Michael Jackson’s Pajama Game

The sight of Michael Jackson limping into a Santa Maria court in his pajamas drew sneers that Jackson had turned the trial into an even bigger three-ring circus. If it was a circus, it was because Jackson whether in street clothes or pajamas is big news. His slippage from his pop throne didn't dimish his celebrity aura. In fact, he was far from the faded, down and out hard-luck, pop star that Jackson critics derided him as.

During the 1990s, he bagged several honorary awards, and though critics tagged his last album, Invincible, a commercial flop. It sold 2 million copies and was only a flop by the rarified standard of the ex-king of pop's past successes. Sony Music Entertainment Corporation shelled out millions promoting and marketing his so-called flops. That the mad press scrambled to get the dope on the latest child hit on Jackson proved that he was still hot copy.

He would have been hot copy even if he had hit rock-bottom as a commercially-viable artist. His eccentricities, bizarre behavior, and physical appearance were grist for the insatiable tabloid media mill. The National Enquirer, Star, the Examiner, and the other tabloids have successfully parlayed gossip, innuendo, rumor, half-truths, and outright lies into hugely profitable empires. They have millions of devoted readers. Their market continues to expand. More people read the tabloids than read the major daily newspapers. More Americans get their "news" from gossipy afternoon talk shows than from the three major network evening news programs.

By the 1990s the tabloid's voracious appetite for the gossipy lowdown on stars had grown to Rabelaisian proportions. There is often precious little independent substantiation or official confirmation of any of the accusations of misconduct against bad boy celebrities. The assumption is that if they are accused of misconduct than the accusation, not the proof of the accusation, is in itself news. The tabloids and the cable talk news networks are camped out in front of the Santa Maria courthouse for Jackson in part because the trial and him promise to be sensational news, and in part because they hope that it will be a repeat of the O.J. Simpson trial and they'll reap a bonanza in ratings and publication sales.

But Jackson is no babe in the woods when it comes to the motives of the tabloids and the networks. He knows that the media are obsessed with him, and that he can exploit that obsession for his own ends. He did not become the world's best-known pop entertainer on his prodigious talents alone. He is a master self-promoter as well. He hyped his reported bid to buy the Elephant Man's bones, and the claim that he'd spend time in a hyperbaric chamber. His purchase of the Beatles' songbook, the surgical masks he wore in public, the rumors of romantic trysts with glamour women from Diana Ross to Sheryl Crow, and his marriage to Lisa Marie Presley, were shamelessly hyped. If Jackson didn't have a direct hand in the hype, there is no record that he did anything to discourage it. After his self-coronation as the king of pop, he stipulated in a contract that MTV always refer to him as the king of pop.

His walk and his mannerisms going in and out of court appear orchestrated and designed always with a close eye on the cameras. Jackson especially played to the media with his courtroom dress. It is always distinctive and unusual. The white coat, and pants, he wore the opening day of jury selection conveyed virginal purity and innocence. Many of his hardcore fans took the cue, and mimicked their idol with white attire as a sign that they believed in his purity and innocence.

Jackson's eye is always firmly fixed on the media. When he was rushed to the hospital with the flu during the early stages of jury selection, he had enough strength to drag himself to the window of his sick room and flash a victory sign to the pack of fans and photographers gathered outside the building. He got the media tongues flailing again when he unveiled a ludicrously long list of America's top celebrities and personalities that he planned to call presumably as his character witnesses. The list will be pared down, and some of those on it will almost certainly beg off of it anyway, but Jackson again succeeded in getting the attention of the media.