Is Michael Jackson’s Legacy Ruined Forever?

After HBO’s devastating documentary “Leaving Neverland” exposed the late Michael Jackson as a serial pedophile, what should we make of his legacy?  Might everything associated with him now become toxic?  Or, will the Jackson epochal circus roll on and continue bringing in the cash?

Michael Jackson was bad.

Any lingering shreds of confidence in the icon’s self-proclaimed innocence were obliterated by a devastating four-hour documentary, “Leaving Neverland,” which aired on HBO.  It was the equivalent of smashing a crystal vase with a sledgehammer.

For the first time ever, two of Michael Jackson’s child-victims were interviewed on camera.  They appeared not only to be thoroughly credible.  They also produced physical evidence of what happened to them at the ages of 10 and 7, respectively.  Their recounts of sexual abuse were corroborated by an unmistakable timeline of events.  Moreover, the repeated acts weren’t just an aberration or a drunken fling.  The abuse was ongoing.  It was deliberate.  It was planned.  It was explicit.  It was nauseating.

The two victims, now young men in their early 30’s, bravely described countless sex acts with the late entertainer in excruciatingly graphic detail.  I couldn’t help but admire them for speaking out and for their willingness to share such painful memories in front of millions of viewers certain to watch the show.  Their testimony should be a final calamitous blow to Michael Jackson and everything associated with his legacy.  Deservedly so.

Or, will it?

Michael Jackson reportedly earns more dead than alive.  The deceased entertainer’s boundless business empire remains insanely lucrative, having acquired the rights to a vast catalog of music and the beneficiary of innumerable licensing agreements worldwide which continue to rake in bundles of cash for the use of Michael Jackson’s iconic image, his songs, and his creative endowment.  Here in Las Vegas, there’s even an entire Cirque du Soleil show devoted to Michael Jackson.

There was Elvis.  Then, The Beatles.  Then, Michael Jackson.

So, what happens now?

How are we to react both individually and collectively speaking when one of Michael Jackson’s songs gets played somewhere out in public?  What’s the appropriate reaction to seeing a Michael Jackson impersonator perform onstage?  Does any major company now want to be associated with a serial pedophile who performed hundreds of sex acts with elementary school boys in the closed confines of Neverland, which now appears to have been devoted entirely to intoxicating children into a vulnerable state?  The giraffes, the merry-go-round, the chimp — they were used selfishly by Michael Jackson to lure boys into the bedroom.  Neverland is like the Playboy Mansion, only for a pedophile.

The entire place should be bulldozed.

Indeed, Michael Jackson deserves to be pegged someplace in-between Harvey Weinstein and John Wayne Gacy.  Say what you will about Weinstein’s petty perversions, who pursued his greedy fantasies with mostly younger women of adult age.  And say something else about Gacy, who was gay and murdered lots of young men, also of adult age.  Jackson not only had a sick thing for little boys, he selfishly pursued his perversions, manipulated his victims, and shamelessly used is power and privilege to bed kiddies.

Anyone with any association to Michael Jackson should be in hyper-crisis mode right now.

How the mega-MGM corporation, which owns Mandalay Bay can continue to rake in profits from a show which essentially pays homage to Michael Jackson is baffling.  It will be quite interesting to see what action, if any, the entertainment conglomerate takes after revelations have now been corroborated that the gloved weirdo with his image plastered across 30 floors of a hotel skyscraper probably deserved to be locked up behind bars for life for his crimes, if he was still alive.

I don’t want to hear any of Michael Jackson’s music, anymore.  At least not now.  I don’t want to see his face or his silhouette.  I won’t buy any products which use his music or his image.  I don’t care how fucking talented he was, or how much money he makes for unscrupulous morally-indifferent investors.  Michael Jackson and his legacy deserve to be shunned and treated as poison.

Then and now, given the gravity of his influence upon generations of adoring worshippers, it may be impossible to totally ignore Michael Jackson as a musician, performer, and monumental titan of influence.  But we must try.

We can’t put Michael Jackson on trial and lock him up for his terrible crimes against children because he’s dead.  However, one thing we can do is treat him as persona non grata.  A castaway.

Justice demands it.

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