Somebody slip Washington Post pop music critic Chris Richards a Valium. His latest piece about being able to “hear” Michael Jackson’s music without being able to “listen” to it indicates a level of anxiety that surely requires medication.
Jackson died 10 years ago on Tuesday and Richards, along with some others, are still struggling with how to reconcile their joy for his music with their die-hard belief that Jackson was a child molester, particularly after the HBO Leaving Neverland documentary aired in March.
“When I listen to ‘Billie Jean’ today, my brain spins as violently as my stomach, thinking about how this hero of pop culture spent his most untouchable years hurting other boys my age,” wrote Richards on Monday. “I feel betrayed, complicit, repulsed and ashamed. My kid-self still wants to skate right into the music, but I have to protect him from that beautiful, horrible sound.”
I’ve explained at great length why I don’t believe the two accusers covered in the HBO documentary, even while I concede that Jackson’s relationship with children is something I would never allow with my own if I had any. But here’s another way of thinking about it: If you don’t believe Justice Brett Kavanaugh ever sexually assaulted anyone (and I don’t), there’s no more reason to believe that Jackson did.
The Kavanaugh and Jackson cases bear great similarities. Kavanaugh was accused decades later by a woman who said that he attempted to rape her at a high school house party, which she said nearly felt like imminent death. The Leaving Neverland guys waited decades to make their claims — until Jackson was dead and had no ability to defend himself.
A key difference is that Jackson settled one claim of child sex abuse in the early 1990s and then was vindicated by a separate trial by jury in 2005. True, Kavanaugh was never on trial, but one of his accusers, Christine Blasey Ford, testified under oath in front of the Senate. The sex crimes prosecutor who questioned her said the case would have never held up in court.
But otherwise, you have two famous men in high stakes situations accused of sex crimes with almost no evidence to back up any of the allegations.
Ford had no corroborating witnesses. Even the friend she claimed could help affirm her story said she had no recollection of the house party where the incident supposedly took place, and that was in spite of outside pressure to change her story. Ford’s coming forward just happened to coincide with Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing for one of the most powerful jobs in the country, an event that Ford had dreaded, according to notes by her own psychiatrist.
Jackson’s accusers knew the singer as a friend, at least they had met, which was more than we knew for sure about Ford and Kavanaugh. But otherwise, they had nothing to substantiate their claims. Before the HBO documentary aired, they had been suing Jackson’s estate for millions of dollars, even after one of the accusers, Wade Robinson, had testified as an adult in the 2005 trial that Jackson had never acted inappropriately toward him.
Chris Richards, the Washington Post’s music critic, attempted to justify his passive enjoyment of Jackson’s music in his reflection piece. “Now, when you listen to a Michael Jackson song, you’re measuring that greatness against everything you know,” he wrote. “You probably know more than you wish you did. You don’t want to listen, you just want to hear — in which case, hearing becomes an act of intentional ignorance, a half-conscious refusal that allows you to protect your pleasure from oblivion. That way, you can keep dancing to ‘P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)’ at the wedding reception. You can keep eating your lunch as ‘Rock With You’ permeates the restaurant. Hearing it isn’t hurting anyone.”
Life isn’t this hard if you’re predisposed to believe that people aren’t presumed guilty simply because they face accusations while serving as easy targets.
I mostly use the Spotify smartphone application to listen to music and it showed me in 2018 that of my 100 most-listened to songs of the year, eight were by Michael Jackson. In 2017, it was five songs. In 2016, it was seven songs.
The music is as good today as it was then. And unlike Richards, I’m not afraid to listen to it.
