Though it may be hazy for some people to remember now, the furor surrounding Michael Jackson and his “purported” pedophilia when Jordan Chandler’s father, Evan, first served as the catalyst to bring suspicions of his “inappropriate conduct” to trial back in 1993, there didn’t seem to be as great a need as there is in the moment to protect the reputation of the twentieth century “God” that was the King of Pop. In fact, there was a certain pleasure the public took in helping to knock down the pedestal, with such jokes heard on the elementary school playground as, “How do you know when it’s bedtime at Neverland? When the big hand touches the little hand.”
But now, with the post-#MeToo era increasingly causing eye rolling instead of solidarity or understanding, it would appear as though the public–especially Michael Jackson’s allegiant fan base–is determined to preserve, as best they can, the memory of Jackson as nothing but a misunderstood little lamb, beaten into submission by societal judgment and lack of “open-mindedness.” But as LaToya Jackson once put it in one of two interviews from the early 90s that have come up again as particularly prophetic, “Now you stop and think for one second and you tell me, what 35-year-old man is going to take a little boy and stay with him for 30 days? And take another boy and stay with him for five days in a room and never leave the room? How many of you out there are 35 years old? How many would take little kids and do that?” Any of the many, one supposes, with the pedophilic thirst of Jackson, whose handlers and business associates put blinders on in the face of his dangerous behavior, and the fact that he paid off the parents (both directly and indirectly, e.g. “helping” them buy a house) of these children for their silence. To be able to exhibit that kind of power–that sort of egregious free reign must have only fueled Jackson in his sentiment of untouchableness (while he, meanwhile, touched others).
Directed by Dan Reed (no stranger to the genre of trauma and delicate subject matters, including 2014’s The Paedophile Hunter, which seems all too eerily in line with Leaving Neverland now), the HBO documentary’s slow build to the emotional revelations of both Wade Robson and James Safechuck is often stomach-turning and rarely without leaving its viewer to question how someone so blatantly sick could have gotten away with his crimes for so long (among many other titles in the Jackson catalogue, “Smooth Criminal” has taken on an especially cringe-worthy new meaning). And as Robson and Safechuck each tell their very similar tales in terms of Jackson’s modus operandi, the Svengali-like conditioning he gave both of them–training them with a tape that would play seemingly forever in their heads that insisted, “We’ll both go to jail for the rest of our lives if anyone finds out” and that the consummation of their “love” was to be a secret from the world, including their family–becomes very clear-cut.
“I had one job. And I fucked up,” Stephanie Safechuck, the mother of James sadly reconciles at one point toward the end of Leaving Neverland. And, to be sure, among the numerous detractors of the veracity or validity of the “claims” of the victims is that if anyone is to blame it is not Jackson, but the negligent parents of the children who trusted him enough to leave them unattended at Neverland. And yet, the efficiency and effectiveness of Jackson’s entire pedophile operation was based upon inserting himself not just into young boys but as a fixture in their families’ lives–a surrogate “son” in his own right. Therefore establishing the bond that would make it possible for him to easily assuage and assure that nothing “improper” was going on behind the closed door, often locked. And, for added security, the additional training Jackson gave Robson and Safechuck included “drills” centered around dressing quickly in case anyone knocked on the door or walked in on them abruptly.
So to the point of the parents being at fault, there was, in their defense, an elaborate con at play. What’s more, no one at that time or even since has ever known that level of fame and reverence. Who among us is to say that if Jackson courted us in the 80s and 90s as a parent, we ourselves would not have been undeniably glamored?
In what is now an even more repugnant-to-watch statement from Neverland Ranch in 1993, Jackson touted, “Throughout my life, I have only helped thousands upon thousands of children to live happy lives. It brings tears to my eyes when I see any child who suffers. I am not guilty of these allegations. If I am guilty of anything, it is believing what God said about children: ‘Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for such is the kingdom of heaven.’ In no way do I think that I am God. But I do try to be god-like in my heart.” But no, in truth, Jackson did think he was God, or at least had a god complex. There is no other explanation for him to have acted so recklessly. To think that he could get away with his abuse, which he did for most of his life, in a classic instance of the abused turning into abuser as a result of a childhood spent under the “care” of Joe Jackson.
Despite the evidence written all over the expression of the victims’ faces (Robson being more stoic about it than Safechuck, but both exhibiting a matter-of-fact somberness in order to be able to tell what really happened), the devoted fans of Jackson, in addition to his Estate (which is the only entity that stands to lose or gain financially from this whole thing, despite their go-to cry of outrage that these “false accusers” are just “out for money”), continue to vehemently speak in support for the fallen crown of the erstwhile “King.” A moniker also once given to Elvis Presley before his own bloated demise. Presley’s road manager, Joe “Diamond Joe” Esposito would go on to serve as Jackson’s at the height of the Second King’s own fame. Yet it was Presley that Joe would speak fondly of till the end because maybe raping one’s own wife is more forgivable than being a pedo. On a side note, the cluster fuck of celebrity incestuousness and how it breeds and feeds itself is evident in the fact that Esposito was married to Joan Kardashian–aunt of the KKK that is Kim, Khloe, Kourtney–who served as matron of honor at Elvis and Priscilla’s wedding. The Presley-Jackson connection would persist when he married Lisa Marie, Presley’s only child, in 1994 (well-timed to mitigate the controversy of his sex abuse allegations with an even more shocking headline).
Or maybe it’s that, with regard to Esposito’s lack of any great fondness for Jackson, depending on one’s level of devotion–how resonant the work of their “savior” and “god” is to them–they can turn a blind eye to any wrongdoing. Deny it as much and as well as the committer of the crime himself. In point of fact, Jackson could and would never admit to himself the truth about his “nature.” Same goes for R. Kelly, who will deny until his last choked out breath that he’s innocent, “fighting for [his] fucking life,” as it were. And all this does is serve to further damage the already forever rattled victims, make them question once more if they’re “over exaggerating” the truth. Something that should be objective, yet appears to be evermore elastic in our distorting internet age. One that Jackson should probably be glad he didn’t survive long enough to endure at its zenith.
Especially as women have become more empowered and more valuable in the music industry. For another repeated account by both Robson and Safechuck was Jackson’s constant smearing of women in general and in particular their mothers. Maybe this stemmed, in part, from his lack of affection for his own mother, who was known to call him a “faggot.”
And even though Madonna, the last of the great pop icons who came up with Prince and Jackson, has vehemently defended her co-pop star (and has yet to comment on Leaving Neverland or how it might have changed her attitude about Jackson), most recently in images from the On the Wall exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, Jackson could never feel the same affinity. As a sort of unbridled representation of a Jezebel in the early 90s, Jackson would say of Madonna in a taped conversation with his rabbi (yes, rabbi), “She’s a nasty witch,” as well as commenting on her jealousy of his higher level of stardom because he was a man, noting, “She’s a woman. And I think that’s what bothers her. Women don’t scream for other women. And men are too cool to scream for women. And I get that. I get the fainting and the adulation and the notoriety. But she doesn’t. She can’t get that.” So yes, a pedo and a misogynist to boot. No wonder he was such a fan of Hitler’s “genius” and Nazi philosophy (if the skin bleaching and self-loathing wasn’t already a tipoff).
The ability to speak freely in this way that would not have been socially acceptable rhetoric (even though “President” T%$^! has certainly made it so) was at its most unfiltered among the children he collected, who would take everything their hero and god said as gospel at such an impressionable and personality-forming age. In this and so many other ways, Jackson did live in a metaphorical and literal Neverland (J. M. Barrie and the movie Finding Neverland, by the way, are just some of the things that have been ruined by Jackson calling his property that), one that allowed him to exist in perpetuity in his insulating bubble of deviant comportment. An endless childhood of his own as he seemed to want to suck the youth from preadolescent boys by sucking them off.
The last boy-turned-man standing in his devotion to Jackson, it would seem, is Macaulay Culkin. For even Corey Feldman has reneged on defending him. And as one reflects on the absurdity of a grown man with a ranch tailored solely to luring kids to it with the “pipe” of the infallibility of his god status (and later, what Safechuck would describe as “candy and porn”), the image of the Pied Piper immediately comes to mind. Wanting to re-create childhood or not, no one likes kids that much, not even their own. With the words of his own lyrics from “Billie Jean,” “Be careful of what you do, ’cause the lie becomes the truth,” Jackson single-handedly established through calculated manipulation and brainwashing that the lie would remain, in the eyes of his worshipping public, as fact. For some die-hard acolytes, it always will be no matter how graphic or heart-wrenching any accounts to the contrary are.
