Michael Jackson. I don’t even know where to begin. Here’s a guy who has clearly lost his mind, yet something still rumbles and tumbles around his empty-can of a head – something admirable about him, actually – the desire to not lose the innocence associated with childhood. I wonder how other people would react if they were blessed with his kind of money while tormented with his incredibly sad existance. I think I know the answer – there would be a hell of a lot of people right there along with him trying to preserve the carelessness and naivete of being a child and being with children.
However, he’s 44. While I’m convinced that he is not harming these children sexually, there’s obviously something wrong with letting children you haven’t fathered/mothered sleeping in your bed and “laughing, drinking warm milk and getting a fire going in the fireplace,” as he so creepily and childishly put it. I find it somewhat admirable that Jackson has such a love for children, I really do, but at the same time his actions are just not something that the public has ever been able to grasp (myself included). His world is clearly a dream world, and I’ll probably never find fault in anyone’s version of a dream world within reason – you gotta go there sometimes – but this is clearly a case of a man who just cannot grasp life outside of his own horrendous upbringing and the subsequent bubble he existed in after puberty. I can’t even imagine, and I’m truly sympathetic that he’ll never be able to grasp real life for just a few minutes.
And did you notice how often he covers his face while speaking? Sad. He wants nothing more than to be invisible. His father, allegedly, poked fun at Jackson’s face and nose all his life. Add that to the stardom, the constant exposure to an unscrupulous and seedy press and his not being able to go anywhere without there being a mob scene, and you’ve got the makings for some brain-wiring problems. These problems harvest themselves in him making these obvious bi-weekly changes to his face and his need to be hidden – even Tatum O’Neal came onto him and as soon as she touched a button on his shirt, he had to cover his face. I bet he missed out! He must have covered his face 15 times during last night’s interview.
What of his children? What kind of feelings or ambitions will they have with their faces being covered in public all the time? Imagine not being able to clearly see in public – ever? Imagine not being able to ever rememeber NOT wearing a little butterfly mask outisde? Will this harm them? Again, there’s something admirable in wanting to go to such extreme lengths to protect your children, but you have to guess that the way he goes about doing it, while less damaging than what his father did to him, will undoubtedly cause these children to be a mess in other ways. Or maybe they’ll just have this mysterious, unfettering desire to be masked professional wrestlers. Imagine the Jackson children and WWF Wrestling together – holy crap, the world would end.
My last comment on Jackson is his obvious childish ways – climbing trees, saying that he’d rather have water baloon fights than see a concert, and the occaisonal mispronunciation of words in a childish way – did anyone notice that? He was talking about cliffs, but he referred to them as “cliftts.” I don’t know. How incredibly admirable that he is living in his own dream world – we should all aspire to such things – but how sad that this guy can’t comprehend life. If it’s one or the other, I’ll take the comprehension, thanks.