Juanson World

Andrew Sullivan expresses my views on the Jackson trial far more eloquently than I could:

The trial is about class in America at its most extreme - the topic Americans most want to avoid. Jackson represents an extreme case of the increasingly powerful and isolated over-class, the super-wealthy who, in a society where money is the ultimate source of power, have become used to creating gated, sequestered universes of their own. They are free from limits or middle-class morality. And they are never satisfied. But Jackson's accusers are also a symbol of the inverse phenomenon: a white underclass whose preferred method of self-enrichment is the victim culture of lawsuits and celebrity manipulation. Ask yourself what virtues or values Jackson shares with his accusers and you uncover an obsession with material wealth, a never-slaking thirst for fame, an ethics-free approach to the shakedown of others. The Jerry Springer culture embraces the very high and the very low. It's what they have in common.

The case is also subtly about race, another taboo. The key fact about Michael Jackson is that he is the first true black celebrity in America who has literally turned himself into a Caucasian. African-American culture has long been obsessed with varying degrees of blackness. Light-colored men and women have historically enjoyed social status in African-American society and we have learned from the exhaustive biographies of Jackson that his father ridiculed him in his youth for having a flat nose and stereotypical black features. Jackson's response? To take the valuation of lighter skin to its logical conclusion.

The way in which celebrity has become, after money, the ultimate American poison is illustrated in a particularly poignant way by the case of Michael Jackson. Forced into unimaginable exposure as a pre-pubescent boy, hounded by a brutal father, denied any natural childhood or adolescence, Jackson became the hideous caricature that pure celebrity spawns. Like Gollum with his ring, young Jackson became twisted into unrecognizable malignity by celebrity itself. No one ever said no; no limits helped secure reality for this boy in the media bubble; parents were part of the problem; and money on a mind-boggling scale kept any sanity or balance at bay.

Some may find it hard to feel pity for someone as wealthy as Jackson, but if you view wealth, as I do, as a potential prison of pitiless isolation, then the damage to the man's psyche and soul must have been and still is immeasurable. And damaged people damage others - even in the pathetic, sick way in which Jackson obviously wounded some of the children who foolishly came into his care. The parents of these boys should have known better, but they too were mesmerized by the fantasy of eternal wealth and youth. What you see in this case, then, is the cold, heartless core of American celebrity: a Faustian trade-off between instant, fathomless attention and the maintenance of any sort of psychological or spiritual perspective.

Not much for me to add to this, but I feel bad for him. I can't imagine what sort of treatment he would have gotten from other felons in jail. Hopefully this will not get blown out of the water as some litmus test for the American justice system. Let's forget about this as quickly as possible.