ABOVE PICTURE:
Michael and oldest children, Paris Michael Katherine, and Michael Joseph Jr )
( I do not own these photos ). Credits: AP, NYdailynews.com.
Family photo November 2008 credited to Mohamed Hadid.
BOTTOM PICTURE:
Michael's close family friend and real estate developer Mohamed Hadid, and his family Michael Joseph Jr I, far left, Paris Michael Katherine middle, and Blanket-aka Prince Michael II on bottom, long dark brown hair, are pictured here on Novemeber 27th during the holidays at his home. Mr Hadid says that he spent alot of time with MJ during his final moments in life and intends on opening up about MJ's state of Mind and his life in those final days.
As I sit here in my small adobe living room drinking a glass of wine, I am thinking of what millions of other people around the world are STILL thinking about; the passing of Michael Jackson. The King of Pop music, the eccentric and fragile man who often seemed like a boy rather than a man. We all knew what made him the star he was. It was what he could exude. When he was on stage or in a video, he exuded a kind of sexuality and sensuality he didn't off stage. It was like he was two different people.
I think to myself now, as I savor a sip of my Cabernet, how lucky I am, even if I am not rich, to have the freedoms to meet new people, have lunch and go shopping with friends without my every movie being judged.
One hot summer, as a child, I wasn't thinking of Michael Jackson in terms of the Legend. I remember that summer listening to "Smooth Criminal" in the back of my Dad's 65 Chevy car in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We were visiting relatives, and the car ride over was always long and boring. Michael Jackson had come out with a new jam and I can remember how badass this one was. It was "Smooth Criminal". It had a core beat that was and MJ was sexy.
I was just a kid, but I remember enjoying a few moments on that hot summer day singing, "Annie are you okay, are you okay Annie....!!!! You've been hit by, you've been struck by a smooth criminal!" In the back seat of the car of my Dad's favorite toy of the moment. And as the heat sweltered and it turned to night in the city , I wanted nothing more than to be a grown up going out on the Albuquerque town, and dancing to the very bad ass Mr. Jackson, with me dressed like those beautiful woman lucky enough to be in his videos!
The up tempo, the suave white suit he wore, the machismo white hat, and the gravity defying tilt he and his dancers looked liquidized on the video itself as if he was held by strings in the air! ( Maybe he was,but who cared?)
Michael Jackson was like no other human I'd ever or will ever know of again. He was the personification of dreams and childhood fantasies. I didn't know much about the Jackson 5, or that Michael Jackson was crazy handsome and rich at the tender young age of 10, and a glorified child prodigy. I didn't know he was just a little boy singing about love and romance who just wanted to play and have friends. I also didn't know that it was all a painful somewhat surreal life he was living, and allegedly began taking prescription pain medication after his hair caught on fire in the mid 1980's after the explosive infamous Pepsi commercial. I just knew Michael Jackson's life must be magical, and from afar it was. From my point of view, he was an unreachable star. I was just a poor kid down the block. He had all the money in the world, a house better than Disneyland, and everyone loved him.....and then I grew up.
The Smooth Criminal Lean that Made my heart skip a beat as a kid.
Within my own adult life, the presence of music continues to influence my perception of a time and a place of ghost like people from the past, and of memories and feelings of family drama, and childhood fears.
It was then, and it is now a coping mechanism, a feeling, a moment, and more than anything an escape. I could get lost in the lyrics to a song. I had gone through so much adult human pain in my childhood and in my life and writing, creating thoughts on paper was my solace, something I didn't know I had in common with someone like Michael Jackson.
I used my writing to create a warm blanket around my heart, to sooth the demons I had as a child, seeing drugs tear those around me I loved apart. It pained the very core of me, but always music was a switch away. These people who sing couldn't possibly know what real pain is, I'd think, and I'd ponder how people like Michael Jackson could sing to my heart without supposedly knowing my pain.
Of course, 1993 came about and I was in high school then. That's when the humanity of a superstar known for setting the world on fire, came crumbling down in the media. He'd been accused of child molestation. This was a nightmare. He'd been tortured and his world and career came crumbling down never to be the same again. He "paid off" the family of the boy who accused him so that charges were dropped. It didn't matter that it wasn't true. What mattered was that a child told it, and we now know that child lied. Michael's name was tarnished forever, and the ghostly whispers of his angelic voice from then on were of fragile, and seemingly abnormally he kept himself in isolation. In the song, "You are not alone" and "Childhood", Michael seems to almost be comforting the public while also begging for someone to love him and not judge him. Interviews with reporters like Diane Sawyer, showed her almost in an attacking and accusatory tone asking Michael how he explains the lyrics to the song and how they are anti-Semitic and racist.
This interview was done with with Lisa Marie in 1995. The attack on his song "They don't really care about us", was a misunderstanding and closely shows Michael's distaste for prejudice and societies labels.
This reporter brought up the lyric, "Jew me, Screw Me", as putting down the Jewish community, and in all reality the song clearly is not a song about that, but about being a racial and human outcast, and as the song says, " Some things in life they just don't want to see, but if Martin Luther was living, he wouldn't let this be"....Anything was done to harm Micheal's reputation, and calling him out on his oddities in public was not just the norm, but was a required part of pseudo-journalism and tabloid standard operating procedure. " Here in the video hosted by a youtube user is the banned version of "They don't really care about us"
If you notice Jew Me, Sue Me" is missing from the song, the on the below video, is the video that was played in the states, where Jew Me, Sue Me was left in:
Jew Me Sue ME! on the news...
Michael said, " By the way, I love Jews!" Only very little people listened. (It was get on the Michael Jackson Bashing Bandwagon once again!!!)
Michael Begs American's especially not to Listen To The Tabloids
Michael begged people to dismiss the tabloids. He gave interviews, but then began to deny access to his world. In the interview, Lisa Marie tried defending Michael as much as a person in her position could, but clearly, she wasn't and couldn't be the one to save him from the very world in which he was meant to be center stage like a GOD, one day-and then a circus freak the next. This was something all too much for his wife, and even more traumatizing to the now obviously fragile person Michael turned out to be to the public. He from then on was both loved and hated. Divorce seemed inevitable, and Micheal's hopes for children and a family fell to pieces. Lisa left.
Diane Sawyer's Bitchy Interview..
It didn't take long for Michael to re-marry the very plain and asexual looking Debbie Rowe. Michael himself seemed asexual, and comparing him to leading men of the time, he just didnt seem to have any real relationships. This oddity, though not a crime, made an already brutal public believe that just because he was different, he must be bad. Debbie Rowe had known Michael from his Thriller days and was a nurse on set for his skin ailment. She supposedly helped treat his skin disease that discolored his skin tone, and made patches of white appear all over. She says she offered to have his babies. "Let me do this for you." She allegedly said. She gave birth to Paris Michael Katherine, a pretty blue eyed little girl with golden brown hair and golden skin, then to Michael Joseph Jr, a blonde little baby with pouty lips and full red cheeks.
The couple divorced later on, and Michael soon had another mystery child that aptly named Blanket, Prince Michael. Why Michael named all his kids the same name as he over and over again, must have been the quirky and eccentric individual he was, then again lots of parents do it. I can already hear Michael saying, " Why not? Why not give them all the same name. They are brothers and sister." In his silly tone of dismissal, Michael made us believe that his plastic surgeries ,the amounts he had, were ALL fabricated lies by the press, even though our beloved King of Pop started to look sickly and skeletal. Why did we choose to look the other way? As sometimes enablers do, well, it's because we all gave him so much admiration and didnt really treat him as a human being. Many still and always will think if of him to be a kind human being. He gave so much to children charities, and believed in the eyes of a child that's where there lay hope and innocence.
Back to Michael and his children. When the mother of Blanket never surfaced, it was a big controversy when Michael put baby Blanket out the window for the press and his fans to see in 2003, and for a split second the world was horrified. Where were these mothers? Why would Michael do that? Cher, the singer he once shared a stage with on a variety show in the 1970's voiced her opinion on the matter, that if it was up to her, he wouldn't have these kids. Everyone had an opinion!
Michael admitted his guilt, but was not stupid enough to know that he had made a human mistake. He hadn't meant to put Blanket in harms way. Elizabeth Taylor stood by him and said that MJ had a tight grasp on his baby and that he would never have intentionally hurt the little one. It still didn't matter. For all of Michael's beautiful gifts of song, dance and entertainment that he gave to all of us, it seemed the world was ready to override every accomplishment he had ever had, with the past decades human failure's and his trusting soul invited "strangers with a mission" into his life. A mission to take down the worlds most celebrated entertainer besides The Beatles and Elvis, and even above them in some ways, away from us for good would soon be a reality.
When Micheal's chance to vindicate himself and to show the world who he really was came to mind, a sort of PR boost, and he chose Martin Brashir, a well known journalist who is credited for Princess Diana's infamous interview. MJ believed he was the one who he could trust to bring out the truth; Micheal's truth.
All that could be said is that the documentary aired with speculation from Brashir that Neverland was a scary place for children and that Michael shouldn't be trusted with small and vulnerable ailing children.
Footage of Michael with a sick child holding hands with him lovingly, while the boy put his head on Micheal's shoulder stated that sharing one's bed is the most loving thing someone could do was the final nail in MJ's coffin. Michael was then investigated for child abuse when the child came out and stated Michael had given him "Jesus Juice", and molested him, and had been inappropriate with him. This was an emotional crush in Micheal's life. He could no longer afford to pay off another lying child, or another parent ready to take down his throne. He had to go to trial, and this time, Michael health was failing and faltering worse by the day. Michael, as most know was acquitted on all charges, but his life would remain a closed and strange world. It was likely the most humiliating time of his life, both spiritually and physically.
He had children to care for, and his money and flamboyant spending spree's could be perhaps have been his worst vice along with the speculated long term drug use, and now MJ was losing Neverland. Maybe Neverland was a source of bad and terrible memories for him, and had become not a dream world of delight and childlike innocence but of human pain and misery. MJ was already living a painful nightmare that took hold.Michael was no longer the fully adored, can-do-no-wrong person and because of the tabloid lies, MJ would never be the same.
Those of us who don't believe Michael hurt any children such as myself, are left to wonder where MJ went wrong. To myself, it was his unwavering love for those in need, and his open door policy for families and children who had nothing.
Michael s own childhood had been filled with torment and emotional and physical abuse inflicted by his controlling yet intelligent and diligent father. In the days where MTV and VH-1 didn't exist, the Jackson five boys had to work every single night and tour everywhere, fly everywhere, be everywhere. It was child slavery at its worst! His lack of childhood "wonderment" as Michael often used in words, and the fact that he never got to be that boy who plays at the park, and has a best friend, may have all contributed to his failure later in life, and his success as well.
The safety Michael felt on stage, where nobody could hurt him, and his imminent fate, the isolation and feelings of betrayal stayed with him. The bigger the star the the farther it falls, but to many people who always loved Michael, including myself, he will always remain a star forever and his contribution to my life, and to others will remain. He challenged us. "If you want to make the world a better place take a look at yourself and then make that change.."
Death might have been the only peace Michael Jackson was meant to have in this world. In another world, Michael may fit in perfectly, a child eternally in a real Neverland called Heaven, where there is no such thing as hurt and human pain.