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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Judging Jacko by company he keeps

Dan Thanh Dang Baltimore Sun

For those of us looking from the outside in, it’s easy to point a finger at the King of Pop, smugly shake our head at the circle of people orbiting Planet Michael and hiss: What a circus freak show!

After first building his fame on remarkable talent, Michael Jackson has since expanded it on nearly nonstop weirdness, providing the world with reams of tabloid fodder over the years, from his pet chimp Bubbles to his walk down the aisle with Elvis Presley’s daughter, Lisa Marie.

Macaulay Culkin’s testimony in Jackson’s child-molestation trial late last week hammered that thought home again, offering images of Jackson and his posse of troubled souls romping around Neverland Ranch, wandering through toy stores on after-hours shopping sprees and collapsing in gleeful exhaustion in the video arcade room.

Culkin reminds us yet again of the peculiar company Jackson has kept over the years.

“Michael Jackson often talks about the kidnapping of his childhood, his slavery to celebrity,” said Los Angeles media psychologist Stuart Fischoff. “His fame brought him a lot of scar tissue. Maybe that’s why he seeks out these former childhood stars. Perhaps that’s why he surrounds himself with people who can relate.

“It’s not that you have to be as wounded as Michael Jackson to hang out with Michael Jackson, you just have to accept him for what he is.”

Two witnesses seen so far, including Culkin, fit those descriptions well.

Jackson forged a bond with Culkin, who shot to stardom after his blockbuster movie “Home Alone,” and who at age 10 made more money than all the adults in his life combined.

Jackson sensed a kindred spirit in Culkin, whose acting fortune became the center of a bitter custody battle between his parents.

Later in life, Culkin battled drug problems, married at 18, divorced his wife soon after and also divorced his parents.

Debbie Rowe, Jackson’s second wife, represents the other type of personality in his life. They met at his plastic surgeon’s office. Besides her claim to fame as the mother of his two children, Rowe is probably best remembered for having never lived at Neverland.

It’s too soon to know who else will be tapped to bolster the defense argument that Jackson was merely a desperately lonely, remarkably giving, misunderstood man-child who was preyed upon by greedy vultures.

Whether any of them will shed any light on what is real is a mystery.

Perhaps next on the stand will be Elizabeth Taylor, she of the eight marriages and numerous rehab stays. Taylor married her seventh husband, whom she met in rehab, at Neverland.

Then there’s pint-sized actor Emmanuel Lewis, who will always be known as “Webster” from his hit TV show. At the height of his fame, Lewis’ adult co-stars blamed him for upstaging them.

Or Corey Feldman, who was one-half of the dynamic Corey duo (the other being Corey Haim) starring in movies like “The Lost Boys.” Feldman used to dress like Jackson, although the two are no longer close, according to recent news reports.

“It is far more likely that Michael Jackson’s instinct to reach out to Macaulay and others was to let them know that, ‘Hey, you are not alone,’ ” said Paul Petersen, a former child actor who played son Jeff on “The Donna Reed Show.”

“There is among the young and famous, a kind of insulation,” said Petersen, who now runs an advocacy group for former child actors called A Minor Consideration. “Do people like you for your fame or for you as a person? Can you complain to anyone about your life? Who do you talk to about typical teen angst? Who do you turn to? Who else can understand what the possible loss of a superstar career feels like?”

To those of us who don’t live in that celebrity world, said psychologist Fischoff, these are all bizarre people.

But before casting judgment, Fischoff suggests that we should all look to our own circle of friends. Who doesn’t know someone who has experienced divorce or drugs or bad marriages or bad parents?

Think of Jackson and his pals as us – to the extreme.

“To fit into a contemporary Hollywood circle, you can’t live the normal life,” Fischoff said. “There’s got to be something eccentric, edgy or deviant about you. It’s really a world of mutual exploitation. People aren’t judged on how you live your lives, but what you can do for me. That covers a multiple of sins. That’s not considered normal to the rest of the world. But it’s normal in their circles.”

While that may not make Planet Jackson more palatable, maybe it’s a bit more understandable.

Still, as his child-molestation case drags on, we’ll be left to ponder a bigger question: Whether the people in Jackson’s life illustrate the eccentricities of an innocent or the exploitation of innocents?