Since it was a forgone conclusion that, with the drama of the Michael Jackson meshuggas drawing to a close, that would be what everyone wanted to know about, I gave everyone who digs up the shmutz for me the month off. Well, all, that is, but the guy whose been sitting in the antechamber of the courthouse, (like Madame DeFarge ringside at the guillotine,) grilling everyone in sight for news. As usual, the mainstream press was interested only in what would sell advertising in their papers and news networks, dealing in the predictable strum and drang that everyone has come to expect. But my ‘little birdies’ went for answers to questions most people never think to ask because the answers might not be the stuff Pulitzers are won from.

Take, for example, Jackson’s running to the hospital for everything from a backache to the sniffles. My people overheard some nurses comment that "The guy keeps coming in, and there's not a damn thing wrong with him, except he's scared…er…spitless.” And, a woman who was with her husband who had just suffered a heart attack, told my guy that a few minutes after he was brought in for a supposed back spasm, Jackson asked where the restroom was and slid off the gurney like Baryshnikov doing a stage-leap.

Other interesting things that were brought to bear were the facts that many of the people demonstrating in Michael’s behalf outside the courthouse may have been paid to do so. My man was offered fifty dollars a day to stand out there with a sign, demanding Jackson’s release. These bissel tidbits are nothing more that an amusing insight into the lengths to which people will go to appeal to the court of public opinion, when it seems as if the court of law is going to nail them to the barn door. The big question now is what will happen to the gloved one now that it’s all over?

Firstly, I think it’s important to explain the verdict. Not since the O.J. Simpson trial, has a jury so polarized a nation with a decision. I could go into a lot of intricate legal hoo-ha, but the bottom line is that the prosecution’s case had more holes in it than an Olympic javelin catcher. The fact is, there would have been no prosecution, had it not been for two things…awesome publicity for elected officials, and the district attorney still having egg on his face from the ’93 case against Jackson, a reality not lost upon the jurors who saw it as a bizarre, real-life version of “Delores Clayborn”. But in an abstract way, the prosecutors have gotten their pound of fleysh. Although they lost a conviction, they did manage to do enough damage to Jackson’s mental state and image. Industry insiders say his career is farblondzet, and that even his genius for outrageous publicity stunts will not be able to revive the aging star’s popularity, at least in the United States. In Europe, he may stand a chance; he owns, after all, a castle in France, where he’s as big as ever. Perhaps he will trade in his glove for a beret and learn to sing in French.

As for now, Jackson sits in his Neverland Ranch, a defrocked Peter Pan lamenting the absence of his ‘lost boys’ and trying to make sense out of the wreck he has made of his life. Maybe now, someone in his entourage of nochschleppers will compel him to get the psychiatric help he needs. Regardless of whether or not he ‘did it’ one reality stands out clearly…he is a man with a firm grip on un-reality. The fact that he saw nothing untoward about his actions is frightening. And as a long-time admirer of his showmanship, I hope he does get his act together. Otherwise, the world will forever lose a great talent.