Interesting OP ED in the NY Times:

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.