Word: jacksonism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...seemed as though he didn't want to be Michael Jackson. His disastrous compact with California plastic surgeons altered his face nearly beyond recognition. His cocoa skin was gradually blanched into a geisha's pancake white - the result, doctors said, of the pigment-depleting disease vitiligo. Except when camouflaged by makeup in videos - he even wore it to bed, said ex-wife Lisa Marie - or cavorting as a speck onstage in giant arenas, he retreated to his palatial Neverland estate near Santa Barbara, Calif., and became the world's most reclusive exhibitionist...
...Michael Jackson songs...
...pictures of Michael Jackson's live performances on LIFE.com...
...Jackson had hoped to star in a Steven Spielberg film of the James M. Barrie play Peter Pan, about the boy from Neverland who refuses to grow up. The story's reflection of his own needs, dreams and scars was poignant. In a tearful (and top-rated) interview with Oprah Winfrey, he confessed that his father had beat him and called him ugly (this beautiful child!). Who wouldn't want a makeover of that scarred youth? Once he had the money and power, the perpetually preadolescent Jackson moved into a fantasy version of childhood, in the company of young boys...
...those boys brought a child-molestation suit against Jackson, which consumed the tabloids, subjected him to a penis examination and ended only when he settled with the boy's family for a reported $20 million. In 2003, Jackson was charged with child molestation in criminal court. At his trial in 2005, he proclaimed his innocence, once showing up in court in his pajamas. The jury agreed with him. He was never convicted of anything, except terminal weirdness, by a public for whom Jackson was less famous than notorious...