Jackson trial: Send in the clowns
At iPodLounge.com, a website by and for fans of the wildly popular Apple digital audio player, users can discuss, among a myriad of topics, the latest must-have accessories, compatibility and installation problems -- and whether they will keep Michael Jackson's music on their iPods.
Ladies and gentlemen, the circus is in town.
For the next six months or so, that town will be a courtroom in Santa Maria, Calif., where jury selection began yesterday in the child molestation case against Michael Jackson. Already, the entertainer has made what seems an appeal to potential jurors, releasing a videotaped statement proclaiming his faith in the justice system. "I deserve a fair trial like every other American citizen," Jackson said, as he also denounced leaks of grand jury testimony.
"In the last few weeks, a large amount of ugly, malicious information has been released into the media about me," Jackson said. "The information is disgusting and false." Jackson maintains he will be "acquitted and vindicated when the truth is told."
In terms of rabid public interest and media attention, this will likely be the mother of all celebrity trials, dwarfing even O.J. Simpson's double murder trial.
Most forget that by the time his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman were butchered in the courtyard of her Brentwood home, Simpson had been relegated to occasional movie appearances that mostly riffed on his perceived nice-guy persona. His indictment on murder charges and subsequent trial and acquittal gave him the kind of worldwide celebrity he hadn't achieved even at the peak of his Hall of Fame football career.
In Jackson's case, the international spotlight that first captured him as an 11-year-old performing "I Want You Back" with his brothers on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1969 has rarely wavered. For more than 30 years, he has been one of the most famous people in the world, and no celebrity in recent memory has been so celebrated, so condemned, so revered, and, frankly, so weird for such an extended period of time. Many of us grew up with Jackson's music, and precious few people can't name at least one of his songs.
And now he's on trial fighting not just for his career and reputation, but for his life and freedom as he faces lurid charges of molesting a now-15-year-old boy who spent time at Jackson's sprawling Neverland Ranch.
As is often the case with high-profile trials, its progress and outcome will inevitably say as much about the rest of us as it will about Jackson's guilt or innocence. For better or worse, celebrity is always a kind of skewed cultural prism through which we can catch a view of ourselves and the society around us.
That certainly happened with Simpson's trial. After spending most of his public life deracinating himself, Simpson suddenly emerged as this peculiar symbol of American Negritude. By the time a jury pronounced him not guilty, this was far more than a case about the murders of two people. Ultimately, it was an unsettling referendum on just how prominent and volatile this nation's racial fault lines remained. Nearly 10 years after that trial ended, the mention of Simpson's name can still ignite verbal fisticuffs.
Jackson's father, Joe, on a recent segment of CBS's "48 Hours," blamed racism, in part, for his son's current predicament. Still, one can probably assume race won't be a factor during Jackson's trial. Then again, it's hard to predict with these things -- who would have forecasted that the murder trial of a Modesto, Calif., fertilizer salesman, Scott Peterson, would have been covered as if it were the Nuremberg trials?
For the next half-year, and possibly beyond, we will be inundated with opinions, punditry, and prognostications offering more heat than light. (So far, no Gloria Allred sightings, but her slightly-less-irksome daughter, lawyer Lisa Bloom, is already making the rounds.)
Lost in all this will be such mundane issues as whether Jackson, because of his money and fame, has been maliciously targeted, or if he's a monster who took sexual advantage of a child who trusted him. Tossing out logic, the media and the public will behave as if we all have some great personal stake in the verdict. Any serious discussions will be shelved in favor of late-night jokes about Jackson's strangeness, and a bloodlust atmosphere reminiscent of gladiator battles in ancient Rome.
In our national preoccupation with the famous and infamous, it's the season's main event. Let the madness begin.
Renee Graham's Life in the Pop Lane column appears on Tuesdays . She can be reached at graham@globe.com.
