> Op-Ed Columnist
> Behind the Facade
> By BOB HERBERT
> Meeting Michael Jackson in the mid-1980s was one of the creepier
> experiences of my life. I was an editor at The Daily News and had to
> present him with an award in a large room with just a handful of
> onlookers and a photographer at Madison Square Garden.

> I wasn’t put off by the fact that Jackson, then in his mid-20s,
> couldn’t make small talk. Lots of people have trouble with that. There
> was something about his overall behavior that weirded me out. He
> seemed, even then, to be a person who was trying with all of his being
> to step outside of reality and leave it behind.

> Emmanuel Lewis, the child star of the hit TV series “Webster,” was
> with Jackson that evening. The undersized Lewis was probably 13 at the
> time, but he looked much younger, maybe 7 or 8.

> Jackson seemed to relate only to Lewis. He made faces at the tiny boy
> and giggled as Lewis hopped around and climbed over furniture, much to
> Jackson’s delight. I remember thinking as I left the Garden that
> Jackson had treated Lewis almost as a pet.

> I’ve never heard any suggestion of anything improper about the
> relationship between Jackson and Lewis. But what I wish I had thought
> more about in those long-ago days of Michael-mania was the era of
> extreme immaturity and grotesque irresponsibility that was already
> well under way in America. The craziness played out on a shockingly
> broad front and Jackson’s life, among many others, would prove to be a
> shining and ultimately tragic example. . . . . . . . . . .

> Motown was the label that gave us the Jackson 5. But when Michael and
> his brothers released their first album in 1969, the label had already
> reached its creative peak and most of the best work — the stunning
> originality of the Miracles, the Marvelettes, Mary Wells, Martha and
> the Vandellas, the Supremes, the Temptations, and others — had been
> done. Hip-hop would soon appear, and then the violence and misogyny of
> gangsta rap.

> All kinds of restraints were coming off. It was almost as if the
> adults had gone into hiding. The deregulation that we were told would
> be great for the economy was being applied to the culture as a whole.
> Women could be treated as sex objects again as misogyny, hardly
> limited to hip-hop, went mainstream. (Have you looked at network
> television lately, or listened to the radio?) Astonishing numbers of
> men abandoned their children with impunity. Most of the nation seemed
> fine with the idea of going to war without a draft and without raising
> taxes.

> In many ways we descended as a society into a fantasyland, trying to
> leave the limits and consequences and obligations of the real world
> behind. Politicians stopped talking about the poor. We built up
> staggering amounts of debt and called it an economic boom. We shipped
> jobs overseas by the millions without ever thinking seriously about
> how to replace them. We let New Orleans drown.

> Jackson was the perfect star for the era, the embodiment of fantasy
> gone wild. He tried to carve himself up into another person, but, of
> course, there was the same Michael Jackson underneath — talented but
> psychologically disabled to the point where he was a danger to himself
> and others.

> Reality is unforgiving. There is no escape. Behind the Jackson facade
> was the horror of child abuse. Court records and reams of well-
> documented media accounts contain a stream of serious allegations of
> child sex abuse and other inappropriate behavior with very young boys.
> Jackson, a multimillionaire megastar, was excused as an eccentric.
> Small children were delivered into his company, to spend the night in
> his bed, often by their parents.

> One case of alleged pedophilia against Jackson, the details of which
> would make your hair stand on end, was settled for a reported $25
> million. He beat another case in court.

> The Michael-mania that has erupted since Jackson’s death — not just an
> appreciation of his music, but a giddy celebration of his life — is
> yet another spasm of the culture opting for fantasy over reality. We
> don’t want to look under the rock that was Jackson’s real life.

> As with so many other things, we don’t want to know.