Micaiah ben Malachi and I recently read the book, The Michael Jackson Tapes: A Tragic Icon Reveals His Soul and Intimate Conversation by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. Because the book was not due to be recorded in audio format for the blind and physically handicapped anytime soon, Micaiah offered to read it to me since I'm blind. The reading public is led to believe that this book would be a tell-all book about the private life of Michael Jackson. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach's interview was about Michael Jackson growing up as a child star and his music career.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach presented himself to Michael Jackson as a good friend. Shmuley approached Michael to be an ambassador for the rights of children. However, he, eventually, talked Michael into financially endorsing his family initiative projects. In his capacity as a Rabbi and family therapist, Shmuley used his counseling skills to manipulate Michael into answering questions with answers that Michael may not have thought about their long-range implications on his personal and public life.
For example, he asked Michael about his relationship with his father, Joe Jackson. Michael spoke about the times when he and his sister, Janet, would play games, imagining their father being dead in a coffin and not feeling guilty about it. When asked about what it was like to be a child star, Michael spoke about his feelings of loneliness and isolation because he couldn't play with the other neighborhood children. When asked about the reason for his love for children and his closeness to them, Michael explained that his experiences as a child are what made him feel the need to reach out to children because he didn't want them to suffer the way he did. Michael didn't realize that, on the surface, the questions about his childhood were not what they seemed. In fact, they allowed Shmuley to convince Michael that he genuinely cared about Michael Jackson, the man. In 1993 and in 2003, Michael Jackson was accused of child molestation. Shmuley convinced Michael that, in order to clear his name, Michael should, with Shmuley's assistance, go around the world, giving speeches that endorse family values. However, Shmuley went on to tell the reading public that he didn't allow his own children to be alone with Michael. Thus, reinforcing the public's belief that Michael actually was a pedophile.
Another example was when Shmuley addressed Michael's sexual orientation. Michael spoke about his female dates and his marriages to Lisa Marie Pressley and Debby Rowe. He explained that the painful divorces were because the women didn't like his lifestyle. They felt that he should be at home all the time instead of out on tours. On the surface, Shmuley supported the argument that Michael was not gay by telling the reader that he didn't see Michael display anything that indicated that he was gay. But, he did say that he also couldn't refute that he might be gay because of Michael's closeness mainly to little boys, thereby, leading the reader to believe Michael was not only gay, but also a gay pedophile who was attracted to boys.
In the section entitled, "The fall Of An Icon", Shmuley told the reader that Michael Jackson's fall was due to his belief that he was the Messiah who came to the earth to save the world from itself. However, Michael said that he never saw himself as the Messiah or Savior. Rather, he saw himself as an individual with a duty to help his fellow mankind. Through his music, Michael attempted to teach others to see and know that they had an important place in this world, and that to neglect it would be a disservice to themselves and mankind. If anything, Michael Jackson was a Universalist. He sought to express the belief that we are all one global family.
On the surface, the book, The Michael Jackson Tapes: A Tragic Icon Reveals His Soul and Intimate Conversation by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, was a tell-all book for those readers who never knew anything about Michael Jackson. The topics discussed in the book were already public knowledge. Having listened to his music and few interviews here and there for over thirty years, I had a strong sense that Michael Jackson's life was not all rose-colored glasses. Reading Rabbi Shmuley Boteach's book only confirmed what I suspected all along. Having heard Michael Jackson's voice in past interviews, including the snippets played on NBC's Dateline and CNN's Larry King Live, I could hear Michael's voice in times of laughter and pain as Micaiah and I read Michael's answers to Shmuley's questions. Shmuley treated Michael like he was a pedophile and that Michael had a Messiah Complex. He continually insisted that Michael discard his music career and lead a normal life as a father to Prince and Paris,, and now Blanket. Shmuley also proposed that Michael allow his children to walk in public unveiled and to be socialized with other children. To insist that Michael discard his music career is equivalent to Shmuley discarding his own career as a Rabbi and family counselor. Michael's livelihood was his music career and helping children. These two things gave Michael a reason to live. As for Michael Jackson's children walking unveiled and being socialized with other children, Michael wanted his children to be treated as any other child and not the children of a Superstar. He wanted them to be compassionate, tender, honest, and affectionate people. He didn't want them to grow up with the media constantly reminding them of who their father was. Would we recommend this book to anybody? No. It was very long, drawn-out unnecessarily, and biased. We expected an unbiased approach to answering the question, "Who was Michael Jackson?" We also found it rather disturbing that he published this book after the death of Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson is not here to defend himself or lend more understanding to the answers of the questions that Shmuley quoted from. We think that Shmuley is no different than attorneys who chase after ambulance patients to get work. Shmuley made his career on living on the suffering of vulnerable people, like a vulture that sits on the side, waiting for a person to die so that it may pick the flesh from the bones of the dead.
Makedah bat Leah & Micaiah ben Malachi
The Michael Jackson Tapes: A Tragic Icon Reveals His Soul and Intimate Conversation by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach; Vanguard Press, New York, 2009
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