Celebrity Scandal

  For the past two or three months, the nation has been caught in the throes of a scandal so salacious, a trial so tumultuous, a rumor mill so gristly we can hardly go about our daily lives.  It has animated our slothful culture and has impassioned us on a single, dividing issue.  Did he or didn’t he?  Molester or martyr?

  Of course I’m talking about the Michael Jackson trial.  Unfortunately, this trial has rooted itself so deeply in our national psyche that, in 2005, it’s impossible to write a column about Jacko without offending (or, at the very least, irritating) half of one’s readers.  But such is the nature of controversy, I suppose, and so we press on.

  Michael has always been a caricature, and a badly-drawn one at that.  His larger than life persona, his worldwide star power, his amusement park ranch, his coterie of exotic jungle animals, and his incessant experimentation with plastic surgery have made him every tabloid’s dream.  His life is surreal, ethereal and scandalous, like a twisted scene from “Dennis Rodman in Wonderland.”  And we have bought and babbled about every one of his eccentricities.

  Like it or not, Michael Jackson is a victim.  He’s a victim of his deranged father, a victim of our greedy press, and—here’s the kicker—he’s a victim of America’s star-culture.

  We love to watch as stars rise to fame.  It gives us hope that someday we might escape our own mundane lives.  But we also love to watch as they burn out, or fade away, or come crashing down in a flaming streak of humiliation and ridicule, because that makes them human again.  We actively perpetuate this cycle.  We buy their CD’s or watch their movies, and then we buy the tabloids. 

  Even before the molestation trial, none of us would have taken any responsibility for turning Michael Jackson into the “freak” that we labeled him.  And the same goes for the cast of “Diff’rent Strokes,” and McCauley Culkin and scores of other child stars.  We chalk it up as coincidence, and never acknowledge our own participation in the whole sordid cycle. 

  I don’t know whether Michael Jackson molested those children or not.  I don’t even have an opinion.  But I do know that Michael broke a lot of rules.  Rule number one: grown men don’t act that way.  They don’t make a spectacle of themselves, and they don’t befriend little kids, sick or well.  That seems to be the one fact we can’t get our head around.  And for that he will hang.

  Set aside your bias for a moment and consider this: whether he molested the kids or not, his life is ruined.  It’s over.  If he’s guilty, well, he did it to himself.  If not, though, that’s a high price to pay for being misunderstood.

-From Pulse
  March 31, 2005