Probably the most perverse thing about the dying news media is their bottomless capacity to frame what should be an interesting story in a way that’s either boring or so untrue that they must have been so motivated by an intense hatred, or evil, that they would risk their credibility for the sake of telling a brazen lie. The way they talk about Michael Jackson, even nearly 20 years after his death, is some combination of both.
Two things I’ll say from the jump: First, I didn’t love the new Michael biopic. I’ve seen it three times, and it’s harmless and enjoyable enough, but not what a die-hard fan would hope in what is sure to become accepted as a definitive piece of Jackson’s historical record. Second, Jackson’s relationship with children too often ventured into the inappropriate and indefensible, but at the same time, the overwhelming evidence is that he was not guilty of sexually abusing children and was in fact the victim of multiple extortion schemes.
