March 28, 2005

Michael Jackson a Persecuted Black Man?

Poor Michael Jackson. The man who has tried to erase his race over the last twenty years or so is now claiming that he is being persecuted because he is black.

In an article in today's New York Post, Jackson even goes so far as to compare himself to Nelson Mandela and boxer Jack Johnson (a boxer in the early 20th century who gained "infamy" for his relationships with white women when such relationships were taboo).

These comparisons were made on Jesse Jackson's radio talk show, a man who would never use race issues indiscriminately.

Jackson was quoted as saying:

Mandela's story has given me a lot of strength, what he's gone through. The Jack Johnson story . . . this society didn't want to accept his position and his lifestyle and what they put him through, and how they changed laws to imprisonthe man, to keep him away behind bars. All these stories that I can go back in history and read about give me strength."

Somehow, Jackson comparing himself to someone who was jailed for twenty years while campaigning for the end of apartheid, or to a man who sought to have consensual relationships with adult women who happened to be of a different race, doesn't seem to smack of credibility. Having the support of Jesse Jackson, an extortion specialist in the name of racial equality and an admitted adulterer, isn't exactly a ringing endorsement either.

Michael Jackson seems to forget why he is on trial: for the alleged molestation of a cancer-stricken child whom he befriended in the guise of support.

Even if he is innocent without a doubt, his lifestyle of outrageous excesses surely hasn't helped his cause. Changing his skin color, using plastic surgery to change his features beyond recognition, sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber, sham marriages that produced children whom he dangles out of hotel windows, and living on an estate that is more like Disneyland than a proper home hardly gives the public a sense of ease about his sense of propriety and appropriateness with children.

And now he cries "persecution" because he is black?

Michael Jackson needs to take the advice of his own song, Man in the Mirror: "I'm starting with the man in the mirror; I'm asking him to change his ways..." When's the last time Jackson truly looked at himself? Does he like what he sees? My guess is no, but he's so caught up in his own "mystery," he can't even begin to take responsibility for what direction his actions have taken him in. Even before his trial, his life was like a car crash: horrible to watch, but impossible to turn away from.

Playing the race card won't fool anyone.

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