It’s that time again: it’s been at least 6 months since we last saw Michael Jackson’s slightly discomforting face plastered all over every major news outlet, more than enough of a rest period between the semi-annual parade of weirdness. If I am recalling correctly, during the last episode we learned that Jackson has sleep-overs with young boys, spends outrageous sums of money on trinkets in Vegas, and makes his kids wear masks in public.
Now that I think about it, I believe that was the episode before the last one, where Jackson battled it out with financial advisors over his alleged debt, and somewhere in between all of this was when a portion of his malleable face collapsed sometime during a trial over missed concerts and, as usual, money. Apparently, this time he has been charged with “multiple counts of lewd or lascivious contact with a child younger than 14,” after a gaggle of police searched his Neverland ranch.
Whether true or not, this will probably result in Jackson again spending millions of dollars and the public being transfixed by his images on television for at least a few months.
The car wreck spectacle that is Jackson’s life epitomizes the tragedy of American celebrity. Everything that can go wrong seems to have gone wrong, creating a sad and twisted cycle: a child missing a childhood, left searching for the lost innocence and the life lessons he missed along the way, resulting in an adulthood as an iconic pariah, doomed to be revered at a distance for past greatness while at the same time serving as a target for the gossip and money seeking masses, and along the way allegedly stealing the innocence of other children.
Money, sex, fame and influence have been poured into the pot of one man's life and simmered with a heavy dosage of abuse mixed in throughout. The result: a recurring story line that will probably never have a happy ending for anyone.
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