ECCENTRICITY ON TRIAL: I’ve been a bit lonely these days, and I’m afraid it’s mostly Michael Jackson’s fault. As friends gather at dinner parties or talk after a show, people inevitably ask me what’s been on my mind. When I answer Thomas Mesereau’s cross-examination, a hollow laugh usually awaits, or worse, a look of polite confusion.
My friends seem to act as if talking about the case in earnest is the uncultured equivalent of accidentally leaving your Paris Hilton video out on the coffee table. If I do coax them into a conversation on the subject, it quickly devolves into ironic posturing and baseless assurance that Jackson must be guilty. I sense their reactions are just a cover-up for knowing very little about the facts of the case, and putting on the pose to know even less than that. Then again, reading 1900 pages of grand jury testimony isn’t always a sure fire way to impress your friends and make new ones.
But in truth Michael Jackson’s fate does weigh heavily for me, and, I’m certain, it weighs heavily for America as well. Having just been involved as a witness in criminal proceedings, I’m well aware how arbitrary the application of justice can sometimes seem. In a celebrity case like Jackson’s particularly when the accusations are so salacious, the half-life of someone’s innocence can be rapidly shortened. Recently in the
New York Post, two days into the trial, Andrea Peyser declares, “He is a full grown freak. And he must pay.” And that really goes to the heart of it for me. Michael Jackson’s odd life is under cross-examination. Eccentricity is on trial in America.
Even those who are fully prepared to believe every last charge against Jackson must admit, upon inspection, that the prosecution’s case is nowhere near hermetic. At its core is a family known to fabricate charges to win lawsuits, two siblings who have admitted to lying under oath, and an accuser who went to two lawyers and the psychologist used in the 1993 case before going to the police. On top of this is the bizarre timeline alleged by the District Attorney that Jackson only started molesting the accuser
after the Bashir documentary came out, and Team Jackson was in damage control responding to the attention cast on his questionable relationship with children.
Yet in the media, it’s difficult to find anyone who pegs Jackson’s prospects at anything less than dire. Most of the legal analysts are not being irresponsible in these assertions, they are simple providing a look into how the jury might be receiving the proceeding of the court room, and my guess is that their grim predictions are likely true.
The jury’s inclination to convict, of course, tells us little about the guilt of Michael Jackson, and much about a paradigm shift in justice that has occurred in the wake of common sense conservatism. As a fan of talk radio and the blogosphere, I listened as Dean’s scream purportedly provided a complete psychological profile of a moderate governor. I watched as Arnold was dismissed as an unserious joke. And now I fulminate as across the media, new and old, Michael Jackson’s presumed innocence is not only quashed but has almost become taboo to mention with any earnestness.
In Malcolm Gladwell’s new book
Blink, he cautions us to pay more attention to what our split-second decision making instinct tells us. However, he may need to do less cheerleading for that cause than he expects. Already, Michael Jackson has been convicted in the minds of so many. He’s weird. He went from looking like a black man to passing for a white woman. He tucks in children that aren’t his own with a bedtime story and milk and cookies, and dangles the ones that are his own over balconies. But the question of whether he molested a young boy is not answered by these circumstances. These scenarios certainly don’t help Jackson, but so far, the most pernicious force this trial has elicited has been the wave of smug assurance of Jackson’s guilt before it’s been proved in a court of law. Not to tarnish an old saying, but, first they came for the freaks, then…well, you figure it out.