Don’t know when this will be broadcast around the world but it was broadcast on British and Irish TV last night.
Martin Bashir, he of the Diana interview fame spent 8 months with Jackson and came away with a fascinating study of a totally messed up human being.
The main thing I came away with was an impression of a very naive, ill advised, disturbed and possibly insane man trying to create a world for himself. While he did talk about sleeping with children I really got the impression there was no sexual element to it. Idiocy in the highest degree indeed and the final nail in the coffin if the press is to believed this morning.
Other things that we heard about/saw:
The 3 kids. We saw all three of them.
Their mothers
His face
His house
His childhood and the abuse of his father
His first sexual encounter with Tatum O’Neil
and more.
I’ll post more about the show but for now I’d like to hear other impressions.
I got the same feeling: he’s a naive fool, but he’s not a paedo.
The problem is he doesn’t seem to realise how something appears can be as important as how something is. That he would admit sleeping in the same bed as 12-year-olds, after all the crap 10 years ago defies belief.
He doesn’t seem to have the slightest grasp of reality, and he’s so rich and powerful that there’s nobody in his life to tell him what he should and should not be doing.
I found him reasonably likeable, childlike and lonely, and felt sorry for him in the end: he’s clearly lying about lots of stuff - and I think he believes half of his own lies.
I’m prepared to believe him about the kids-in-the-bedroom thing now that I’ve heard him talk. Looks like he just wants to be 12 years old again, nothing more. Sad, but not sinister.
Although that 12 y/o kid he was filmed with looked like a lawsuit-in-waiting to me… he seemed a little ‘hungry’, a little streetwise. Maybe I’m being overly cynical.
I warmed to him a lot when I saw his ‘giving tree’. There are few things finer in this life than climbing trees, particularly a fine Oak specimen. I do it a lot (when I can) purely because it’s such fun! What other explanation is needed?
Not too sure if he’s fit to look after those three kids though. Something’s wrong wrong wrong there. Firstly they’re all as white as milk, so you have to wonder about the paternity. Even more dubious was the claim that the mother of the youngest is a black woman. I know genes produce such oddities from time to time, but three in a row in seperate births?
And when he was bottle-feeding the youngest… brrrrrr.
I am going to defend Michael Jackson on one point concerning his looks.
Michael has a skin disorder called vitiligo. Vitiligo is a skin disorder, in which the skin does not produce melenin (sic?) that produces skin color. This is why his face looks white.
I have this shit, but I am blond haired and light skinned, so it is not noticable, especially in the winter monthes. It started as a small white spot on the back of my right hand that has spread to almost all my hand, my right elbow and the side of my face. I am going to hate the summer, because this is when it will start to look noticable. The affected skin does not tan, so I look like I have a lot of splotches on my skin. I went to a tropical island for four days and noticed the vitiligo on my hands.
There is no cure, and this is harmless, except for the psychological factors of wanting to look nice. People of all races get this, but it really must hurt people who are black or brown skinned.
Except for the vitiligo, Mikey is a child loving freak!!!
I too have had my image of him changed by the programme. He’s no paedo - just a tragic case of a guy who had his childhood taken away from him and wants to stop it happening to others, whilst trying forever to recapture it himself.
It has pissed me off the way today all the tabloids are screaming: “Jackson a paedohile!” Did they not watch what I watched?
I’ve also known people with vitiligo, and it doesn’t make you all white like Jacko, though. As you say, **Yong Lee Fampee
** (Kung hei fat choy, BTW) - it is patchy.
Just finished here. He is a disturbed and damaged man. That footage of them singing “ABC” was interesting - I’d never noticed anything beyond the smile on his face in those years. But he looked miserable and afraid. Like others, I don’t get the impression that he’s a child molestor, just a weirdo.
I didn’t actually see the interview, but I have read the media response from both the more and less reputable UK press. It does seem like his grip on reality is very shaky at best. From what I understand his response to anyone who criticises him is to brand them “ignorant” – a word which shares a derivation with “ignore”, which is precisely what he does to his critics. He cannot be reproached for dangling his baby over a balcony because his critics are “ignorant” and should therefore be ignored.
All the red-tops here have of course massively twisted his words (“Jackson sleeps with 12 year old boys!”) and then go on about the accusations of child molestation. Well, he might be ill-advised discussing this in public, but as I recall, none of the allegations were proved in court, therefore he is - in the eyes of the law – innocent. Or am I missing something here? Does he share a bed with just his children or the other random children that I understand he invites to his ranch/funfair?
I don’t see why he bothers to continue with the denials of extensive plastic surgery, though. I know people change over time, but surely not that much? Would any medical practitioners care to comment on whether it is actually possible for Michael Jackson to look like he does (pace the two nose jobs he admits to)?
I doubt it’s possible to have led the sort of life Michael Jackson has led and maintain any real connection with normality, as you and I understand it. It’s a pity he agreed to the interview, I can’t see it helping anyone.
I have vitiligo too, and it’s more noticeable on me because I am olive-skinned – and it doesn’t look anything like Jacko’s skin. (In my case, the condition is so far confined to my belly, which is one reason I don’t wear a bikini.) Besides which, I believe Jackson has said that he’s had bleaching done to his skin.
I didn’t see the program, but he’s creeped me out for a long time.
The program improved my opinion of him. I discussed it with colleagues this morning, and the women seem better disposed to him than the guys.
My perception was that he was a gentle, childlike, naive soul. As <b>Kabbes</b> said he’s trying to recapture his childhood – and he has the money to do so. He wants to be 12 years old, and it’s how he behaves. Unlike most 12 year olds, he has no one to keep him in line or make decisions for him.
He obviously loves his kids. The baby incident was blown out of proportion. Stupid yes, but not abuse and those demanding that he should have his kids taken away from him should conentrate on those children who are beaten or neglected, not on a guy who did a stupid thing, that had no adverse consequences. How many dads have thrown their kids up in the air for example? that’s potentially dangerour, but for the most part nothing goes wrong.
I was disappointed in Martin Bashir. It was established early on the MJ wasn’t your average person. Why then did he keep trying to judge MJ against when he (Bashir) percieved to be acceptable behaviour for a 44 year old ? why did his age keep coming into it? Would it have been less of a problem if he’d been 24? There are many many people who like being with children. Are all boy scout leaders weird?
The headlines and media coverage today has pissed me off - they’ve heard what they wanted to hear, and are trying to perpetuate the idea that he’s a child abuser. They know that “sleeping” with someone can mean two things and it was pretty damn obvious what he meant by it.
The worst thing about him is his taste in home furnishings (loved the shop owner’s body language btw).
Yep he used it all the time. It almost became his mantra by the end.
He said he shared a bedroom with the kid who was interviewed but not a bed. He was in a sleeping bag on the floor but he did say that he had shared a bed with many children who stayed at the house. He used Macaulay Culkin and his brother as a example. he said they would sleep in the same bed and in the morning go hot air ballooning.
I haven’t seen the program yet but I was surprised at the tone of contempt for him after the baby accident. Sure it was stupid and indicative of the fact that he might not be fit for parenthood but that doesn’t make him a bad person. I also never thought he was a pedophile.
I’m in accord with the folks who have posted here so far.
I was most struck by his incredible naivety. His justification for sharing his room with kids sounded lot like a child’s reasoning - I’m not going to do anything wrong so the rules shouldn’t apply to me. Like jjimm said, it’s that Jackson doen’t seem to have the conception that how something appears is important - and doesn’t seem to be able to see his own specific situation in general terms. He didn’t seem to understand that the fact that there are bad people out there who would make friends with children for bad reasons would impact on how he would and should behave with children. An adult should be able to use that kind of reasoning.
As well as being incredibly trusting with respect to the kids he has at the ranch (trusting them and those around them not to make false accusations), he was frighteningly naive with respect to his fans. Twice we saw him allowing fans to hug him. One fan pushed through a crowd to his limo, and Jackson let her inside to give him a hug. I don’t think his bodyguards had had the girl searched. She could easily have had a weapon.
He’s successfully protecting his kids from the kind of physical and emotional abuse his father did to him, but is ignoring other kinds of problem that his kids’ lifestyle could produce.
I’ll be watching this. I read some of the highlights in the paper today, and boy what a loon! He was paid about 5 million for the interview, which I’m guessing he needs pretty bad.
Like the posters here and most of my workmates, I was left with the impression of a lonely, deluded man trying to re-capture his lost childhood. His shaky grip on reality and refusal to listen to those who might offer him good advice has led to some inappropriate and downright odd behaviour but he appears to be basically a decent guy. But despite what appears to be the majority view, even the reputable media have said that the interview was ill-advised and means that his career is at an end. I don’t agree; IMO, he has done much to dispel the rumours of paedophilia and has shown that, in tabloid terms, he is more wacko than sicko. Overall, it was better that he tell his own story (strange, sad and delusional though it is) than to continue to have it passed through the filter of a hostile press.