Michael Jackson Approaches 50 - Page 2
I remember the day of his acquittal. I sat behind Michael in the Santa Monica courtroom - as I had every day for months - and listened as each charge was dismissed.
When he stood up to leave, he didn't seem to know what was going on or even that he had been found not guilty.
He was a shell of the person I had known over the years. He was disoriented - his eyes vacant, his face expressionless - the result of obvious drug abuse.
I knew then that he would never be the same. The testimony had been so damning, I was certain that a man as private as Jackson would never recover.
Unfortunately, Michael has been allowed over the years to do as he pleases, without having to be held accountable to anyone, and this is one of the things which has caused his downfall...his inability to deal with anything resembling the real world and all the obligations that entails:
Looking back, Neverland - which he bought in 1988 - was the worst thing ever to happen to Michael Jackson.It allowed him too much solitude and gave him the chance to isolate himself from his friends and family, and from common sense.
He surrounded himself with children, animals and a false reality - so much so that he never learned how to cope in the real world. He never wanted to grow up, and his managers encouraged these eccentricities when they should have encouraged therapy.
They allowed him to live an excessive life and spend money like there was no tomorrow.
Alone in his madness, he became gradually weirder, and no one seemed to care.
During the Eighties, when he started to experiment with plastic surgery - an obvious cry for help - there was nobody to slow him down and not even his family seemed to help him.
But by then, it was almost impossible to get through to Michael in his increasingly isolated state.
And now, he has selfishly added three children to this mixed-up existence he calls a life...children who are never, ever going to have anything that resembles a normal life, much like their father:
A middle-aged man wearing pyjamas is being pushed in a wheelchair down a sidewalk by an assistant. He is gaunt and frail-looking. His skin seems to be peeling. His fingernails are a sickening shade of yellow-brown.Beneath a red Marines baseball cap a surgical mask is visible, covering the bottom half of his face. A pair of large sunglasses shield the top.
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