Gav's Spot

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Michael Jackson - he loved kids to broken bits

“Everybody deserves lovely words,” Shepardson says. “Say lovely words.”

Obits glumly render all that is morally abysmal to flowing elegic
If y’ain’t got nuthin’ nice to say – don’t say anything

By Terrance Seamus O’Gavan
I admit to be a little peeved by the onslaught of valedictions that cascaded and caromed off the pinging walls of the Fifth Estate, in the wake of Michael Jackson’s untimely demise.
It’s almost as if we’ve forgotten - in our unbridled haste to plop another elegeic log on the funereal pyre – Mikey’s questionable predilection for sleeping with children.
Yeah, I know. Thriller. The Moon Walk. Storied legacy. Rock n’ Roll genius. Yada-yada-yada. I get it.
And yeah, I know, I know. He was never convicted.
Quick refresher.
In 1993, Jordan Chandler, a minor, received an out-of-court settlement for $20 million from the estate of Michael Jackson. The allegations of sexual impropriety poofed into the billowy clouds above Neverland. Jackson was charged formally in 2003, and faced more child abuse scrutiny in 2005. He moonwalked out of the courtroom.
Should we be surprised? Never. Not in Neverland, where childhood angst is lost midst the windrows of rides, Nintendo, Elephant man remains, hyperbaric chambers, and the toy-stocked “special room.”
Way too often, in celebrity trials, we’ve seen the scales of justice tipped in favor of that imposing wheelbarrow full of newly serialized Benjamins.
Jackson stated in a documentary with British journalist Martin Bashir that many children, including Macaulay Culkin, his younger brother Kieran, and his sisters had slept in Jackson's bed.
Y’know, I can forgive a litany of sins. But not this one. This is the biggy. It’s the one that has 35-year-old men and women torn to waking, bathed in cold sweats.
They still remember the trauma of that betrayal when they were 4 or 5 or 6 or 7.
No, the life of a child is too precious. An adult should never barter fame, power or a seat of influence to harm a child.
The whiff of serial child endangerment lingers around Michael Jackson. I never trusted him after the payout in 93, and the Bashir interview cemented that gut-ugly feeling.
The fact that Michael never expressed an iota of remorse, and sought to quash all interference through his battery of legal aid and that access to hush money just makes it worse.
And try as I might. I can’t jump on the bandwagon.
And I am totally flabbergasted at the number of people who rushed to the many available microphones and cameras proffered last week in the wake of Mikey’s untimely death.
But I understand it. Good music. A Rock legend. I get it.
Talk of the kids just spoils the nice buzz.
And, we are all taught from an early age not to speak ill of the dead.
Jan Shepardson operates a eulogy writing web service called www.lovingeulogies.com. She offers advice for the passing, or parting shot: “Everybody deserves lovely words,” Shepardson says. “Say lovely words.”
This long and flowery bouquet is not unprecedented.
Remember Adolf? Whooooo, boy. Now that guy knew how to party.
Do you perchance recall the long, flowing verbal semaphores that came-a-twinklin’ when they pulled gentle Adolf and wheezy Eva from that well-stocked bunker in Berlin back on April 30th 1945?
Glorious eulogies. Flowered elegies. Rousing verse dripping from all available nooks, crannies and corners. Say what you will about Hitler, but the trains ran on time.
“Ah, Adolf,” wrote his good friend, drinking buddy, and fellow world traveler, Ernest Hemingway.
“Remember the parades? Those marvelous mass meetings in the squares?” wrote Papa.
“Adolf brought us the pageantry. The goose-stepping phalanx of misanthropic palace guards, the tanks – god those tanks were beautiful - the long, long, long speeches. The pogroms, the genocide, the nihilism that literally tumbled from every inch of that scrunchy little man. To look into his eyes was to stare into the deep, dark depths of Nietchke’s abyss. God, I can hardly believe he’s gone.”
And Winston Churchill, Adolf’s counterpoint and contretemps, his bon vivant alter ego, on hearing the news of Adolf’s bunkered demise was heard to say: “I cried. Poor Adolf. Legacy, accomplishment, curriculum vitae. The body of his all-encompassing, grasping and overarching work. Compelling, awe-inspiring and visually stunning! The Volkswagon Beetle, those planes, those ships, the Bismarck, those unguided rockets, those glorious nights in London, cooking dinner in the dark – always in the bloody, goddam’ dark - that popping prance with the Polish Cavalry. Bloody Hell! The Swastika, and those lovely concerts in the park! Adolf, you lovable, overmedicated, megalomaniacal, little sociopath … goddamit’ you little shit! We’ll miss you.”
Too much?
Heloise, that eloquent etiquette diva says nay! Never too much when it comes to propping up the bygones.
“We will be dead too, one day,” says Heloise “And in death … do we not deserve kindness?” Ah, sweet Heloise, insight, oozing from every polite, proper and ponderous pore.
Okay here goes.
“Hi Mikey, sorry you’re gone. I had a chat with St. Peter and I’m afraid it’s a thumbs’ down. Anyway … I have it on good authority from Janis Joplin that there is a huge band down under. She says the acoustics off the canyons on the River Styx are ‘friggin’ mind-numbing.’ Kinda’ like the Demarol I guess. Love the shoes, the hat and the glove. And the songs. Except Ben. Rest in Peace, Michael.”
“Everybody deserves lovely words … Say lovely words.”
More important than the lovely words?
The children.

No comments:

Post a Comment