Freaks

There was a time when, not far from Bloody Nib Manor, there was a seaside amusement park called the Pike. It was, I assume, since I've never been to New York, the California version of Coney Island. It was a place where one would go if one had a desire to ride a roller coaster that occasionally sent a car into the Pacific, throw balls at a shy in exchange for a cheap ashtray, get one's fortune told, get a tattoo or see a freak. It was mildly disreputable but not so disreputable as to keep families away on a summer's afternoon in search of a cooling sea breeze and a corndog.

Several times, as a child, your faithful correspondent was taken to the Pike by Earl Nib. And each time yours expressed an interest in seeing the freaks. Now, understand, the freaks at the Pike were pretty mild by freak standards. There were such anomolies as the fat lady, electro-girl, crocodile boy, bearded lady and rubber man, among others. The pater, in his wisdom, would reply that it was not the done thing to stare at those less fortunate than one. The Countess Nib, when receiving entreaties to see the freaks, maintained that only savages engaged in such behavior. Thus, as result, yours truly has never had much of a taste for gazing upon freaks.

Now, instead of good, honest physical freaks, we are inundated with emotional and psychological freaks. On the Oprah Winfrey program we're presented with weak sisters who have suffered savage beatings from boyfriends for "love" when they should have followed the example of Emily Dickinson and become spinster writers of questionable poetry. Jerry Springer has featured such things as incest, trans-sexuality and incestuous trans-sexuality. Maury Povitch has championed the desire of a young woman to follow her aunt's career as a porn star while denigrating the woman's mother's expressions of shock and disdain.

In other words, Lobster Boy, Wolf Boy and Pocket Venus are in Florida collecting unemployment while the freaks with invisible maladies are raking in the long green on television.

Which brings us to Michael Jackson. The fellow seems to have managed to combine the aspects of physical freakishness with psychological freakishness. He appears to be not only a black man trying to become a white woman, but, if his various accusers are to be believed, he has a taste for pederasty.

A jury is now deliberating his guilt or non-guilt in a case involving ten charges ranging from the molestation of a young by to giving booze to said boy.

The whole case is tiresome simply because of the excess of media coverage. Legal analysts spend much too much time trying to second guess the jury or explaining the obvious. One would think that the Michael Jackson case is tantamount with the Cuban Missle Crisis.

The more interesting thing, from the viewpoint of the Manor, is the coverage of the Michael Jackson fans who have gathered in front of the courthouse in support of their champion. These are people who apparently have a skewed sense of values and reality. Instead of getting on with their lives they've decided to protest the innocence of a person who is nothing more than a hired entertainer and who has no more loyalty to them than the next dollar they spend on his product. One can only write off their collective psyches as somewhat bent. They are, in a sense, freaks who support the arch-freak.

The various media, on the other hand, have shown themselves to be less than civilized in their interest in the case and in the fans. They are pointing at, and tittering behind their hands, at the freaks (Jackson and fans) in the "cause" of news dissemination. And why? Well, guilty or not, Jackson is a freak and his fans, by their behaviour, are mini-freaks. People like to stare at freaks. And there is money to be made. So what we have is the media openly doing the thing that was considered "not done" in polite society in previous decades, and making money from it. One could say that those who have a fascination with freaks are freaks themselves. It's just that, as psychologically off-kilter the Jackson courthouse kook is, at least he or she is openly so. The guy or gal with the microphone sneering while reporting on them day after day after day with enthusiasm just hides their fetish better.

It all reminds me of a party that silly cow Anais Nin had back in the sixties. The theme of the party was Come As Your Madness. Jackson's madness is pederasty. His devoted fans madness is Jackson. And the media's madnesses are ratings and "my fame."

You may ask, "Well, Hitz, do you think that Michael Jackson is innocent of the charges leveled against him?" To be short, the guy is, in my opinion, guilty of using more than one boy as a catamite and he should have been brought up long ago. But isn't it interesting that one the priests in the Catholic priest pederasty scandal of recent memory had, as far as we know, many more victims than did Jackson, and yet the press wasn't camping out at his rectory. But a fall from grace isn't as interesting to the media as is a deeper burrowing into the base. Especially when there is big money involved and to be made.