In retrospect, Michael Jackson never said any truer words than in "Billie Jean." As a kid myself when that song was riding the top of the charts, I didn't really get what he was talking about. But it had a great beat, a great hook and my brothers and I wore out the grooves on Thriller. It was the first big dip into pop music for us, and we fell pretty hard. Billie Jean was not his lover. How would we have felt if we knew who his lover actually was?

Something happened to Jackson then. Something not only changed him, but changed the way he dealt with the world. He was bigger than Jesus (although he never said this) at the time. Everyone did want a piece of him. Not since the Beatles was there the kind of hysteria Michael Jackson inspired.

And he froze. He must have thought it couldn't get any better, so nothing must change. Everything must stay the same and everything will stay exactly like it was in the mid-80s. The rest of us moved on, but Jackson is still back in the past, doing the same tired shit he did back then. Cartoon military outfits, spangly gloves and that now very freaky high voice.

He decided he had to be white, and now he's whiter than me. Except when he wants to play the racist card--which makes sense only in some kind of Twilight Zone conceptual way--then he's black and the music executives are the devil. He uses that voice, even though his ex-wife (Elvis' daughter) has said it's not his real voice. He does it just for show. Because he wants to be a cartoon character?

I shouldn't really care much about this freaky sideshow, except Jackson was a part of my childhood. Thriller is an amazing album. And if I didn't feel creepy about it, I'd probably get it on CD. But I feel creepier about Jackson than any other pop culture icon I liked when I was a kid. I mean, even though it's really not cool at all, I feel LESS creepy about liking Poison in high school than I do about Michael Jackson.

In the local newspaper, we get reports of kids getting raped all the time. Usually it's by relatives or mother's boyfriends or acquaintances. Rarely is it an abduction and rape (like a stranger luring a kid into a car), which is what we were all warned about as kids. The youngest I've seen is two months. Some fucked up twenty-something father thought it was a good idea to try to have sex with his two month old. It doesn't matter if it was his daughter or a son. Two months old. Freaks me out.

Jackson is going to have a hard time getting out of his latest mess. Less than a year ago, he was worldwide telling a journalist he sleeps with children. And then he tried to back out of it by admonishing the journalist for thinking something bad might be going on. They were like sleep-overs, y'know, like we all used to have as kids. Except Jackson is 45 and these kids are not even 14.

Also in the same interview, there was a scene where Jackson was holding his youngest son. His legs were moving up and down, obviously he was working himself up in some way. Now, I've seen parents of kids hold their young children. I, myself, have held those little lumps of goo. I've never seen anyone act like Jackson did when he held his son. He was going into some kind of quiet hysteric with his son in his hands.

That scene still sticks with me because it was so frightening--possibly the most damning evidence against the guy.

And I go back to all the stories I read in the newspaper. Uncles, step-fathers, fathers, step-sons and boyfriends who felt it necessary to get their kicks with children who had nowhere to go. No recourse for the kids, who usually--eventually--tell tales of being threatened with bodily harm (more than had already been done to them) if they told.

I know people are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. Except I feel the evidence is already out there. He's already painted a red letter on his chest with his own words and actions. No matter who protests or comes to his side or supports his theory that 45-year-olds should "sleep-over" with pre-teens, the evidence is rather clear.

Now it's up to us--as a nation and a world--to tell Jackson he's wrong. Because it seems like no one has really taken the time to tell him this. That, no matter how messed up his celebrity childhood might have been, he's not a child anymore. And he's not going to be treated like one.

Matt Worley is disgusted with this "man."