Posted by Timne on July 8, 2009, at 11:02:11
In reply to Never Will Say Good-Bye, Michael, posted by Fivefires on July 8, 2009, at 1:49:27
I'll admit, my admiration of Micheal grew after his death. I admired his dance already, though it took me several years to see it through the filter of pop music and pop culture. His singing -- not so much once he grew up. As a kid, he had an amazingly mature voice.
Until he grew up and started singing along with Nicole Richie's dad that "we are the children."
Analysis of his lost childhood is widely available, and pretty well accepted in texts and mass media as biographical explanation for his quixotic style. His soft voice and kind outward expression can be seen as largely a product of his milieu. He was number one a performer. What lurks beneath -- that's the wonder of art -- we get to appreciate the expression as pure not matter how flawed the producer might be.
But sleeping with children, as he readily and repeatedly admitted to doing? What if, in fact, he never did anything other than what he claimed? Read them a story, tucked them in and basically played babysitter, albeit billionaire superstar babysitter.
No harm done, right?
No matter how pure the motives an adult male -- or female -- baby sitter I might hire, I don't want them under the covers with my child past the age of two or three. Once my child develops language skills, I need them to learn -- and I need other trusted adults to teach them -- how to use language skills to meet intimate needs. Did Michael explain to these kids "tonight I'm like your daddy, but you can't just jump into bed with any superstar your mommy hands you over to, because not all of them are as kind as myself?"
There's the problem. If Michael could be trusted under the covers with pre-teen, post-toddler children, his behavior implied to his young charges that adults could be trusted in such a situation. He encouraged those kids to lower their boundaries to levels that may not be safe for children when the lessons they need going into their teen years was probably more about raising and defending boundaries.
Did those kids parents teach them the difference in a super-kind man like michael and a super-kind-talking man who would use exactly the same approach to get them in bed for some other purpose?
If that's all there was to Michael's bedtime with young boys, whose needs was he meeting? His own need to have contact with childhood such as he never got to enjoy, or his guests need to have a childhood where they learned to live with boundaries that could assure their safety in most situation.$0.02
poster:Timne
thread:905580
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20090624/msgs/905601.html