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Jewish World Review June 16, 2005 / 9 Sivan, 5765 Making sense about Jacko's shattered life By Clarence Page
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
NEW YORK — Every media circus needs its sideshow. Michael Jackson's acquittal Monday appeared to leave Rev. Al Sharpton, a Jackson adviser and major megaphone for racial anger, in the awkward position of having precious little to be angry about.
"I think the criminal justice system has worked this time," Sharpton shouted over the midtown Manhattan traffic into a bouquet of microphones. "I think this is a vindication for people that believe people are innocent until proven guilty. . . . We can say that this jury decided the evidence was not there and they acquitted him. . . . It is good for America. Michael deserved the same rights as any other citizen."
Sharpton spoke to a scrum of reporters, including me, outside the headquarters of Jackson's record label, Sony Music Group. When I asked Sharpton whether he would be advising Jackson to change his lifestyle, which famously includes his proclivity for sleeping with young boys, the Harlem minister only hinted that he might. "I plan to advise Michael to take a long period of reflection and to be deliberate and sober from here on," he said. Right. Tell him to choose older roommates too.
One was left only to imagine what Sharpton would have said had Jackson been found guilty.
Jackson and Sharpton protested here together in 2002 after Jackson's last album failed to sell as well as his earlier ones. Jackson accused his label and former Sony Music chief Tommy Mottola of racism. That was a revelatory statement, since a couple of decades of plastic surgeries and skin lightening had turned Jackson's race into a matter of deep mystery. The bogus-sounding racism charge also revealed how seriously Jackson was in denial of how his career was sliding from its stratospheric heights.
That's show biz.
Race stalked the Michael Jackson trial like a ghost. Sharpton didn't bring it up on this occasion, but several black bystanders who came up to me out of the crowd did. Their concerns, expressed before the verdict was read, reminded me of how, as much as white Americans seemed perfectly happy to stop talking about Jackson's race long ago, black folks just can't seem to stop talking about it.
I also find it interesting that so many black folks I know still view the pop star as black, compared with the many white folks I know who are quite comfortable to see him as someone who is trying very hard not to be black.
I know I am going to offend some people simply by bringing up the race issue. But, it's always there in many minds, whether the rest of us like it or not. Remember how shocked Americans were in 1995 when the O.J. Simpson verdict came in? We were shocked because we hadn't had an honest dialogue about race in the country beforehand. When TV footage showed whites crying and blacks cheering after the verdict was read, blacks were not cheering because they necessarily loved O.J. They were cheering because his high-profile trial reminded so many of them that he beat a criminal-justice system that tended to be a lot worse for blacks than for whites.
That's also why we have not seen many blacks dancing in the streets over Jackson's acquittal on all counts at his child-molestation trial. Just because you're not guilty, as the old saying goes, doesn't mean you're innocent, Michael.
To paraphrase an old Jackson tune, it doesn't matter if you're black or white (or whatever) when it comes to feeling revulsion about Jackson's weird sleeping habits.
A lot of Jackson's old fans—like me—are hoping he takes Sharpton's advice, looks at the man in the mirror and asks him to change his ways.
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Comment on Clarence Page's column by clicking here. © 2005, TMS |
Mitch Albom | |||||||||||
