Will the Tragedy of Michael Jackson's Life Be Inherited By His Kids?

By Patricia J. Williams, The Nation. Posted July 4, 2009.

But in the longer term, the question of Michael Jackson's children is challenging in other ways.  Their conception was accomplished in very much the same spirit as his demand for plastic surgery or painkillers: as a made-to-order, cash-on-the-barrelhead commercial transaction.  Apparently, Jackson is not biologically related to any of the three children;  he is too phobic about touch to have actually had intercourse with either of his two wives.  Nor did he supply the sperm for any of the three.  Even the women who gestated them carried anonymously donated eggs fertilized by anonymously donated sperm.  (Anonymous but for race, apparently -- the children were all crafted to be “white” enough to match Jackson's artfully devised if pathetically alienated image of himself.) Deborah Rowe, the surrogate who carried Jackson's eldest two children to term, describes being inseminated “like a horse”; she then received something on the order of nine million dollars to give up any claim or connection to them.  And on the birth certificate of Jackson's youngest child, the space for “mother” is marked “none.”

It's hard to imagine that Jackson would have been found fit if he had attempted to adopt children.  If not, it is interesting to contemplate the eugenic ends to which in vitro fertilization and surrogate birth are being put these days, often as a kind of end run around the formal inspection of the adoption process.  And how much more common will the purchase of “the perfect child” become when bioengineering for specific physical traits becomes easier and less costly?  It's not a new problem -- “colorism” (or preference for lighter skin as a way of finding social acceptance) is an old problem within the African American community.  And of course, choosing trophy spouses is a cruder version of the same game.  Nevertheless, it does seem troubling that the law of sales is the about only context for debating this rapidly developing area. One wonders if we ought not think harder about the degree to which a free-market for eugenics is enabled by easy-payment contract clauses conferring parenthood through the immaculate conception of biotechnology.

Jackson's fame and fortune ensured that he had few barriers in the pursuit of whatever whimsical fancy seized him. He became a more brilliant and frightening version of the Mad Hatter than even Tim Burton could conjure. And with that power, Jackson arranged for the bringing-to-life of three innocent souls whose racial embodiment pantomimed all that he could never be.  There is something horrifying that in the wake of his demise, his ignorant brutish father will be delivered of three blond, blue-eyed grandchildren, the perfectly rendered apotheosis of Michael's final crossing-over.

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