I Wanna Be Startin Something

Ben, the two of us need look no more
We both found what we were looking for -"Ben"- A Michael Jackson love song to a rat.

I want to briefly weigh in on the death of Michael Jackson. It seems their are two separate and distinct ways in which his death is being interpreted. The first group says the guy was an unbelievable talent, and it is wrong to say anything negative about him now that he is dead. For the hell of it, let's call this group "black people". The second group says that yes, he was an unbelievable talent, but you have to also incorporate how he lived when you look at his life. For lack of a better term, let's call this group, "the white people".

Now, I am a uniter and not a divider. But I do not see how to find common ground between these two views.

But maybe we can find some middle ground between the two groups.

I have thought hard about this. I am going to make a statement. I believe it is a fair statement. A true statement. A statement that I believe both groups can live with. That both groups can agree with.

Here goes my statement:

Michael Jackson is without question the weirdest person to walk the earth during the last 50 years.

Surely, both groups can agree with that statement, no? As far as competition for sheer weirdo-ness goes, Michael Jackson is like Secretariat @ the 1973 Belmont-no one is even close.

I think both groups can agree on Michael being the weirdest ever because weird isn't necessarily bad which would satisfy one group, but it could hint at something negative, which would satisfy the other group.

(By the way, do you know that my pal "Ace" Ventura has not been seen since the death of Jackson? People grieve in different ways, I guess. In fact, the last time Ace was spotted was leaving David Carradine's hotel room in Thailand.) (Thank TG for the Carradine line.)

Back to MJ.

Oh, how I would have loved to represent him in those child molestation cases! First, I would be secure in the knowledge that I could never lose the case. Why is that? It has nothing to do with my legal skills; it has everything to do with MJ's fame.

Think about it: Robert Blake's actual defense was "I could not have killed my wife, when she was murdered, I was on my way back into the restaurant where I had forgotten my gun." OJ could have opened a blood bank with the amount of Ron & Nicole's blood the authorities found on him, and R Kelly was kind enough to provide provided prosecutors with videos of his statutory rapes of children, yet each one walked. (By the way, do you know how he got the name "R"? The average child he statutorily raped was so young they usually only knew 18 letters of the alphabet.)

They each were famous and fame trumps justice. I know you say that Phil Spector was convicted, but the mistake Phil Spector made was that he stopped producing records almost 40 years ago. While Spector's trial was pending, his lawyer should have advised him to produce the next Ringo Starr record, and make sure it was released before the trial.

MJ's fame dwarfed all of the other defendants mentioned above. In fact, he may have been the most famous person in the world. Some say that Muhammad Ali is the most famous person in the world. But that is not true. Ali is the most famous vegetable in the world.

Think about it: if R Kelly was famous enough to be found not guilty when their were videotapes of his crimes, Michael could have molested children at the defense table, during the trial ,in front of the jury and the jury would have MOON-WALKED in from deliberations, each wearing one glove and saying "not guilty your honor."

I would have told the jury that Michael is just weird. And there is no law against being weird. From the time he gets up in the morning and rises out of his hyperbolic chamber, to the time right before he goes to bed and checks on the elephant man's bones, he is a man engaged in ultra weird activity. Off The Wall may be the name of one of MJ's albums (although as a kid I thought it was a song about a game we played in John Jay schoolyard, just as I thought the movie Apollo 13 was a continuation of the Rocky Series.) but OFF The Wall also is an accurate description of Michael: he is off the wall, but again, there is no crime against weird behavior.

I also would have taken a page out of Johnnie Cochrane's play book.

During the OJ trial, the jurors got to examine OJ's house. Before the jury arrived, OJ house was filled with photos of scantily clad white women. Mr. Johnnie, in his quest for the truth, had each photo removed and replaced them with solemn portraits of MLK and Malcolm X- which is what the jury saw when they examined OJ's house.

After the jury left, MLK and Malcolm X were removed, and the white bimbo's were put back up.

Justice is sweet, no?

Back to the question that I started with: Which Group is right? The answer is we will never know. If Jackson is innocent of the child molestation charges, he deserves to be in a better place than here on earth. But if he did prey upon the weakest members of society, then he probably is in a fiery furnace right now, burning in agony, while Vincent Price's laugh is piped in and plays on for all eternity.