- LOS ANGELES - It's
deja vu all over again. The famous face. The heinous crime. The ever-expanding
legal dream team. The roiling sea of reporters and spectators clustered
together, waiting expectantly outside the courthouse. And, beyond them,
the endless lines of camera trucks and upturned satellite uplink dishes,
and helicopters circling above.
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- I was here 10 years ago when O.J. Simpson's preliminary
hearing quickly became the only show in town - literally, throughout most
of that lengthy process, there was virtually nothing else on TV. And the
Michael Jackson trial, once it truly gets under way, is going to make the
O.J. show look like a coming attractions trailer.
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- As much as Jackson's shocking fall from moon-walking
pop icon to perp-walking potential felon has dominated the international
media here in L.A., just 275 kilometres north, in Santa Maria, Calif.,
this is very much a local event - with considerable collateral implications
in what is essentially a one-industry town. A town that, since O.J., routinely
grinds to a halt to glue itself to the tube at the mere hint of a slow-speed
police chase.
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- Jackson, 45, pleaded not guilty yesterday to child-molestation
charges that could send him to prison for 20 years - and was scolded by
the judge for being 21 minutes late for his first court appearance.
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- "Mr. Jackson, you've started out on the wrong foot
here," Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville told him. "I want
to advise you that I will not put up with that. It's an insult to the court."
The judge scheduled a Feb. 13 court session to set a date for a preliminary
hearing.
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- All week, leading up to yesterday's arraignment, blow-dried
TV reporters with mikes in hand have imbedded themselves outside Jackson's
Neverland Ranch, and in the hills outside his rented Beverly Hills refuge,
and in the streets of Santa Maria, a formerly sleepy little community of
85,000, desperately recycling legal minutia for lack of anything even remotely
substantial to report.
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- A situation rendered that much more desperate by the
judge's edict banning cameras from the courtroom. One thing you can say
for the O.J. show - it at least had O.J., front and centre, smiling benignly
for the folks at home. Aside from his ill-advised 60 Minutes appearance
in which he defended having children over for sleepovers, all we have been
able to see of the reclusive Jackson is the endlessly recycled footage
of his sun-glassed, umbrella-shrouded arrivals and departures.
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- There are odd echoes of the O.J. trial - his ultimately
ineffectual prosecutors, Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden, are both
now doing talking-head commentary, for Entertainment Tonight and CNN, respectively.
Defence attorney Johnnie Cochran is said to be lurking on the sidelines
of the Jackson camp.
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- But there is one essential difference here that will
set these proceedings apart from even other celebrity arrests - from O.J.
and Kobe Bryant to the lesser travails of Hugh Grant and Robert Downey
Jr. - this is MICHAEL JACKSON, the self-proclaimed "King of Pop,"
one the most internationally adored, and undeniably one of the most peculiar
celebrity superstars contemporary culture has ever manufactured.
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- The cumulative impact of these extreme elements has propelled
this already circus-like spectacle well beyond the upper stratosphere of
silly - "the Superbowl of Strange," as one reporter dubbed it.
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- Hundreds of Jackson fans, some from as far away as Germany
and Japan - as well as a bus-borne "Caravan of Love" from L.A.
- made the pilgrimage to Santa Maria, waving banners and wearing t-shirts
bearing such sympathetic slogans as "Leave Him Alone."
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- In the two hours that elapsed between Jackson's late
arrival and delayed departure (taking time out for a bathroom break) to
and from the Santa Maria courthouse, the crowd doubled in size to an estimated
400, many apparently drawn to the site by the blanket local TV coverage.
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- But it will likely be Jackson's bizarre behaviour, even
under such serious circumstances, that will ultimately have the greatest
impact on the outcome of these events. The brazenly tardy arrival, the
savvy working of the crowd, that moment on his way out that he felt compelled
to leap on top of his limousine (making sure it was dutifully recorded
by his own personal camera crew), the astounding printed invitation, distributed
by Jackson's entourage, directing the assembled fans to his Neverland Ranch
for a post-arraignment party, complete with catered refreshments, "in
the spirit of love and togetherness" ...
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- None of this will exactly endear him to local officials
in their ongoing effort to keep these proceedings as quiet as possible
and as close to "business as usual" as even this surreal scenario
will allow.
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- Of course, not all of this exploitive excess is coming
from within the Jackson camp - not while there's money to be made.
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- Last Sunday, at Pasadena's Rosebowl Flea Market, I came
across a "Michael Jackson: Superstar of the '80s" action figure,
dolled up in Thriller gear, right down to the teeny leather jacket and
weeny little sequined glove. "How much?" I asked the proprietress.
"Fifty bucks."
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- Noting the incredulous look on my face, she wryly added,
"Hey, if you'd come to me 20 years ago, it only would have cost you
$8.95. But for 50 bucks, I'll also throw in the Macaulay Culkin figure
behind him."
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reserved.
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