|
| | At the outset Michael Jackson looked healthy and optimistic. Now he has become a drawn, skeletal figure after enduring 60 days of a trial that may put him in prison for more than 18 years (PHOTO: ROBYN BECK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES AND WIREIMAGE.COM) |
|
|
HE LOOKS like a dead pop star on a coat hanger. Tiny, weak, and with the flesh visibly shrinking from his face — leaving behind an almost skeletal jaw line made stranger by the pulled lips and white man’s chin dimple — Michael Jackson is clearly in extremely poor health. That the singer has survived 60 days of a child-abuse trial, with 135 witnesses and more than 1,000 pieces of evidence, with little more indication of ill-health than a fleeting visit to hospital for treatment for de-hydration on Thursday night, is a surprise to many. But now that the closing arguments have been made and the judge’s instructions given, Mr Jackson faces the longest weekend of his 46 years. Judge Rodney Melville, as he handed the case to the jury yesterday, said: “You are not partisans or advocates in this matter, you are the impartial judges of facts.” The jurors were also given 98 pages of instructions to guide them. Mr Melville told the singer that he could stay at his Neverland ranch during deliberations but the lawyers would have to stay within ten minutes of the courthouse in case the jury had questions. The judge asked if one hour would be sufficient time for Mr Jackson to get to the court, but added: “If you are slightly delayed, I would rather be slightly delayed than have you rush too fast.” The 12 small-town Californians on the jury — they cannot, in any seriousness, be called his peers — will now debate the case for imprisoning the global pop icon for the next eighteen years and eight months of his life. If previous celebrity trials are anything to go by, it could take the jurors as long as a fortnight to reach a verdict. If convicted on all ten counts, the former billionaire, whose lusty falsettos and robotic basslines are as much a part of Western popular culture as McDonald’s, Mickey Mouse and Levi’s 501s, will not be seen again by the public until just before his 65th birthday. His musical legacy, however, is probably strong enough to survive without him. Billie Jean remains an uncorrupted pleasure, in the same way that Die Walküre remains unspoilt (for many, at least) by Richard Wagner’s anti-Semitism. Deprived of the most basic freedoms, and with a face bleached and maimed by countless sessions with plastic surgeons, prison would be an almost biblical end to the tale of Michael Joseph Jackson, the poor Jehovah’s Witness boy from Gary, Indiana, who lost his childhood to stardom and was beaten by his father. Two decades ago, when Mr Jackson was better known for his dance moves or for selling more than 50 million copies of his rock-horror album Thriller, he was rich enough to wrestle the Beatles’ back catalogue out of the control of Paul McCartney. Now, he may lose not only the Beatles songbook, but also his own back catalogue, after borrowing compulsively against his assets. With legal fees estimated at more than $1 million (£550,000), even his Los Olivos ranch, Neverland, may be sold. That Mr Jackson’s anguish is almost entirely self-inflicted — resulting, as it does, from a Martin Bashir documentary in which he willingly took part — increases the irony to an almost unbearable level. The singer has already been mocked by the tabloids (which invented the “Wacko Jacko” moniker); mocked by his fans; and mocked by Tom “Mad Dog” Sneddon, the Santa Barbara district attorney who raided Mr Jackson’s ranch and issued a warrant for his arrest on the same day his Number Ones CD collection was released. Now, it seems, he is being mocked by fate itself. Mr Jackson would be pleased with any biblical analogy. He seems to see himself as Jesus Christ , however, not a citizen of Sodom. During his molestation trial, jurors were shown video footage of a giant replica of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper that hung over the singer’s king-sized bed, with its sad, unmade blue sequinned sheets. In the painting, Christ’s face had been replaced by Mr Jackson’s. The singer’s disciples, meanwhile, were shown as Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Walt Disney, Charlie Chaplin, Little Richard, and, of course, Elvis Aaron Presley. That painting, more than any of the other fame- induced lunacies at Neverland (including the royal “King of Pop” crest above the golden gates, or the statues of naked children at play), betrays the almost clinical nature of the singer’s delusion. The trial of Michael Jackson has arguably not told us anything new about the singer. We knew about the two voices (the showbusiness falsetto and the real, 46-year-old African-American baritone that scolds employees); the wine served guilt-ily in Diet Coke cans; the endless sleepovers with boys; the wooing of the boys’ mothers; the fickle dumping of his favourite 13-year-old friends for new, younger versions; the $1 million Las Vegas shopping sprees; the financial difficulties; the offspring from hastily divorced wives and surrogate mothers; and the cast of lawyers, accountants, business advisers, publicists, bodyguards, security officers and theme park operators who have all helped to relieve Mr Jackson of enough money to fund a Nasa space programme. Some of them, the defence told the court, even managed to get power of attorney over Mr Jackson’s most intimate affairs. Others sued him; several tried to auction their lurid confessions to the British tabloids. A few turned up in court to say that they saw the singer abusing children, even though they never reported the incidents to police. One of those children, Macaulay Culkin, the actor, gave evidence to deny the allegations personally. |
