I don't know what Joe has come to think in the decades since raising his own kids. What he did to them happened decades ago within the context of trying to turn them into stars, and it was terrible. I don't know him, but I suspect he has regrets and shame about it. Has he wished he could go back and do things differently? It's too late for his own kids, and especially for Michael, but what about the idea of redemption? Could it not be a beautiful thing for an old man to have a chance of redeeming himself with the children of the son that seemed to suffer the most by him? Don't many of you have parents who try to make up for the way they treated you by trying to be extra good to your kids now?

That's all I wanted to contribute here.

>" michael thought she [his mother] was saintly."

Of course.

Hitler's male caregiver beat the hell out of him daily. When the latter died, Adolf wept profusely. When his own mother died, however, he barely noticed.

Why?

And where did his childhood anger go, the fury that couldn't be directed at his male abuser ...whom religion commanded him to "honor" and "love" and "obey"? It was redirected against those who reminded Adolf of his own helplessness: Jews, Poles, Russian POWs, the mentally challenged, etc.

Millions of Adolf's generation were raised to love parents who literally tried to "beat the hell" out of them. It's not the sole explanation of the Holocaust, but gives some insight as to why German soldiers could endure so much deprivation and still fight. And why millions of Good Germans followed a leader who was so like their own fathers...and why they showed so little empathy for the victims.

They were familiar with suffering and pain and felt love for those who inflicted it because the country at-large reminded them of their early home lives.

Alice Miller has written extensively on this. There's also some new movie out now about German kids abused after WWI and how it affected them as WWII approached.

It seems true that pain, unless processed, gets passed on. And pain doesn't get processed by being denied. And rarely is it processed/felt alone. Support is needed to convince the wounded child that the pain, if felt, won't be overwhelming or deadly. Absent that help, those who had too little or no help often become abusive in turn, sometimes killers. Manson et alia were abused worse than dogs, no one caring. He gave back what he got. Kids who aren't comforted enough in orphanages become sociopaths, too, unable to give the love and empathy they never got.

Joe Jackson should be in jail for killing his son's soul. He's a bully who shouldn't be around children or get a dime from Michael's estate.

To see how "promoter parents" can harm their "star" children, watch "Fear Strikes Out." It tells the story of baseball star Jimmy Piersall's breakdown. While paternal hyper-coaching might not be the sole source of Piersall's condition, it most likely didn't help him.

>" I don't think that Michael Jackson decided he needed to buy the Elephant Man's bones and a bucketload of plastic surgery because his dad hit him with a belt in 1965...."

That depends on how much abuse occurred, when it happened, how long and often it was inflicted, what the nature of it was, and if any adults were around to protect Michael. Being constantly whipped by someone who supposedly loves you does a lot of damage to adults. It's a soul-killer for kids.

Read some Alice Miller on this.

Adults who "just" spank children don't like it when their adult bosses smack them around the office for perceived faux pas. How much more angering and despair-creating such abuse it when parents inflict it on vulnerable children with no option to fight back, who are supposed to LOVE the person who harms them. Many abused males who had no "enlightened witness" to their travails end up hitting adult women "for their own good," too. After all, the women aren't children and no Commandment exhorts THEM to "honor thy abusive mate"... so they must not suffer, right?

The Elephant Man was human. He was treated like a famous geek, his head covered from the public. Michael probably identified with that.

I wonder if his father beat Michael while using pejorative putdowns about race. You know, "You lazy N-word! Get back up and dance. I don't care if you're 10. More-more-more!" That might explain Michael's fascination with "whiteness."

Finally, a lot of men who give Joe (a self-admitted child abuser) a pass are "sure" Michael was a child molester. I don't buy it. I think Michael was trying to give kids the childhood he never had. That included being held, not beaten with "just" a belt. Like grieving, we don't "move on" until we process what we're supposed to. And just like advice to "get over it" usually comes from people who won't cry (and so fear emotions displayed by others), people who weren't allowed to be kids hate seeing others act child-like.

Nervous people don't relax when you command them to. They relax when they feel relaxed. Similarly, children move naturally into adulthood unless forced to hurry the process.

"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me."

The kicker is you don't "become a man" be will power. You have to naturally evolve. Otherwise you look like an adult while acting like a child.

That's complicated by the shaming that goes on around "growing up." After all, there is a healthy "child" inside every healthy adult:

"Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."

Or as someone once said, "Deep meaning often lies in childish plays."

On the other hand, much of manhood is forcing boys, around age 5, to stuff feelings. Females certainly do a lot of the shaming, from saying "Big boys don't cry" to giving lewinskis to footballers who "play when hurt." Is it any wonder, then, that men grow up emotionally stunted? They didn't exit the womb wounded. They were "carefully taught" to disregard emotions in themselves. Why expect them to have much empathy for others, then, having too little themselves? Females are allowed to cry about almost anything without risking their femininity or sexual allure. Men have to constantly prove themselves, often by acting robotic.

Of course, women aren't allowed to show "male" feelings like anger or aggression. But we all know that, having heard about it for the past 40-50 years. Where is the comparable attention paid to male emotional issues? Look how many times in Broadsheet comments men are called "whiners" or "flaccid" or "wusses" and so on if they disagree with PC feminist views? It's a certainly male genitals will be mocked, laughed at, or gleefully mentioned as worthy of abuse in a way that vaginas rarely are. No one says Michael's mother should be raped, or mocks her for having "dry gulch."

Again, the same people who demand women be treated equally insist that men be deemed second-class, inferior beings who deserve abuse.

Like "Sundays and Cybele" we also come down harder on men accused of misconduct with kids while winking at females doing the same ("Murmur of the Heart" and "Tadpole" and "Summer of 42" and on and on).

Sexism is cool, it seems, provided only males get harmed.