MOVED

Why does the media demand that we hate Michael Jackson?

>> Tuesday, August 10, 2010 around 4:45 PM

Barbara Walters was shocked, absolutely shocked. There she was, hosting the myopic 20/20 “news magazine” program that consisted of British reporter Martin Bashir’s lengthy interview with Michael Jackson.
To Walters, as well as to the Brit (who, toward the end of the two-hour piece, apparently decided he was the subject of the interview, rather than Michael), it was devastating.
How devastating was it? Quite devastating. For example, a breathless Walters reported the shocking scandal that Michael Jackson said he was “worth” one billion dollars, when the figure is actually somewhere between 200 and 300 million.
Wow. What an outrage. Never mind that Jackson didn’t want to discuss the subject of his personal fortune, and eventually just went along when the reporter kept asking if he might be worth one billion.
Are you ready for more? Well, it turns out that when Jackson’s two older children go out with him in public, he makes them wear masks. It’s another huge scandal. Never mind that it is because Jackson doesn’t wish them to be photographed, for their own protection and that both kids seemed to be having a grand time with their father.
Naw, that’s not important.
In fact, the more Walters and her colleague tried to argue that Michael is a one-man freak show, the more it appeared the brilliant entertainer and song writer was simply being used by the two of them.
If Jackson never again agrees to any kind of interview, it would certainly be understandable after this latest betrayal by people whom, I suspect, are utterly incapable of appreciating his music, his talent or his art.
Among the things rehashed – the dangling baby incident. From the tone of the 20/20 piece, you’d have thought Michael Jackson caused the world to come to an end. It was nothing. It was less than nothing, and yet these whining crybabies can’t stop talking about it.
Oh, but wait, there are even more horror stories. Michael Jackson likes to visit Las Vegas and, ohmygod, spent over one million dollars during a recent shopping spree.
And I guess that puts him in the same company of every other rock star and movie star, though you wouldn’t think so from the disdain of Ms.Walters and her colleague.
And then we got to go (once again) through the whole controversy about Michael’s plastic surgery. How dare Michael not admit to having numerous surgical procedures on his face, Walters wonders.
Jackson insists he’s had very little plastic surgery. Okay, so it doesn’t look that way, but there’s just one thing – who cares?
Interestingly enough, Walters missed a wonderful opportunity – to comment on all the plastic surgery she has had. Nor does it disturb her that journalists like Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw all insist they don’t wear makeup and toupees, when it couldn’t be more apparent that they do – and it appears that they, too have had plastic surgery.
We all know Barbara’s golden rule: one set of standards for people I admire, a totally different set of standards for those I do not.