fairly sane, as does Lindsay Lohan. Oh–and the guy who played Danny Partridge seems ok, too.
MJ is mentally ill, IMO. Only his money allows him to continue in these “eccentricities”.
Hell, we’ve got Dopers here who went through sheer hells that make Jacko’s childhood look like Beaver Cleaver’s. They’ve survived and gotten beyond it.
Besides, like I said-I had a pretty great childhood-and I still say “childhood” is overrated.
Oh, it’s seen by most to be this idyllic, carefree existance…talk about nostalgia!
Childhood is fraught with fears, anxieties and ignorance. It can be fun, but not nonstop fun-one reason MJ sickens me. Even if you take the molesting out of the picture, he still is feeding a myth…more of a fairy godparent than an adult.
Ugh.
