The Michael Jackson Tapes (34 page)

How could a man with such a deep attachment to God suddenly make
himself
into a deity? Once he set himself up as an idol to be adored, it was but a short step for Michael to create his own rules and live by his own set of laws. The erosion of Michael Jackson from a man of decency and humility to a man who had disfigured his face, given his two sons the same name—Prince I and Prince II (who became known as “Blanket”)—and dangled his baby from a balcony in the belief that he need answer to no higher authority, dates from that period.

Right and wrong was now what Michael determined them to be. The world may find sleepovers with another person's kids revolting. But the world be damned. Inhabiting a lower level of consciousness, they just did not understand. The Bible commands that we honor our parents. But Michael reserved the right to condemn his father publicly on many occasions, even when those condemnations served no healing purpose in their relationship.

I would tell Michael he had no right to denounce his father in front of strangers, that he was transgressing the Fifth Commandment. Indeed, the lecture I wrote for him to deliver at Oxford revolved around forgiving, rather than abhorring, his father. It was designed to reestablish the integrity of his relationship with his father. But that was Michael Jackson the innocent boy who was listening to me. Within time he would revert to Michael Jackson the icon who treated me as a well-meaning nuisance who dared question things that are way beyond his understanding.

It seems bizarre, therefore, that we single out only Michael for his excesses when so many celebrities are destroying themselves and those around them, even if it is to a lesser extent. And we the public are not completely innocent. Celebrities live in a world not of their own creation but of
our
creation. Our worship of celebrities has gone from a pastime to a devotion, from a form of recreation to a form of veneration, from entertainment to religion.

Detached as we are from God and estranged from loftier pursuits, we have invented new gods here on earth. Where once people were awed by the heavenly stars, today they prostrate themselves before movie stars. Where once man pondered the secrets of the universe, we today seek to uncover the enigma of Marlon Brando. Is it surprising, then, that the objects of this worship begin to believe that they have a right to make up and live by their own rules, even when it becomes completely ruinous?

And we the public, the idolizers, are just as guilty as the celebrities who invite the adulation. The golden calf of Moses' time has been replaced by the Oscar statue of our time.

The essence of the Bible can really be reduced to a single idea: God alone should be the epicenter of our lives, the heart of our existence, the soul of our actions. Brook no counterfeit substitutes.

Gone are the days when humans would bend their knees or prostrate themselves before the celestial host. No, our modern idols have moved from the stone-carved totems of the ancient world to the perfectly sculpted bodies of the Hollywood world. Rather than pray to the heavenly stars, we obsess on the lives of our movie stars. Rather than talk of the beauty of God's creation, we talk about the magnificence of our screen creations. Rather than talk about how we can connect with God, we talk about who Jennifer Aniston is connecting with.

Many believe that it is drugs and failed relationships that spoil celebrities. But I have discovered that it is sycophantic friends and abettors who are the worst poison of all. They reinforce the idea that the celebrity can do no wrong.

Humans are not gods, and when the public expects them to be gods, they must conceal or dismiss their humanity in an effort to not appear ordinary. It is against this backdrop that much of Michael's bizarre behavior must be understood.

Once, when we were walking into the home of my friend, PR guru Howard Rubenstein, for a quiet meeting with members of the press, Michael emerged from his van and put on a black mask. I said, “Please put that silly thing away. It makes you look like Darth Vader.” He never
wore it in my presence again. He had put it on before, not because, as people speculated, he was a freak about air quality but simply to appear more mysterious. He wanted to always keep people guessing. Indeed, he loved being a trendsetter, bragging to me that he had made it cool for people to wear white socks with the pant legs ending high—“You used to be a geek if you wore white socks and high pants, but now everyone wears them”—and one, instead of two, gloves. Little did Michael realize that even if you are a great trendsetter, but people think you are deranged, you are still the loser. But then making up his own rules was always more appealing to Michael than living by existing ones, no matter what the circumstances.

At the time of the Oxford lecture, which was made possible from my eleven years serving as rabbi at the university, he and I were championing the call for a Children's Bill of Rights and putting children first, a movement to improve the lives of children. I made it clear to Michael that the success of his lecture would depend entirely on his ability to subordinate himself to his message. “Humble yourself and glorify your words.”

He agreed. But as we walked into the debating chamber of the venerable Oxford Union, a place where Albert Einstein, the Queen of England, and several American presidents had lectured before him, Michael told me to go in first with the president of the Oxford Union, who should announce him, after which he would arrive as he always does in his concerts, with fanfare and screams.

I told him this was no concert, that he had been invited to one of the most prestigious lecture chambers in the world, that the two-hundred-year-old tradition was for every guest to be escorted by the president into the chamber, and that he would be no exception. But he was adamant. He could not be anything but the star. He could occupy no place but center stage. So we went along with the preposterous arrangement and it immediately cheapened him. And while his lecture was not just a popular but even a critical success, he emerged the loser that night. In the battle of the warring sides of himself, he was destined to lose to the corrupting forces of fame.

After my two years of friendship with Michael, I became extremely disillusioned with celebrity culture in general and what it had done to Michael and the people in his vicinity in particular. It is what led directly to the publication of my 2003 book,
The Private Adam: Becoming a
Hero in a Selfish Age,
which serves as a strong critique and repudiation of the celebrity culture, arguing for everyday, unsung acts of heroism that would never make it into a newspaper. I dismissed the false heroes who were leading our culture off the precipice. My attraction to Michael was largely based on my feeling that he was a different kind of celebrity. More humble, more sensitive, more human. And truth be told, there was that side of him. But very little of that human Michael remained at the end. All that was left was the decaying superstar, the side of him that got away with reckless and irresponsible behavior.

When Michael and I were friends, I never feared that he would one day molest a child. The thought of his being a child molester was foreign to me, and even now I find it painful to accept that Michael could sexually abuse a child. No, my fear was of a completely different nature: that Michael would not live to see his fiftieth birthday. That the dark abyss over which he had led his life would finally consume him and he would be lost.

I shudder to think that perhaps there was something that someone could have done to save him. But, barring being found guilty in 2005 and being sent to a penitentiary where all his privileges, including access to phony doctors with their truckload of painkillers, would have been taken away, there seemed to be no hope. In this sense, ironic as it may sound, being found innocent was yet another tragedy in Michael's life.

When he was arrested I thought it might provide the jolt that would save him from implosion. But it was not to be. Michael could never truly hit bottom. Even when he had run through his money, his friends, and his family, he was able to borrow against his future earnings and even his future chance at a comeback to avoid the cold reality that would push him in a new direction.

In the close friendship we once shared, where I endeavored to reverse the downward spiral, I would often tell him that without an authentic
connection to God he would never survive life as a celebrity. But celebrities rarely listen to mortals. And they do not need God, since they are gods themselves. They allow all their relationships to atrophy as they become more and more isolated.

His relationship with his father was the first major relationship he lost. From an early age Michael began to perceive Joseph Jackson—and Michael always called him Joseph rather than Daddy, which his father insisted on—as a harsh manager rather than a tender parent. Next to go was his close relationship with his brothers. Jealousy between Michael and his brothers, egged on by their wives, according to Michael, ensured that The Jackson 5 could not survive as a unit. This also, according to Michael, made him highly suspicious of marriage, thereby ensuring that a grounded wife would not be present to help him through life.

Then he lost his relationship with the Jehovah's Witnesses Church, a key ingredient in keeping him humble and stable. So devoted a son was Michael to his Church that he even placed their required disclaimer at the beginning of his memorable “Thriller” music video, announcing that the video did not represent an endorsement of the occult. A few years later, however, he had repudiated the Church and they had repudiated him. By this time, aside from a loving but distant relationship with this mother, nothing was left. Like a kite at the mercy of the winds, Michael Jackson was completely untethered. And although he would later have two, and then three, children, they could not (nor was it their role to) connect Michael to the people, pursuits, and beliefs that could provide the safe harbor and positive influence all of us need.

We are not the first generation of individuals who wish to be famous and who are infatuated with celebrity and notoriety. Throughout history, men and women have endeavored to escape the horrible faceless-ness of anonymity by becoming recognizable to their fellow humans through grand gestures. The great men and women of history have always sought to rise from the undistinguished morass of the general populace and be noticed, like a towering wave that swells from the pool of the ocean's waters.

Two-and-a-half thousand years ago, Alexander the Great of Macedonia, the first truly famous man in history, took along on his campaigns chroniclers and historians who would later tell the tale of his wondrous conquests. Later, Augustus of Rome minted dozens of coins with his likeness. He wanted his vast achievements as the towering administrator of the greatest empire to be known throughout the world. In an age where the majority of the population was illiterate, the best way of becoming famous was visually rather than verbally. Even in the last century, Charles Lindbergh became the most famous man on earth when he conquered the seemingly endless vastness of the Atlantic Ocean as a lone flyer, and indulged in an orgy of ticker-tape parades and never-ending interviews. So, no, as a generation, we are not distinguished by our lust for fame.

What does make us different, however, is that so many of us relish the loss of our dignity in the quest for celebrity. In the aforementioned historical scenarios, the protagonist always wishes to be famous for some virtue or accomplishment. Celebrity was a means by which one magnified one's own renown and respectability by having the masses know of one's triumphs. Men pursued celebrity with the express intention of promoting their dignity, establishing their legacy, and thereby defining their uniqueness. They promoted their part in the long timeline of human achievement. To be sure, we can debate today whether Napoleon was a liberator or a tyrant, whether one who finds glory on the battlefield is a bully or a victor. But be that as it may, in his own age, military conquest was glorious and thus Napoleon wished for all the earth to know that the glory was his.

Michael Jackson became the most famous man of his generation. But it was a fame radically different from the ones just described. Here was a man who became famous first for his music, then for his dysfunction. He became celebrated first for his genius and talent but then later for his deficiencies and peculiarities. A man so desperate for recognition, so seemingly deprived of love, that if it took being seen with a chimp or telling the world he slept in a hyperbaric chamber to get people to talk about him, he would pay that price. If he had to let it be known that he was buying the bones of the Elephant Man, or run around the world wearing a villain's mask, or grab his crotch a hundred
times during a concert, he would do that too to become even more recognizable. Plastic surgery did the rest. In the public's mind, Michael Jackson was transformed from talented boy wonder to human train wreck. Some people embrace eccentricity. Michael put all his creativity into it.

Perversely, he ended up getting everything he ever wanted. His trial on charges of child molestation, among other allegations, made him even more famous than the Beatles. But while some sell their soul for a place in eternity, Michael, through his inability to put any brakes to his plastic reconstructions, sold the very image of God in man.

Michael Jackson became the father of all those who are prepared to flaunt, rather than conceal, their imperfections in the never-ending quest for fame. In that respect, Michael Jackson became, arguably, the most influential man alive, the man whose antics would later invite the age of reality TV and would culminate in cheap stunts like Britney and Madonna kissing on stage, an intoxicated Lindsay Lohan driving her car into a tree, and Jessica Simpson talking about her stool.