This is one of those cases where i haven't a clue whether the charges are true or not. I will hold my judgment until more facts come to light. From what we have seen of MJ's interest in children and the 1993 charges, he sure looks guilty as hell, but then the motivation of bringing false charges for money is very, very high and MJ is a very easy target. I think once we see more information on both sides we'll have a better idea what has happened.
I do think he has serious mental/emotional problems. He is almost completely bound up in this fantasy world he created for himself. He is not honest with himself or with others, like when he told Bashir that he has had only two surgeries to his face. This statement of his shows quite plainly that he is willing to deny things that are obvious to other people and fudge the truth. I don't think he necessarily intended to deface his appearance .... it may be that he just didn't know when to stop or doesn't realize how he looks to other ppl. The MJ we saw in the Bashir documentary also seemed to lack basic common sense and the way he talked struck me as very innocent and naive. But I don't buy into the descriptions of him as a 'child trapped in an adult's body' or an adult who thinks 'like a child'. It seems more like his self-imposed "childhood" is itself a fantasy he is living out, a construct of his imagination, instead of something that he just happens to find himself in. In other words, he has regressed himself into an imagined childhood he always wanted for himself instead of genuinely being "arrested" in a childhood. I say this of course, just as my own opinion. But hearing him talk about children, about childhood, seems to suggest this to me. He idealizes children and puts them on such a pedestal of spiritual and symbolic magnificance; he describes children idealistically as being the closest thing to God and childhood as a wonderful end to itself instead of a process of "growing up" into adulthood. He seems to talk as an adult who wants to aspire to the ideal of being a child, who wishes to re-make himself as a child, and not as someone arrested with a child-like outlook on the world and life. I thought about this a lot the week Mr. Rogers died. Mr. Rogers talked to children as peers, he understood their language, and endeavored to talk to them about the pains, problems, and "growing up" issues they all experience. In no way did he fetishize them as ideals of human Goodness -- he talked to them as real people about their real issues. MJ is not interested in what most kids concern themselves with (how to grow up), he wants to play with children as a child, but he turns what most kids realize is a process (childhood) into a state and wants to forever remain in that state. I do not see how this outlook helps children (such as, the very kids he is raising) face the real challenges of growing up. He reminds me of Barney, the purple dinosaur. When a child on the show has a problem, instead of directly confronting it and talking about it as what happens on Mr. Rogers or Sesame Street, Barney's solution is distraction with more fun games, never facing the actual issue at hand. MJ seems to be going in the opposite direction of most children....wanting to become more and more like a child when most kids want to learn how to be "age-appropriate", to be "big boys" and "big girls". For most kids, "play" is a means of learning about the world, learning how things work, how social roles work, how their bodies work, etc. while for MJ "play" is means of "being a child" and an end to itself. Of course, this is all my subjective impression of how Jackson has expressed himself and acted around children, so this may be completely off base. It just seems to me that he is coming from a totally different point of view than most children. His present childhood seems to be one that he has made for himself from what he BELIEVES childhood should be, rather than what it really is.
And what all that makes me wonder is if all the naivete and innocence which he may use for his defense is REALLY innocence, or if it is a feigned innocence he has adopted for himself in order to act in a child-like sort of way. It's like the "blonde bimbo" syndrome. It is not unheard of that in certain situations, some blonde women act in certain naive ways in order to make other ppl (i.e. certain MEN) think of them as dumb and therefore attractive.
Also, my impression of the MJ circa 1983-1984 seemed much more savvy and "adult" than the one interviewed by Bashir. Songs like "Billie Jean" seem to betray a more adult understanding of the world than what we would expect these days from him.
Leolaia
