Today's Stories

August 3, 2009

Pam Martens
Millions of Americans Pushed Into No-Law System by Colluding Banks

July 31 - August 2, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Biden and Clinton Mutinies

Gabriel Kolko
Searching For Enemies

John Prados
The Intelligence Oversight Mess

Joe Bageant
The Bastards Never Die

Tim Wise
Rationalizing Racial Oppression

Carl Ginsburg
Frist First: Follow the Money (and Find the Plump Heart of "Health Care")

Michael Fox
The Honduran Coup as Overture

John Lindsay-Poland
Revamping Plan Colombia

Michael Winship
Pay-to-Play: Washington's Sport of Kings

Rev. William Alberts
White Men Can Jump ... to Conclusions

Andy Worthington
Judge Orders Release of Tortured Gitmo Prisoner

Steve Breyman
Counting the Unemployed

Cyrus Bina
Racism, Class and Profiling

Missy Beattie
Promises Ignored

Ron Jacobs
Into the Vapid: Consuming the Cultural Product

Willie L. Pelote, Sr.
Party of Concessions: Democrats Never Learn

Lucia Alvarez
Fall of the House of Kirchner? Return of the Right in Argentina

Dave Lindorff
David Brooks' White Guy Nightmare

Lawrence R. Velvel
Madoff: What Should be Done Now?

Omar Barghouti /
Sid Shniad
United for Freedom and Universal Justice

James L. Secor
The Name of the Game is Wipe-Out

Belén Fernández
Zelaya in Nicaragua: Has Another Constitution Been Violated?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Frank Lloyd Wright in Hollywood: the Ennis House as Imperial Ruin

David Yearsley
Beauty in Dark Places: Berlin's Olympic Stadium

Brian J. Foley
Pre-Eating: a Threat to Restaurants Everywhere

Alan Cabal
Onward, Into the Fog: Thomas Pynchon's
"Inherent Vice"

Kim Nicolini
The Way War Feels

Lorenzo Wolff
The Way It Felt the First Time: the Jump Rope Magic of the Shangri-Las

Poets' Basement
Four Poems From the Chinese

Website of the Weekend
Obama's Ex-Doc Knocks ObamaCare

July 30, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Victims of a Covert Tit-for-Tat War

Gareth Porter
Afghanistan's US-Backed Child-Raping Police

Saul Landau
Summer of Denial

Greg Grandin
Honduran Coup Over?

Roy Bourgeois / Margaret Knapke
School of Coups

Diane Farsetta
Pentagon Pundits Get a Pass

Stephen Soldz
The King Case, the APA and the Missing Ethics Investigation

Alan Farago
Learning How to Survive in a Depression From "Weeds"

David Macaray
Cops and Labor Unions

Mike Howells /
Jay Arena
Volunteerism Will Not Rebuild the Gulf Coast

Christopher Brauchli
Oatmeal Envy

Website of the Day
Changing the SOFA

July 29, 2009

Carl Ginsburg
Our Crisis, Their Gain

Clifton Ross
From Tegucigalpa to El Paraiso: a Voyage From Curfew to State of Siege

Paul Craig Roberts
How Fake is the "Recovery"?

Franklin C. Spinney
Winning Hearts and Minds, Pentagon Style

James Bovard Lackawanna Six: Bogus Charges and Martial Law

Anthony DiMaggio
Health Care, the Media and Public Opinion

Bouthaina Shaaban
How Will Arabs Wake Up?

Greg Moses
A Catch and Trade Policy for Labor Costs

Wajahat Ali
No Racism in Obama's Post-Race America?

Gary Leupp
Beer Will Not Solve This

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Musharraf, Imran Khan and Overseas Pakistanis

Website of the Day
Why Single-Payer Gets No Respect

July 28, 2009

Jean Bricmont
Bombing for a Juster World?

Uri Avnery
Obama, Netanyahu and the Settlements

Dean Baker
Right to Rent: a Remedy for the Foreclosure Crisis

Heather Gray
Stupid Cop Tricks: Driving Too Close to a White Female and Other Episodes in Racist Policing

Jonathan Cook
Can an "Arab Soul" Yearn for Israel's Anthem?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Beyond the F-22: the Future of Pentagon Reform

Belén Fernández
Thomas Friedman Does Afghanistan

Carl Finamore
The Hotel Workers' Kickass Local 2

Eli Jelly-Schapiro
Striking the World Cup

Harvey Wasserman
We All Stand Before Peltier's Parole Board

Website of the Day
Behind the Wheel

July 27, 2009

Ishmael Reed
Gates: Post-Race Scholar Yells Racism

Patrick Cockburn
Elections Shake Kurdistan

Roger Burbach
Hillary and Obama Nix Change in Honduras

Steve Breyman
Bomber Joe and Russia: Why is Biden Channeling Cheney?

Ramzy Kysia
Gaza: On the Right of Resistance

Stephen Soldz
Will the American Psychological Association Renounce the Nuremberg Defense?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Sexual Hocus Pocus in the Episcopal Church

Greg Moses
The Color Line is Black

Binoy Kampmark
Swine Flu Panic

Kim Ives
Lavalas and Haiti's Student Union Unite

Website of the Day
Meet the Paid Assassins of Health Care

July 24-26, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
"A Damned Murder, Inc."

Clifton Ross
Surreal Honduras

Patrick Cockburn
Party of "Change" Challenges Old Guard in Kurdistan

William Polk
Report Card on Obama From a New Frontiersman

David Sterritt
Screening the Politics Out of the Iraq War

Ray McGovern
Hooded in Bush's Hood

David Lindorff
Cops Gone Wild

Hannah Mermelstein
"The War is With the Arabs"

Carl Ginsburg
The Actually Existing Health Care System

Helen Redmond
The Selling of Single-Payer Features

John Ross
The Song of the Guerrilla

Bill Simpich
Fair Play for Cuba and the Cuban Revolution

Mark Weisbrot
Learning From China on How to Beat the Recession

Lee Sustar
U.S. Labor in Crisis

David Macaray
Union Workers Forced to Accept Massive Cuts

Felipe Matsunaga
Obama's Slow (and Familiar) Dance With Cuba

Sara Mann
Why Health Care Will Kill My TV

Martha Rosenberg
Which is Worse? Germs in Our Food or the Antibiotics That Kill Them?

Missy Beattie
Cha-ching Culture

David Ker Thomson
Empty Nest: a Natural History of Now

Ron Jacobs
United4Iran, a Footnote

Stephen Martin
The Crying of Lots 1 Thru 50

David Yearsley
Psst, I Show You a Feelthy Gluck

Gilad Atzmon
Bruno: a Glimpse Into Zionism?

Kim Nicolini
Guilty Laughter in the Dark: Seeing Brüno Twice

Poets' Basement
Kakak and McLellan

Website of the Weekend
Dead Prez: Summertime

July 23, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Masters of Perfidy: AIG and the System

Saul Landau /
Nelson Valdés
Hypocrisy and the Honduran Coup: Term Limits Only Apply When Governments Help People

Jonathan Cook
The Reality of Israel's "Open" Jerusalem

Nadia Hijab
Israeli Warships in the Red Sea

Dave Lindorff
Living in a Police State: the Gates Incident

Laura Carlsen
21st Century Coups d'Etat

Steve Breyman
Bankers Beware?

Ellen Brown
How California Could Turn Its IOUs Into Dollars

Norman Solomon
Spinning Health Care

Jorge Mariscal
Youth Activists Demand Military-Free Schools

Website of the Day
Copy-Editing Sarah Palin

July 22, 2009

Bernard Chazelle
How to Argue Against Torture

Nikolas Kozloff
The Coup and the U.S. Airbase in Honduras

Carl Ginsburg
The Recovery, Phase Two

Clifton Ross
Back to the Future? Return to El Salvador

Anthony DiMaggio
Health Care, Media and the Case for Socialized Medicine

Michael Donnelly
The Whoppers Behind WOPR

Nadia Hijab
Memoirs of a Lost Arab World

Dedrick Muhammad
Structural Inequality: News Not Fit to Print?

Charles Thomson
Cronyism at the Tate

Alan Farago
Ted Williams and the Florida Keys

Website of the Day
Himmelstein: Howard Dean is a Liar

July 21, 2009

Sasan Fayazmanesh
The Iranian Election and Its Aftermath

Uri Avnery
Breaking the Silence on Israeli War Crimes

Dean Baker
Séance on Wall Street

Jonathan Cook
Team Twitter: Israel's Internet War

Dave Lindorff
Saving Private Bergdahl

Andy Worthington
Interrogating the Uighurs

David Macaray
Heat, Dust and OSHA

Carl Finamore
The Deferential Party

Harvey Wasserman
Cronkite and Three Mile Island

Walter Brasch
The Marie Antoinettes of Health Care

Website of the Day
Linebaugh: Magna Carta and the Commons

July 20, 2009

Pam Martens
Judicial Apartheid

Nikolas Kozloff
Honduras and the Big Stick: Obama's Bullish Behavoir in Latin America

Paul Craig Roberts
Threatening Iran

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Policy on China and Iran

Ira Glunts
Netanyahu's Time Bomb: Building in the Vineyard of the Mufti

P. Sainath
Put Your Money Down, Boys

Binoy Kampmark
The Moon Landing and the Cold War

Stephen Fleischman
The First Anchorman

Norman Solomon
Cronkite and Vietnam: Beyond the Hype

Andy Worthington
Predictable Chaos as Gitmo Trials Resume

Ron Jacobs
Out of the Haze, Into the Darkness: Recalling 1979

Website of the Day
Why Publishing Can't be Saved (as it is)

July 17-19, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
"Watch What We Do, Not What We Say"

Nikolas Kozloff
Chiquita in Latin America: From Arbenz to Zelaya

Joanne Mariner
CIA Apples: Bad at the Top of the Tree

Joe Bageant
America's White Underclass

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Road Signs: Wiping Arabic Names Off the Map

Saul Landau
Why So Much Sympathy for Madoff's Dupes and So Little for the Poor?

John Ross
Jurassic Fallout in Mexico

Sue Sturgis
Senator Sessions, Race and Impartiality

Anita Sinha /
Daniel Farbman
The Ricci Case and the Myth of Special Treatment

Peter Morici
Obama's Donut Economics

Pervez Hoodbhoy
Whither Pakistan? A Five-Year Forecast

Ramzy Baroud
Gaza and the Language of Power

Greg Moses
The Real Demand Crisis

Kia Mistilis
The Niger Delta Crisis

Missy Beattie
The Placebo President

David Ker Thomson
How Not to See: Things to Tell Your Eyeballs

James G. Abourezk
Evil Spirits: the Booze Strip in Indian Country

Paul Richards
Why Does Jon Tester Want to Log Wild Montana?

Dave Lindorff
Dark Days for Working People (With Three Small Rays of Light)

Marc Levy
Just Like Hanoi Jane

Matt Siegfried
The Good War Goes Hot

Stephen Martin
Panopticon Blues

Ben Sonnenberg
Sembène's Faat Kiné

David Macaray
Casablanca: When Melodrama Trumped History

Charles R. Larson
A Pakistani, Victorian Novel Celebrating Women

David Yearsley
That's Women for You: Abbas Kiarostami's Così

Lorenzo Wolff
Death Rattle and Roll: the Sound From England's Gutters

Poets' Basement
Payne, Anderson and Williams

Website of the Weekend
Hitler Learns of Sarah Palin's Resignation

July 16, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
What Economy?

Afshin Rattansi Iranian Planes and the Hidden Toll of Economic Sanctions

Gregory V. Button
The Search for Environmental Justice in Perry County, Alabama

Evan Knappenberger
Profile of a Deserter

Michelle Bollinger
Why is Leonard Peltier Still in Prison?

Russell Mokhiber
White House to ABC News: No Obama Single-Payer Doc

Belén Fernández
Iranian Penetration, Oh My!

Alice Walker
What is Torture Like? A Letter to Obama

Nicholas Dearden
Paying the Climate Debt: the G-8's Troubling Model

Albert Osueke
Sotomayor and the Identity Mountain

Website of the Day
Sotomayor for the Prosecution

July 15, 2009

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Assassination Bureau

Vijay Prashad
A Political Recession

Dean Baker
Stimulus Arithmetic

Ray McGovern
Cheney Sweating Bullets

Jonathan Cook
Jenin's Model of "Economic Peace"

David Rosen
Shouts From the Gallery: the Sotomayor Hearings and the Culture Wars

Eric Walberg
Uighurs vs. Afghans: a Study in Contrast

Greg Moses
Three Dimensions of a Complete Stimulus Plan

Sousan Hammad
Decolonizing Israel

Binoy Kampmark
The Trial of Charles Taylor

Tracy McLellan
The Story of My Arrest

Website of the Day
11 Days in Saudi Gitmo

July 14, 2009

Eamonn McCann
The Emperors of Bombast: Bono, U2 and the Crisis of World Capitalism

Joanne Mariner
Obama's New Euphemism

Franklin Spinney
The Taliban Rope-a-Dope

Steve Heilig
Walking Mount Tam: an Interview with Gary Snyder

Ali Abunimah
Hamas' Choice

Dave Lindorff
The End of "Nice" Health Care Reform

Nikolas Kozloff
The Politics of Destabilization: McCain and Honduras

Ellen Brown
From Golden State to Subprime State

Alice Slater
How US Missile Defense Plans Sabotaged Nuclear Disarmament Talks With Russia

Ron Jacobs
Protest U.S. Aggression

Joe Allen
The Fight to Save James Hickman in Jim Crow-Style Chicago

Website of the Day
Mel Brooks Does the French Revolution

July 13, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Essence of the Regime

Mike Whitney
The Deflating Economy

P. Sainath
How the World Depression Hits Orissa

Gareth Porter
A US / Iraq Conflict on Iran

Paul Moore
Rap in the Streets, Rap in the Suites

Tim Wise
Off the Deep End: Private Clubs, Public Prejudice

Andy Worthington Former Insider Shatters Credibility of Military Commissions

David Macaray
Cartoon Voices: Serf's Up in Hollywood

Cal Winslow
The Healthcare Worker War

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Spring in the Time of Obama

Website of the Day
Washington's Deep Game with China

July 10-12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Biden Problem

José Pertierra
The Cuban Five: a Cold War Case in a Post-Cold War World

John Ross
After the Honduran Coup

Conn Hallinan
The Settlements and the Quartet

Nikolas Kozloff
C Street Band: Sex Scandals, Moral Hypocrisy and the Far Right Agenda in Latin America

Clifton Ross /
Marcy Rein
U.S. and Honduras: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Good Neighbor

Carl Ginsburg
Summers' Clouded Crystal Ball

Michael Neumann
Say It Loud, Say It Proud: There is No God!

Gilad Atzmon
The Left and Islam: Thinking Outside of the Secular Box

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Parable of the Golden Parachute

Ellen Hodgson Brown
California Dreamin': How the State Can Beat Its Budget Woes

Jim Goodman
Rural America Needs More Than Listening Sessions

Christopher Bickerton
Europe's New Politics of Hard Times

Wendell Potter
Health Care Industry Adopts Tobacco Lobby's Tactics

Dave Lindorff
CIA Lies: Why Isn't Congress in Open Revolt?

David Ker Thomson
Switchbacking Toward Bastille Day

Anthony DiMaggio
The Michael Jackson Feeding Frenzy

Raymond Lawrence
Michael Jackson as Sexual Pervert: the Calumnies of Peter King

Walid El Houri
Neda and Marwa: a Tale of Two Murdered Women

Stephanie Westbrook
Yes, We Camp

Roger Gaess
The Shades of Highgate Cemetery

David Yearsley
Tara, America's Dream House

Kim Nicolini
Caution: Men at Work, Robbing Banks

Poets' Basement
Five Poems From the Japanese

Website of the Weekend
Free Tiga and Hugh!

August 3, 2009

Beat It!

Sex, Death and Michael Jackson

By Dr. SUSAN BLOCK

Like millions around the world, I was shocked when the news of Michael Jackson’s death hit me harder than I’d ever imagined it would.  True, I grew up on MJ, enjoyed my first make-out session to the guiding notes of “ABC,” slow-danced to “I’ll Be There,” moonwalked to “Billie Jean,” jilled-off to “Beat It,” and opened my heart to “We Are The World.”  But throughout our lives, I had no problem taking Jackson’s music, his moves, his scandals and paraphilias in moderation.  I always liked to dance – and make out – to his tunes (who doesn’t?), but I was never a huge fan, never even went to a live concert.  He seemed so, well…commercial.  And then there was his tacky taste in art, not to mention those bizarre pajama parties with boys the age that he was when he taught me my ABCs. 

That all changed on the afternoon of June 25, 2009.  As soon as I got the news, I caught the wave.  Where were you when MJ died?  Like millions, I was on Twitter. Within seconds of TMZ’s scoop, “RIP MJ” hit #1 on Twitter’s trending topics, with “Michael Jackson,” “Jacko,” “Gloved One” and other nicknames occupying almost all the other top spots.  From Farrah Fawcett to the Iran Election, all other news was kicked to the curb.  Make way for the King of Pop! 
Twitter wasn’t the only site infected with MJ fever.  News of his demise sent the internet an unprecedented surge of traffic that caused crashes and slowdowns in what many referred to as a major "wake-up call" for internet infrastructure. 

At first, I didn’t believe the news, assuming it was a Jeff Goldblum-style hoax, or maybe even Jacko’s own amazing scheme.  Could he have somehow slipped out of his looming 50-concert tour, then stolen away to some far off palace in Bahrain where he would live as a woman, going out to the local mall in an abaya and watching sales of all his old records soar in his wake?  The family could have been in on it too.  After all, Saint Michael’s Ascension to Heaven has buoyed the whole Jackson Juggernaut.  Unsolved mysteries pervaded the news, and didn’t get solved even as facts emerged.  Visions of Zombie Michael rose from the grave like a “Thriller” creature in my dreams, maniacally laughing at our tears and quietly raking in the revenues.

That might have made a hot Michael Jackson video, but it wasn’t the cold corpse of reality.  With various authorities examining the body, pronouncing it dead as a multi-platinum doornail and even removing MJ’s brain for further study, I put the Elvis-Is-Alive theories to bed, at least for a while.  That started my spiral down into the depths of Dead Michael Mania. Forget Swine Flu; I had MJ fever, which is a lot more contagious and sometimes lethal.  Supposedly, 12 Michael Jackson fans killed themselves when they heard the news that their idol was gone.  Even as I derided their devotions, I joined the zillions already down on their knees worshipping Dead MJ in the interdenominational Church of the World Wide Web, scouring YouTube for scratchy old Jackson 5 videos and “exclusive” interviews with the Gloved One, awaiting breaking news of the autopsies, perusing scholarly assessments of the Pop King’s famously “weird” sexuality, gawking at photos of the freshly unmasked Jackson 3 - Prince, Paris and the MJ-lookalike Blanket, and studying amateur videos of a fourth kid, love child Omer Bhatti whose mom is rumored to have been the Norwegian-Pakistani Billie Jean.  The mass hysteria over the “welfare” of these kids is like that over the heirs to a crown.

MJ Backlash

The backlash began before the body was cold.  Bill O’Reilly announced that he was “fed up” with the likes of me and my Jacko-inspired brothers and sisters.  Of course, O’Reilly is just an old, natal white guy with a loofah up his butt, freaked out by the fact that not only is his President black, but so is the most internationally successful – and internationally mourned - entertainer the world has ever known. 

But O’Reilly wasn’t the only one outraged by the mass adulation of this “poor black boy who grew up to be a rich white woman” (thank you, Red Buttons).  Over a month after his death, right-wing ranters John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou were still ranting on KFI-AM 640 about the travesty of spending taxpayers’ money on security for a “memorial service for a pedophile.” In the Twitterverse, explosions of MJ backlash constantly roiled – and still roil - the enormous sea of adoration: "Hopefully there are child rape survivors out there shouting down this worship of Michael Jackson," tweeted ConservativeLA. "Infuriating. Unacceptable!"

Unacceptable as it was, there it was – and still is, a tsunami of MJ awareness.  Gandhi may have had a bigger funeral, JFK more conspiracy theories, and Princess Di more swag, but no one had more of an instant international outcry of very personal yet universal grief – as well as equally passionate outrage over the grief - as Michael Joseph Jackson in the moment of his death.  It was as if his last breath – a final high-pitched “hoo-hoo” - shattered light bulbs in a zillion rooms.  The sheer magnitude of the worldwide response was enough to make me feel eminently justified in my newly acquired MJ addiction.  How could I help but be swept up in such a tremendous tidal wave of feeling?

I must confess that, at the time, I was plagued by a major web development problem (which is still plaguing me – Drupal experts, please help!), and MJ’s untimely death provided what seemed like the perfect means of escape.  Immediately, I stopped focusing on my own problems to stare at the many masks of Michael, the different phases of his face, from little Boy Wonder to Awkward Adolescent to Androgynous Hottie to Peter Pan Man to Diana Ross’ Sister to Whiteface Mime to Creepy Mug Shot to Masked Dad to Dead Head on the Gurney.  I played hit after MJ megahit, on and off RadioSuzy1.  I binged on *pop* salted with tears, stuffing myself with MJ music, moonwalks, celebrity hype, interracial politics, sexual drama, illicit anesthesiology, hints of homicide and toxic cotton candy-textured gossip. 

So now, like a pop cultural bulimic, I am purging by writing this voluminous bloggamy.  Please excuse my verbosity, my darling reader, but the life and death of the King of Pop is giving me the hiccups.  So…how do I really feel about MJ? Like the jewels on his coats of many colors, there are multiple facets to my feelings…

Voice of an Angel: MJ as Castrato

First there is The Voice.  Ironically, Jackson’s death pushed the death of Neda, the Iranian “martyr” whose name literally means “the voice,” out of the news.  MJ’s was not Neda’s voice of protest; it was a voice of amazing grace, high and sweet from childhood until death, a voice that has both seduced and repelled me since Michael first taught me my ABCs. Unlike Prince and the Temptations, MJ wasn’t singing falsetto when he hit those skyscraper notes.  He just had an unusually high voice for a man. His speaking voice - even his laughter - was girlish and sweet was girlish and sweet, without apparent strain.  Of course, most young boys have high counter-tenors, and little Michael’s was one of highest and sweetest of all.  But how did he maintain that treble tone which almost all males lose in puberty? 

My MJ-feverish thoughts raced back through time to the notorious castrati of Renaissance Italy, adult male counter-tenor sopranos who had been castrated before puberty to preserve their high angelic voices. Some of these boy-men were the Michael Jacksons of their day, wildly adored by fans for their beguiling androgynous voices and flamboyantly sexy manners.  I raced to the Internet to find that I was not the only one wondering if Joe Jackson, in addition to notoriously beating his gifted child, also had his son castrated to guarantee Michael’s sweet voice would be preserved and continue ringing in the dough.

Was Motown mogul Berry Gordy in on the deed?  Was a literal lack of balls the “distinguishing characteristic” of MJ’s genitalia to which young Jordy Chandler was referring in 1993 when he claimed to have been up close and personal with the Pop King?  Is that why Jacko thought he could play in bed with the boys - because no penetrative harm could come of it?  

Hmm…interesting, but probably no more real than a “Thriller”zombie.  After all, how could Joe, Berry and Michael pull off such an outrageous stunt all these tabloid-infested years with no one spilling the beans?  Jackson could have been a virtual castrato due to some endocrinological condition.  But that too would have hit the tabloids by now.  MJ’s high speaking voice may even have been a partial put-on, says Court TV's Diane Dimond in her new book, Be Careful Who You Love who wrote that Jackson had “a big, deep voice…if you bring him bad news or if you make him mad, his voice gets very, very deep.” 

Nevertheless, the image of MJ as Castrato moves through our collective imagination.  Many have called him “sexless.”  Michael Kinsley alluded to the Castrato Theory 25 years ago when the young adult MJ had just become “bigger than Sinatra, Elvis, the Beatles, Jesus, Beethoven - all of them” in popularity.  “What's happened to Michael Jackson isn't too different from what they used to do to young male singers in Europe a few centuries ago, to keep their voices sweet,” he wrote in the New Republic back in 1984.

Kinsley wasn’t just referring to MJ’s Mickey Mouse voice here.  He was talking about how Jackson was kept by his handlers – and eventually by himself – in a state of perpetual arrested development “living in a fantasy world…that he thinks is real.”  Conventional wisdom is that Michael “never had a childhood.”  That’s often said of child stars, and that’s how the singer himself described his life.  But perhaps it’s more appropriate to say that, with the help of his immense fortune and formidable talent, MJ managed to make his “childhood” last 50 years.

Whether or not Jackson died with his testicles intact, he exhibited the diva/castrato style throughout his life.  Being a cross between male and female, the castrato can seem to be a kind of god, elevated above mere male or female humans.  But of course, the castrato is also a victim, a tragic child sacrifice on the altar of our entertainment.

MJ as Child Sacrifice

Whatever the condition of the Jackson Family Jewels, Michael was a child sacrifice.  He was “raised on the stage” for our pleasure. As Agamemnon sacrificed his eldest daughter Iphigenia on the altar of ancient Greek military politics, and as Abraham almost sacrificed his son Isaac on the altar of God in Genesis, so Joe the Jackson Family Patriarch sacrificed his fifth son Michael on the altar of American showbiz. 

I’m not joining the chorus of MJ lovers who hate Papa Joe for his drill sergeant style of raising young musicians.  There is no good excuse for using violence against children.  But not all parents had read Dr. Spock in the 60s, and if not for mean old Joe, MJ might have become nothing more than a singer in a Gary, Indiana church choir.  Then again, he might still be alive.

Both Joe and Katherine Jackson were Jehovah’s Witnesses, the type of Christians who are supposed to avoid “sinful” music and dance.  Michael was more like a Jesus freak, the child star who followed his paternally ordained destiny to “Heal the World,” killing himself in the process.  Christ-MJ lived and died for our sins of hypocrisy.  He rose up on the wings of our desire, thrived on the gold, frankincense and myrrh of our accolades, suffered from the thorns of our accusations, bled from the spears of our derision, burned in the fires of our commercialism, and choked on our conflicted fantasies, nailed to the cross of his own success.  He enhanced this image during concerts, often stretching his arms out, Christ-like.

When he died for real, we who grew up on MJ felt a collective pang of longing for our own misbegotten childhoods, coupled with communal guilt over our participation in his sacrifice. That was my first reaction to Jackson’s death: We killed him.  I twittered, “Why such a huge orgasmic outpouring of RIP MJ grief? Partly bc #MichaelJackson was a pop genius. But also bc we feel guilty 4 hounding him.” We gave him the greatest honors, and then we charged him with the worst crimes.  How could the world’s greatest entertainer also be the world’s most well-known accused child molester? How could our God on Earth and the Devil Incarnate be one and the same? 

This stark dichotomy is integral to his mass appeal, an appeal that blossomed into full-fledged worship, iconography, pop sanctification and the gestation of a commercial posthumous enterprise that has just begun.  My own MJ Fever is just a tiny flickering particle of this viral frenzy ricocheting around the world, a communal agony bordering on ecstasy.  The King is dead! Long live the King!

MJ’s ABCs

The fever then took me down a more personal memory lane when the King started out as the Little Prince.  The first Jackson 5 song I ever heard was “I Want You Back,” ironically appropriate for how so many feel about his passing.  But the song that really hit me where I lived was “ABC,” the children’s ditty that’s also a love song.  Here was Michael, just a kid like me, but wiser and ever so much cooler than me, teaching me that complicated adult feelings like love could be simple as child’s play. With the Little Prince’s irresistible timing, megawatt smile and adorable James Brown imitation, how could I resist that lesson?  If I could do my ABC’s and Do-Re-Me’s, I too could master the art of love as little Michael apparently had.  Ha!  Little Michael sold me a bill of goods.  This was the message of pop – love is as simple as carrying a tune – and MJ was the carrier of the message. 

I realize now that I was a little jealous of Michael Jackson.  I wanted to shake my bootie in crazy colorful outfits with a band of brothers behind following my lead, surrounded by crowds of proud grown-ups and adoring fans.  Of course, I wasn’t quite as talented as Michael.  And I was a whole lot lazier.  Plus, my Dad didn’t beat me, and my Mom made me go to school to actually learn the real ABCs.  “They shouldn’t make a child sing and dance for adults like that,” she disparaged.  “He should be in school. “ On the surface, I agreed with my moral mom that it was “bad” to make Michael Jackson perform like a monkey for the pleasure of grown-ups.  But Mom couldn’t stop that powerful little Peter Pan Voice from infiltrating my head and whisking me off to Neverland “1-2-3 Baby, You and Me...”

Body of MJ

It defied gravity.  Light and magical as a marionette, Jackson was skin and bones with soul.  So many original signature moves: the moonwalk, the robot, the mime, the lean, the tiptoe stance, the lightening spins, white socks glittering as he goes.  Michael was born into a dancing family like circus people are born into circus families, and he danced all of them – and all of us – under the table.

MJ danced like a man on fire.  That’s why most fans took it in stride when his hair caught fire during the making of that horrific Pepsi commercial. He never complained about it.  And Pepsi made sure we didn’t know how bad it was; only releasing the video of the freaky accident after his death. Supposedly his addiction to painkillers kicked in after this.  When you see the video of the man’s head ablaze, you can’t blame him for wanting something stronger than a Tylenol.

Then there’s another, more unsettling aspect of MJ’s Body: Modification.  Jackson constantly experimented with music, dance, costuming and performance, usually with awesome results.  He also experimented with plastic surgery.  Even his own face was a stage, a place to try to create something new.  Obviously, in most people’s opinion (including my own), he was more successful with his performance experimentation than he was with his face.  Some of his later facial appearances are downright frightening, like one of the desiccating zombies who surround and possess his younger, more supple self in “Thriller.”  But sometimes his Kabuki-like visage catches the light at just the right angle, such as in “Ghost” or “Scream,” and it is utterly beautiful in an otherworldly, Pierrot-esque, only-MJ way.

MJ as Integrator

Michael brought black and white together, sometimes in the most politically correct, universally admired ways, such as breaking the racial barrier on MTV or bringing all those mega-stars of different races and musical styles together to warble “We Are The World” for African relief. 

Other times, he did it in the most politically incorrect, utterly “weird” ways, such as lightening his chocolate skin to paler and paler shades of beige.  Whether he did this to combat the skin-mottling effects of vitilago or because he wanted to deliberately produce what I call his “whiteface mime effect,” it was unnerving to see a black man turn white over the course of a few years, especially for people who like to think of race as a fixed factor. 

Beyond the bleach, Jackson was an African American icon who married two Caucasian women, the daughter of Elvis and the nurse of his dermatologist.  Obviously, he liked white women. A lot of black men do.  And vice versa.  It’s all part of integration through sex.  Not that MJ necessarilyhad sex with either wife, or anyone else - which wouldn’t make him “sexless,” just not into partner sex, but more on that when we “beat it.”   

MJ mainly integrated through his music. “Black or White,” brown or pink, it always reached out to us and made us want to dance, make love, make peace, or just hug someone a little different from ourselves.  He also appealed to different generations.  An idol to the young, he was not vilified or feared by the middle-aged, because they had known him since he was a child.

If Only MJ Had Seen A Sex Therapist…

Like most of us, Michael Jackson’s sexual life was a rich tapestry of nature and nurture, feelings and experiences.   His greatest, most passionate, tempestuous and erotic love affair wasn’t with any individual woman or man, or any particular young boy or chimpanzee.  It was with the public. In a sense, Jackson’s sexuality was that of a consensual exhibitionist with the public as his bedazzled voyeurs. The exhibitionist-voyeur relationship between MJ and the public was not always overtly sexual, but when it was – as in his signature crotch grab or those humiliating allegations – it really was.

From pubescent sex symbol to accused sex offender, Michael Jackson’s sexuality has long been objectified by the public, ever since he was a little boy teaching the world the ABCs of Love.  Though MJ’s sexual nature was inherently personal, just like every other human being’s, it was inextricably intertwined with his relationship with the public. Ironically, the public – and certainly the media - never could *get* MJ’s sexuality, and still can’t.  So we called him Wacko Jacko, and still do.  And some of us called him a pedophile, the worst label to slap on a human being in modern society.  

So let’s get one thing straight (so to speak) in the land of labels.  There is no evidence – hard or hearsay – that Jackson was a pedophile, meaning that he was turned on by children younger than prepubescent.  There is some evidence that he was a hebephile, an adult who is sexually aroused by pubescent youths (10-14).  He certainly seems to have been psychologically stuck in pubescence himself, a Puer Eternis, as Marie Louise Von Franz put it, an “Eternal Boy” or Peter Pan.  Those fantastic toys and rides in Neverland weren’t built *just* to seduce kids; they were there for Michael himself to enjoy. 

Michael was raised as a sex object, groomed to be an exhibitionist, dressed up and made to dance and sing for the pleasure of adults.  In his off-stage hours, he observed two very different attitudes towards sex.  Performing in strip clubs at age nine, he saw his “strict” father cheating on his mother and his brothers having casual sex with groupies while he hid under the covers, probably scared that these older females would come after him.  Maybe some of them did.  Maybe some of the guys did.  Whatever happened in those seedy venues, eventually little Michael went home to his beloved mother who was strict in a very different way, a devout Jehovah’s Witness, who taught him that “lust in thought or deed” was horribly sinful.  No wonder his adorable head explodes into a monstrous werewolf right after a girl embraces him lovingly in the opening scene of “Thriller.”

I don’t think MJ ever talked to a sex therapist about his feelings. No, Deepak Chopra doesn’t count, though he is an endocrinologist in addition to being a “healer.”   I’m talking about a sex therapist who wasn’t too starstruck to be able to help Michael to sort out his erotic feelings and memories.  Of course, being a sex therapist myself, I’m biased.  Though I would never divulge the identities of my clients, I will reveal that MJ was not one of them.  And it’s too bad, because he might have greatly benefitted from sex therapy; it could even have prevented his untimely death. 

Bi MJ

Young Michael went out with a few high-profile It-Girls like Tatum O’Neal and Brooke Shields, as well as more mature divas like Cher, Liz Taylor and his first “older woman” crush Diana Ross  Of course, he never seemed to be having sex with any of them.  Each female was a kind of Wendy to his Peter Pan; she might have had sexual feelings, but he didn’t, though he loved her anyway.  Did he break his own Peter Pan mold in marriage?  According to his ex-wife Lisa Marie Presley, too wealthy on her own to have been paid off, Michael was a “hot” lover, and they had “normal” hetero sex. 

He’s also rumored to have had “hot” homo sex.  Another unofficial MJ biographer Ian Halperin, author of Unmasked: The Final Years of Michael Jackson, claims to have spoken to two of MJ’s male lovers, including an actor named Lawrence who told the author: "He was very shy. But when he started to have sex, he was insatiable."  With lyrics like “Your butt is mine, gonna take you right” (Bad), the idea of a gay MJ is a natural.

Another unnamed lover supposedly told Halperin, "The very first time he had sex with me he said, “The King of Pop's going to lick your lollipop.”  Lollipops are for kids, of course, but at least these alleged male lovers were all grown-ups.  Though gay love is bad too, according to Jehovah’s Witness doctrine and Mama Kate who fended off would-be outers in 1983, saying, "Michael isn't gay. It's against his religion. It's against God. The Bible speaks against it."

Paraphiliac MJ

The Bible speaks against crossdressing too: "A woman shall not wear man's clothing, nor shall a man put on a woman's clothing; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.” (Deuteronomy 22:5)

Of course, MJ hadn’t been a practicing Jehovah’s Witness for years.  Towards the end of his life, there were rumors that he converted to Islam, like his brother Jermaine, and changed his name to Mikaeel.  In any case, Islam condemns gay sex as well as crossdressing, pointing to the same Biblical passages (another reason that Islam, Christianity and Judaism are really all the same old-time patriarchal religion with slightly different spins).

Whatever his faith, Michael was often seen in dresses and other feminine attire.  He was practically a transvestite or at least, a modern-day dandy.  Not that the original, flower-power and sequin-festooned Jackson 5 costumes were what you’d call “masculine.”  And performers commonly wear some makeup.  But from Thriller on, MJ’s makeup ontop of the plastic surgery and skin-bleaching got more and more extreme.  The running joke was that he was trying to look like Diana Ross.  What was he doing?  Jackson may have had a paraphilia clinically known as “autogynephilia,” sexual arousal at the idea of being a woman. 

His autopsy report declared that he had had at least 13 plastic surgeries, the essential objective of which seems to have been to make his face more feminine.  But not totally.  The general effect of his surgeries was a softer look, but then there are the pointy nose and the cleft in the chin, not conventionally feminine characteristics.  According to Northwestern University Professor J. Michael Bailey, MJ was a “homosexual autohebephile” attempting to look like Disney’s version of Peter Pan. 

Again, a good sex therapist could certainly have helped Michael to deal with these conflicting feelings, especially as they relate to his private and public lives.

Mortification of MJ

No doubt Michael was obsessed with the elusive Disney-fied Neverland of “childhood” where he and the Lost Boys ran the ranch, sending their dimwitted parents off to get facials, body waxes and new cars.  Like Peter Pan, MJ shamelessly proclaimed that he “slept” with pubescent boys in the infamous interview with Martin Bashir, trying to make an incredulous Bashir understand that “the nicest thing you can do for someone is to share your bed” before nonchalantly adding that he actually slept on the floor while the kids slept in the bed. 

Neither Halperin’s book nor any other hard evidence has emerged that Jackson had actual sex with anyone on these odd sleepovers.  There’s a reason that the Santa Barbara court acquitted him in 2005 of all of District Attorney Thomas Sneddon’s pumped-up charges.  Sneddon and his team were hungry to eat MJ alive.  They wanted to “make an example” and put that uppity Man in the Mirror behind bars for a long time.  But the jury, despite MJ’s loopy behavior, couldn’t find any real proof of lawbreaking, and acquitted him fully. 

Jackson’s own statements in the Bashir interview were Sneddon’s most damning “evidence.”    So, why did he brag on national TV that pubescent kids slept in his bed?  Why did he go so far as to say “It’s good.  It’s very loving”?  Why did he allow himself to be filmed in front of that tacky painting of himself as an angel surrounded by doting little boy cupids? Was he crazy? Drugged? Going too far with his exhibitionism? Suffering from sleep deprivation? Or did he somehow think that just as he changed the racist policy of MTV, he could change the dirty minds of a molestation-crazed public?  If so, he was in for a hard smack in the face. 

Michael Jackson may have been fully acquitted, but just being charged and tried for such a mortifying offence punished him severely - mentally, physically and financially – and poisoned his relationship with his one true love, the voyeuristic public.  All in all, it virtually ruined his life, as it does to so many who are similarly accused in our current witch-hunting climate.  Some say that Sneddon’s charges were, on a certain level, what really killed MJ.  Here is where intensive compassionate sex therapy could have helped Jackson a great deal.

Beat It!

Whatever his sexual orientation, paraphilias or fetishes, there is no doubt that MJ was an avid, though covert, proponent of the art and sport of solo sex.  Maybe he wasn’t the greatest sex partner, but he sure knew how to “beat it.”  At least he sang like he did.  One of his top songs and one of my own personal favorites, “Beat It” manages to be both a catchy paean to non-violence and a joyous celebration of masturbation. 

It’s a lot more acceptable as an anti-gang song, of course.  But “Beat It” as the ultimate “beat off” anthem is undeniable.  The video starts with some Lost Boys of the “young, dumb and full of cum” variety, roaming around, strutting their stuff, looking for trouble.  MJ makes his entrance alone in his bed, wearing just a white T shirt before he dons his iconic red leather jacket to penetrate the cold, wet, nasty world and lead the testosterone-pumping Lost Boys into a better, more peaceful and even more potent Neverland.  The rumble is on, but MJ is in fine dancing form, so fine he gets two knife-wielding toughs to stop fighting and dance with him.  Then he makes an extravagant beat-off gesture with his right hand, blending a long fast stroke with his finger-snapping West Side Story style.

It’s kind of corny, but inspiring in a bonobo way that this precocious Child of the 60s who grew up into the Pop King of the 80s turned “Make Love, Not War” into “Don’t Fight, Just Beat It.”

Soon enough, all the chorus boys in both gangs are jacking with Jacko in a giant circle jerk without the circle.  At least, that’s what it looks like to me. I admit, it takes a particularly dirty mind, or a sex therapist’s mindset, to see the “beat off” in “Beat It.”  But in concert footage, Jackson did even more of these masturbatory stroke movements, enhancing them with some lingering crotch grabs as well as sensuously rubbing his chest, and miming the zipping and unzipping of his fly.  The crowd went into an orgiastic frenzy.  I wish I could have been there live; I’d probably have creamed my jeans. It was a great moment in exhibitionist-voyeur history.

A more politically historic moment in exhibitionist-voyeur history occurred when Michael’s little sister Janet bared her heavily pierced nipple during half-time on the Super Bowl, stirring up a storm of outrage and censorship.  Is there a tendency toward exhibitionism running through the Jackson genes? More likely it’s just that many successful performers are driven exhibitionists.  They love the limelight with an erotic, sometimes crazy passion.

Dead MJ

MJ’s untimely death is fraught with as much intrigue as his life, beginning with the Pop King’s own morbid fascination with his impending mortality.  Jackson was obsessed with the idea that he would die young “like Elvis,” according to his ex-wife Lisa Marie who just happens to be that otherKing’s daughter.  According to his sister LaToya, MJ was afraid he might be murdered, saying, “They're gonna kill me for my publishing. They want my catalogues and they're gonna kill me for these."  Did he have some kind of death fetish?  Though he always seemed to be a peaceful, guy, his videos are filled with shootings, killings, ghosts and zombies. 

Or was he done in by his own exhibitionism? Did he perform himself to death?  The accusations of 2005 were a 21st century tar and feathering.  Some say MJ wanted to make it up to his fans and his legacy, to do one last P.T. Barnum-esque spectacle of fantastic proportions: This Is It!  And it was personal.  He wanted to show his own kids that this guy they called Daddy really was Peter Pan. 

Or was he being pushed?  This time, instead of Papa Joe forcing him to “perform or die,” there was a team of money-driven handlers, doctors and enablers.  Was this just business as usual with an aging, debt-plagued pop star?  Or are they guilty of homicide? Manslaughter?  Is kooky sister LaToya right that "Michael was murdered…in a conspiracy to get his money"? 

He looked pretty good doing those high kicks and spins on that rehearsal tape.  I understand how he could be performing like a dynamo one day and dead the next.  The same thing almost happened to me.  One night I was doing a show and within 36 hours, I was in a coma, almost dead from septic shock. The only thing that saved my life was the speed with which my husband called 911 and the paramedics got me to USC’s Emergency Room.   MJ – with all his mega-fame and fortune – somehow didn’t get that kind of care.  The King of Pop didn’t even have a phone in his room.

What he did have was his own personal IV drip, several tanks of oxygen and a stash of the powerful drug propofol. When the Pop King said he was “bad” and “dangerous,” he wasn’t just playing.  Propofol, commonly known by the brand name Diprivan, isn’t kid’s stuff.  It’s a super strong anesthetic, only legally administered for surgery in hospitals.  MJ must have had some harrowing insomnia to demand propofol for regular home use.  Or maybe he suffered from yet another paraphilia: anesthesia fetishism.  Here again, and most critically, a little focused sex therapy might have saved MJ’s life.

The French call orgasm le petit mort, the little death.  But a more literal “little death” is general anesthesia.  Your consciousness is as good as dead on the stuff.  And yes, some individuals, including some of my sex therapy clients, have an erotic craving for the knock-out punch that ultra-strong anesthesia delivers.  Sometimes they want a sexy nurse or doctor to “put them to sleep.”  Other times it doesn’t matter who delivers the goods, as this type of heavyweight drug is so hard to come by outside of a hospital. Some anesthesia fetishists actually feign or induce medical conditions in an attempt to obtain general anesthesia from medical personnel. This could have been one of the hidden reasons for MJ’s numerous plastic surgeries: He craved entering the blissful, blacked-out Neverland of anesthesia.

Whether he was an anesthesia fetishist or just a misguided, stressed out insomniac, just because the spoiled star demanded propofol doesn’t mean he should have received it, not from a responsible doctor anyway.  Most of the medical professionals he begged for the drug refused to get it for him.  Eventually he found a Houston cardiologist named Dr. Conrad Murray who seems to have given him propofol on several occasions, including the day he died. Rumor has it that the $150,000/month cardiologist had fallen asleep while MJ’s pulse was dropping, and by the time he woke up, the world's biggest star was already dead.  Murray is now the subject of a federal manslaughter probe. Many unsavory possibilities are now being savored all over the Internet, as we the MJ Feverish await the police reports, toxicology results, news of even more beautiful children and zombie sightings.

Whatever comes, it all seems like destiny.  Whether his death was a homicide, a trick, an act of astounding criminal negligence or just a simple tragedy, his spirit has taken on the wings of Saint Michael the Archangel of Pop in the hearts of his beloved voyeuristic public.  Finally, like Peter Pan, he can really fly.

Dr. Susan Block is a sex educator, cable TV personality, author of The 10 Commandments of Pleasure and hostess of Dr. Suzy’s Speakeasy. Commit Bloggamy with her at http://www.drsusanblock.com/blog/ Email her at liberties@blockbooks.com

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