The Internet Monk
A Webjournal edited by Michael Spencer
In The Bedroom
Michael Jackson and the erosion of our moral soul
by Michael Spencer
There is a
famous scene in "The Elephant Man" where John Merrick has been
cornered in a train station washroom, and in a mixture of anger,
self-loathing and despair, shouts in his pathetic voice, "I am
not....an animal. I am...a human....being!!" Any day now, I expect
Michael Jackson to recreate this scene somewhere in the media frenzy
that has engulfed him.
Surely, the man deserves the pity of any person with an ounce of compassion. Michael Jackson and I are almost the same age, so his life journey has paralleled my own. When I hear his name, I cannot think of the ghastly spectacle he has become. I can only think about the Michael Jackson of the Jackson Five and Thriller. Because I remember what he was, and the wonder of the gifts God gave to him, I feel a true and genuine sadness at whatever has eaten away at the human being I once would have easily called the greatest pure talent of his generation.
I do not know when I first heard of Jackson's concern for children. It certainly goes back as far as the "History" album. The construction of his Neverland fantasy world, his friendship with child actors like the Caulkins, his increasing public advocacy of children's issues: none of these things said anything about Jackson that was not true of many other wealthy and self-indulgent entertainers.
Then, of course, came the lawsuit claiming sexual abuse of a child. The revealing of the sordid details of these accusations at once raises alarm, but there are many reasonable people who can imagine that Jackson was falsely accused by a family willing to go to malicious lengths to extort money from him. While I must admit that though I tend to believe these accusations, particularly now that I have read them, I do not mock anyone who says that Jackson could have been trying to buy back his life from a worse pit than the one he was living through.
Now, another piece of the puzzle emerges. Looking into a camera lens, Jackson has said he has slept (really, actually slept) with children; minors between the ages of ten and fifteen. That he has slept in the bed with them and in the room with them. He says this matter of factly, as if there is nothing particularly odd about it and only the overly scrupulous would care.
To say that Jackson is bizarre is an absurdity. He goes a hundred miles beyond the normal meaning of the term. There is good evidence from his denials of plastic surgery, his phony marriages, his surrogate children, his public baby-dangling, his veiling of his children and his autobiographical strip-tease at Oxford, that Jackson lives in a strange reality of his own construction. A world where he is Peter Pan and the Pied Piper. A world where rules do not apply and everyone should like him because he is a friend of children.
It is not a crime to be bizarre. It is not unusual to endow one's life with a sense of importance obvious only to one's self. It is not necessarily evil to make your life into a fantasy, or to invite others into it. But I, and millions of other people, suspect there is more going on here than merely being eccentric or immature. Jackson may be--in my opinion, most probably is--at some point in the descent into pedophilia.
Jackson's admission of sleeping with children places all of these oddities in the highly likely picture of Michael Jackson the pedophile. A man who, for whatever reason, cannot establish intimate relationships with adult women. A man who uses his fame and wealth to construct a world where children feel safe and Jackson can play the non-sexual role of Peter Pan. And a world where, at the end of the day, Jackson can go to the bedroom with children and sleep with them and beside them.
Now, none of my readers are learning much at this point. Most of them agree already. But you are going to surprised at what you read next.
Earlier this week, in a lecture on Matthew 7:1-2, I went looking for an example of a moral issue where everyone would agree a moral judgment was necessary and appropriate. The Michael Jackson interview had aired while my students were home and I knew many had watched it. I thought this would be an excellent illustration. But I was in for a surprise.
When I engaged three of my classes--forty-five high school juniors and seniors--in a discussion of the question "Did Michael Jackson cross the line of normal, moral behavior between adults and children?" each class had between two and six students who vigorously defended Jackson and his actions as acceptable and not inappropriate in any way. I was stunned with the determination of these students to stick to their guns on the principle their generation holds as the absolute of all absolutes: no one can judge another person as immoral. (I would say that in their tenacity they were willing to cut off their noses to spite their faces, but it seemed like a poor choice of words.)
Several things caught my attention as the discussion ranged over the three hours of my classes. They are worth noting.
Among some young people, there is an irrational reverence for celebrities that approaches worship. Several students said that Jackson was a persecuted celebrity who had done nothing wrong. I suggested that Jackson was a persecuted celebrity that had done something wrong. No dice. Being famous somehow makes you an angel, at least in the minds of many students. In a growing spiritual wasteland, the mythology surrounding celebrities has canonized them in the minds of some students. One said the $20 million was given out of concern for the boy's family.
I also was reminded that racial politics is alive and well. One Americanized African young man said he "couldn't diss his man Michael." I asked what disrespect had to do with determining the morality of an adult man going to bed with children? He grinned. Didn't I get it? O.J. was innocent and so was Michael because we all know what's really going on. The man is trying to keep the black man down. Of course. How obvious. (If this were Dick Cheney and not Michael Jackson, I have a suspicion I would not have heard this line.)
Some students from rural or international backgrounds brought slightly different cultural values about the interactions between adults and children into the discussion. While I reluctantly accept the notion that theoretically there might be a cultural factor somewhere that would affect the discussion of 10 year olds sleeping in the same bed with an adult male, there clearly is no such factor in Jackson's case. He is not ignorant or unaware of what our society expects. He is crossing a line that has been carefully drawn in our society and in his own history. A man who has settled a sexual abuse case for 20 million dollars may not be legally guilty, but he may not have children over for a slumber party without scandal.
The largest justification for this strange position was the one you would expect if you know anything about the postmodern paralysis of moral judgment that afflicts this generation. Despite years of hearing about child abductions, pedophiles, kiddie porn and sexual abuse, this vocal minority of students was more afraid of making a judgment that Jackson had crossed the line than they were afraid of approving Jackson's behavior. While I made it very clear I was not accusing Jackson of sexual contact, I was saying it was wrong for an adult male to sleep with minor children who are not his own, and whether he was on the floor or in the bed didn't matter. He was crossing the line. The students were firm on the idea that it was outrageous to impose such a moral judgment on Jackson. Even when the logical implications of the 20 million dollar settlement were factored into his behavior, it made no difference.
What does this mean? Were these kids just getting a kick out of watching my jaw drop? Were they just showing that the shocking has become the normal and it's all a game? I don't think so. I think this is evidence of the erosion of the moral soul of millions of American youth, and the implications are frightening.
My primary fear is how those without the ability to make moral judgments--except on those who dare to make them--will be manipulated by those seeking political power. We are witnessing a significant anti-war movement in America and Europe; one not founded upon moral judgment, but upon the suspension of moral judgment and the refusal to judge Iraq or the terrorists as evil. Yet these same postmoderns are remarkably susceptible to manipulation by media, conspiracy theorists and spinners. It is not at all difficult to see the possibility of terrorism attempted in the cause of stopping those in the world who would end terrorism.
America's progress as a nation has been economic and political, but also moral. The civil rights movement, the significant progress on the issue of abortion, the movement for women's rights, the acceptance of AIDS in Africa as a worthy national cause: this all indicates a moral people willing to make moral progress. What will happen when the soulless become parents and politicians and educators? There are already previews of this in front of anyone who knows where to listen. Knowledge without truth proliferates in many places, and as Ravi Zacharias says, there is no evil so heinous that it does not have a professor somewhere defending it as permissible.
I frequently respond to this kind of reasoning with questions about what they would do with their own children in a similar situation. While this brings momentary clarity to some minds, others say things like, "I would let my child go. Spending the night with a celebrity would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience." Indeed.
Others, still avoiding a moral judgment at the cost of even the safety of their own children, say that if they knew and trusted the individual it would not be a problem. Such thinking is, of course, the fondest hope and dream of a pedophile, who does not want to hide in the shadows, but to be trusted and believed no matter what evidence to the contrary emerges. The moral poverty evident in this discussion says that evil and perverse individuals who prey upon children can be confident of continuing their scourge into the future.
I have no doubt that Michael Jackson would have tearfully embraced those who defended him in my classes. He would probably invite them into his world, and do even more to prove his innocence. My judgment cannot convict him, because I am not God. But I prefer to allow the possibility of being mistaken than to defend, with loudly announced certainty, the rightness of Michael Jackson sleeping with children.
As Bill Bennett once said, I am all for being open-minded, but not for letting my brains fall out.