Automatic for the people?

So, Michael Jackson’s been acquitted. Looks like he’s going to hold a press conference and then go back to his bizarre lifestyle at Neverland. It seems the jury have been persuaded that Jackson, though obviously a weirdo, is not, on the strength of the evidence so far presented, a child molestor. He’ll make a few more records, play gigs in venues of probably ever-decreasing size to crowds of similarly diminishing sizes, but it’s difficult to imagine that his profile will ever be anything like what it was in the early 1980s.

Then again, what artist doesn’t go through high and low phases – usually, the highs are early in the artist’s career and then following lows. A singer I used to be fond of, Neil Young, notoriously produced a series of dud albums in the 1980s, partly because his time was largely taken up with caring for a seriously disabled son, but no doubt also because he was short of ideas. The same happened to lots of late 60s and early 70s artists. Then he became well-respected again from around 1989 to about 1994. The problem is that Jackson’s reputation ever since the mid 1980s has been dominated by his strange lifestyle, plastic surgery and obsession with children. His 1992 album, Dangerous, was produced by Teddy Riley, producer behind a lot of that awful New Jack Swing music (Keith Sweat, remember him?).

But this also brings to light how difficult it is to get a jury to fairly consider the guilt or innocence of a famous person. This trial could have resulted in a guilty verdict from a jury who were swayed by his lifestyle rather than whether the evidence was strong enough. Another similar case concerned Peter Buck, the guitarist with REM, who was accused of an “air-rage” attack on a British Airways flight a few years ago. Buck managed to produce some A-list rockers (including Michael Stipe of his own band) who testified what a great mellow guy Buck was. REM’s music was praised even by the prosecution! After the case it was remarked on how the case showed that justice is “automatic for the people” but not so for the rich and famous. No doubt some have the same ideas about the latest case.