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asked me if I thought the parents should turn him into the authorities or go for the lawsuit. I immediately said that they should turn him in.

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A lawsuit and criminal prosecution are not mutually exclusive.

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I feel incredibly sorry for Michael Jackson

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We're talking about a man whose centire life has been devoted to image-manufacture. So to judge him as "delusional" by normal standards is to miss the point. He's not delusional in the sense of a plumber who suddenly decides Jesus told him his customers were demons and he should kill them with his wrench. He's a man who has been allowed to give his own, er, idiosyncratic view of things a reality. He did not want to grow up--but certainly is comfortable with the power of BEING the kind of grown-up he is. In his world his behavior is entirely sane, indeed his right. He lives in a different world. It's just that it intersects with ours and is dangerous to some of the members of it.

He's very aware of how to deal with the press--but the problem for him is that the press are not as compliant about him as they used to be. The delusion he suffers is that his magical innocence bullshit still works in today's media. You could call him a relic in that sense. He's used to a world in which money would always make this go away, either money paid out or money extracted.

The plastic surgery, the arrested-development aesthetic, the manufacture of a personal world in which only old people, children, and maternal women exist, the careful methods of facilitating his molestations(he certainly targeted sick little boys quite heavily--but then, why did Willie Sutton rob banks?)--these are not the acts of a man falling apart exactly. In the sense they are all means to a desired end. (no pun intended, sorry) These are the acts of a man who knows what he wants and knows what he has to do to get it, and also knows he's in a position--usually--of virtual invulnerability because of his importance to the entertainment industry(which has gone away though he doesn't seem to realize it--probably spending too much time in Germany) and because of many still having a sentimental attachment to him, as icon, singer, cultural hero, what have you, that seemingly will not allow them NOT to make excuses on his behalf. That guy on South Park you may remember--"So he touched some children. He's MICHAEL JACKSON, man!"--I hear echoes of this in every excuse I've heard made for him. The not-so-unspoken root is this: Michael Jackson has earned the right to molest children.

But now he can't buy his way out and those who might have helped him--apart from his fans, who can do nothing--he's alienated long ago. Being a celebrity only keeps you invulnerable if you remain a good employee of the industry. As you know, he's been more like a petulant child toward it in the past 5 or 6 years. He's expendable; everything important about him is already the property of Epic anyway. And here's the point of delusion: he refuses to understand this.

I didn't see naivete in his interview with Bashir. I saw playing TO the naive. Carefully-calculated and phony, though. I saw arrogance; I saw "I can almost CONFESS it to you and still remain free, hee hee." He knows his image and he knows what worked. He knows how he looks. He's ****in' with us, has been forever. Very few "naive" musicians are as concerned with money and sales as he. The naive type more often stupidly sign away their rights and royalties. I'd call the Jayhawks "naive," for instance. I'd call Robert Johnson "naive." Not Jackson.

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You are right, Dagonee, and we actually knew that - Dr.M is a lawyer (as well as a legal ethicist) and I put myself through college as a paralegal. We were having more of a philosophical conversation and Dr.M was asking me which I'd choose if they were mutually exclusive.

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Memo Could Hurt Prosecution's Case

By MARTIN KASINDORF and CESAR G. SORIANO

LOS ANGELES — The boy who is alleging that Michael Jackson molested him told Los Angeles authorities in February that the singer did nothing inappropriate, according to a confidential government memo revealed Tuesday.

After interviewing the Los Angeles boy and his family, child welfare workers determined that allegations of sexual abuse at Jackson's Neverland Ranch were "unfounded," the memo says. The summary of a Feb. 13-27 investigation was disclosed on the Web site thesmokinggun.com.

The memo is authentic, says the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, which is investigating the leak from its "sensitive case" unit.

Jackson's defenders seized on the memo as evidence that Jackson, 45, is innocent of the child molestation charges that the entertainer faces in Santa Barbara County, Calif., where he was arrested on Nov. 20.


"This is a real smoking gun," said Stuart Backerman, Jackson's spokesman. "This only corroborates and reinforces what we've said from the beginning: that Michael Jackson is innocent." Jackson has called the charges "a big lie."

The Los Angeles memo was written at a time when the boy and his family were defending Jackson from allegations of abuse — and before Santa Barbara authorities say the boy told a psychiatrist in June that Jackson had molested him.

Santa Barbara County District Attorney Tom Sneddon said the memo was insignificant. He has said he plans to file formal charges against Jackson next week on multiple counts of child molestation. The boy, who is suffering from cancer and is among the sick children Jackson has entertained at Neverland, is a cooperating witness, Sneddon says. The boy is now 14.

Jackson will be arraigned Jan. 9 in Santa Maria, 60 miles north of Santa Barbara. The case will be tried there because his ranch, which has a zoo and an amusement park, is in that part of the county.

To the Los Angeles investigators, the boy, his 34-year-old mother, his younger brother and his older sister denied any form of sexual abuse and spoke glowingly of Jackson. The statements were consistent with comments the family made about Jackson in the weeks after Feb. 6, when ABC broadcast a British TV documentary on life at Neverland. The show triggered investigations of the onetime "King of Pop."

On the program, the boy, who was 12 at the time, called Jackson "Daddy" and told interviewer Martin Bashir that he had slept in Jackson's bed, but that Jackson had slept on the floor.

Jackson told Bashir that there was nothing wrong with having children in his bed. "Why can't you share your bed?" Jackson asked. "The most loving thing to do is to share your bed with someone."

A Los Angeles school official who saw the show called a child-abuse hotline and alleged that "an entertainer" had abused the boy and that the boy had been neglected by his mother, the memo says.

The mother, a former waitress, supported Jackson in February when he complained that Bashir's documentary was unfair. Jackson hired criminal defense lawyer Mark Geragos, who according to the Associated Press got the mother and the boy to sign affidavits and to videotape statements in which they said Jackson had done nothing wrong.

But the boy began telling a different story in June. Santa Barbara authorities say that during a session with a psychiatrist, the boy said Jackson had molested him. The psychiatrist, as required by California law, reported the alleged abuse to Santa Barbara sheriff's deputies. They launched their own investigation. Local newspapers said the boy told authorities that Jackson had given him wine and sleeping pills.

Sneddon said Tuesday that the judge who issued warrants for a search of Neverland and for Jackson's arrest had seen the Los Angeles memo. "Given what we know, we do not consider the ... statement a significant factor," Sneddon said.

The Daily Telegraph of Sydney reported that during a 13-hour search at Neverland, investigators seized letters and poems from Jackson to the boy, along with videotapes. The boy's 12-year-old brother saw one incident of molestation and is a potential witness, the Los Angeles Times reported.

In 1993-94, Sneddon investigated a 13-year-old boy's allegations that Jackson had sexually abused him. The case collapsed after the boy's family reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with Jackson. The boy declined to testify in court.

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"This is a real smoking gun," said Stuart Backerman, Jackson's spokesman. "This only corroborates and reinforces what we've said from the beginning: that Michael Jackson is innocent."

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Jackson told Bashir that there was nothing wrong with having children in his bed. "Why can't you share your bed?" Jackson asked. "The most loving thing to do is to share your bed with someone."

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[ December 10, 2003, 10:26 PM: Message edited by: Jon Boy ]

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