There goes Kevin Spacey's career (Sexual misconduct)

[Rev. Rye]

The idea that MJ just wanted to live like a child because he missed his own childhood doesn't add up to me. What males here slept in the same bed with their male friends as kids? What young boys hold hands with other boys like Michael did? I think he was probably a hebephile rather than pedophile. I don't know if he did anything or not. All I know is the man could sing and dance, and that's all that matters when it comes to me enjoying the art.

The crucial thing to understand is that factors (from his poor childhood to his heavy isolation, which only became worse in his later years) combined to make sure Michael Jackson did not have much in the way of social skills into adulthood; it appears he created a strange idea of what childhood should be like that didn't necessarily reflect anything that happened in reality. Following the saga of Chris-Chan, and how CWC seems to have created a very strange view of how the world works that's matched in its preposterousness only by Chris's headstrong insistence that it's 100% correct and if reality doesn't fit with those assumptions, it's on the world to change it, not Chris, it would appear Michael Jackson's mind worked in much the same way.

That last sentence, however, certainly rings true: an artist's work should be judged not on the artist's character, but by the work's own merits. By all accounts, Adam Sandler is a nice guy, really courteous, and apparently, the animation director of Eight Crazy Nights was really so enamored of the way Adam Sandler interacted with him and the crew that it took a long time before he figured  out it was a piece of shit. That doesn't make the majority of his work any less shit.

Meanwhile, if you really believe a work of art loses its appeal once it turns out one of the leading lights behind it is horrible human being, well, if you own a copy of The Wizard of Oz, destroy it, and if you don't, never watch it again. And in any case, thank your lucky stars Shirley Temple had the sense to laugh at Arthur Freed's mighty sword.

“First we get rid of the baby fat,” said the little man seated behind the wide desk. “Then new hair. Teach you to belt a song, and some decent dancing.” . . .

Best known as producer of the blockbusting The Wizard of Oz, Freed was rumored in some adult circles to have an adventuresome casting couch. At the time I knew none of this, not would I have recognized such furniture even when sitting on one. To visit an executive of such stature was enough to send my spirits soaring.

“I have something made for just you,” he continued, fumbling in his lap. “You’ll be my new star!” That phrase had last been used when I was three years old in Kid in Hollywood. Obviously, Freed did not believe in preliminaries. With his face gaped in a smile, he stood up abruptly and executed a bizarre flourish of clothing. Having thought of him as a producer rather than an exhibitor, I sat bolt upright . . . Not twelve years old, I still had little appreciation for masculine versatility and so dramatic was the leap between schoolgirl speculation and Freed’s bedazzling exposure that I reacted with nervous laughter. Disdain or terror he might have expected, but not the insult of humor.

“Get out!” he shouted, unmindful of his disarray, imperiously pointing to the closed door. “Go on, get out!”