Gutter slurs against Michael Jackson reveal problems of journalistic competence and that there was a campaign against Jackson

I've just about had enough of the Daily Mail.

It really thinks it can write anything it likes and there's no consequences to that.

Its position in the market is one of supposedely representing the interests of conservative middle England, but when it comes to some subjects it represents as much gutter garbage as the Sunday Sport or The Star.

The Mail's latest cracker is a staggering article about Michael Jackson.

I've never actually read an article in any newspaper in my life that's a complete fabrication, a complete heap of nonsense and lies from start to finish, until just now.

This is a rare gem at least in its inability to hide that, it really is. Congratulations to its writer, a so-called celebrity biographer named Mr. Ian Halperin. Unfortunately for Mr. Halperin, nonsense has a certain pattern, it's identifiable, it has a certain smell, it's unmistakable, and it repeats itself.

And this is what nonsense looks like, just mad insane stupid dumb nonsense.

Of course sometimes, journalists are guilty of wanting a particular story to be true, they 'find' they story they want in other little pieces of data. Just so you know that's in exactly the same way as the guy who wants to believe there are heads of C3P0-like robots and domes on the moon does. They want to see what they want to see and they want us to 'see' it too to vindicate themselves.

Sadly I don't even know if I can say for sure that it is the case here, and he hasn't just made the whole thing up whole cloth.

I feel sorry for this guy, because he just doesn't realise in what he's writing what he's writing. He just doesn't get it.

It's fascinating Halperin agrees there never was a real case about Michael Jackson and child abuse. Fascinating as Halperin begins this though by admitting, "I started my investigation convinced that Jackson was guilty".

So he had already come to the conclusion in that case.

But Halperin says aha, but never mind because dah dah DAHH! Jackson was really gay.

Was he ?

Around Michael and around people around Michael there will be lots of different people with all kinds of stories to tell, in exactly the same way that when people are employed in a job somewhere they are going to have a lot of stories and things they have heard about the boss.

Some of that is a kind of subordinate/working class angst and resentment, some of it is just to pass the time of day, or gossip about something at lunch and some of it is to try to make life more interesting than it is.

But I think it's important not to forget the obvious. Michael Jackson was a huge celebrity, perhaps the biggest and greatest of all time. Just like Elvis and others there's going to be a lot of people both women and gay guys who really believe they have had affairs with Michael and they were really part of his life and this just goes with the territory for anyone like that.

Just pretty convenient for Halperin then Michael Jackson can't directly defend himself now.

Ian Halperin claims he has seen a photo of Michael and an 'aspiring actor'. Is it a photo of them having sex ? Show us the photo then. If you have it publish it. Otherwise I've got a photo of me and Britney Spears. We had an affair. I'm telling you it's the truth I swear it so I do. Exclusive to my blog!

The other interesting thing is this idea of 'streams of lovers' coming and going. Funny these celebrities always have insatiable sexual appetites. It's never restrained is it ? And despite how ill Halperin claims Jackson was: i.e he couldn't sing, couldn't dance anymore, could barely talk, walk or think, was regularly collapsing, was drugged up to his eyeballs and not eating (I kind of agree with those last two based on other things I've read) yet had libido and was having plenty of sexual activity.

Needless to say I don't believe that, and we're starting to see what Mr. Halperin's article is.

As for predicting ill health, I'm no medical expert but I would imagine predicting when people are going to die due to medical reasons, even people who are quite ill is going to be difficult, yet Halperin claims he not only 'knew' Jackson was going to die, he knew when Jackson was going to die. You see to me, if anything, that raises alarm bells of a different kind and I'm wondering why (if Halperin can be believed at all) that someone was leaking him stories about Jackson going to die. This makes me concerned.

As Halperin wants to present a checklist of things I think that has to be a reasonable stigmata about the direction of the article/writer/publisher on the subject and he goes on to suggest that 'Michael Jackson was bad because he didn't pay for some hospitality provided to him by some sheik'.

Who cares ? There's a story like that about every celebrity under the Sun. As someone I know said, when Michael Jackson bought those enormous £600,000+ pots (someone remind me was it Harrods?) in that terrible Bashir documentary he almost certainly didn't pay for them, just as almost no other celebrity would either.

The only interesting thing in the whole article is this:

"Sony have been in a position for more than a year where it can repossess Michael’s share of the [Beatles] catalogue. That’s always been Sony’s dream scenario, full ownership.
‘But they don’t want to do it as they’re afraid of a backlash from his fans. Their nightmare is an organised 'boycott Sony' movement worldwide, which could prove hugely costly.'"

This statement I think is somewhere around the truth, and we know that because Michael talked about this himself in a fascinating interview with Jesse Jackson back in 2005. And I believe this is the key to a lot of this stuff and this negative publicity which is fed out to the press in a very specific and deliberate way, and we know Michael complained heavily about a conspiracy against him, which has almost been forgotten since his tragic death.

Apparently Halperin seems actually unaware that this is an area that would account for that negative publicity and the things in his own article. Like I say sometimes we make the story we want in our mind for our own reasons because we want it to be true and we miss the big picture.

Some people, like Halperin will undoubtedly say 'well you're only saying that because you want to believe the best about Michael, and Michael was only talking about a conspiracy because he was just trying to blame something for his own difficulties'

Was he ?

Again this is another one of those cases where you can't have it both ways. Halperin just said in his article at the begining, he just said:

"I could not find a single shred of evidence suggesting that Jackson had molested a child. But I found significant evidence demonstrating that most, if not all, of his accusers lacked credibility and were motivated primarily by money."

I don't know about you, but if those allegations are false, then it makes me wonder about the others and it makes me wonder why Halperin doesn't see that as a serious problem in his article.

No one wishes to be rude, but I think Mr Ian Halperin has demonstrated himself to be not a credible journalist and if not an all out fraud which I think remains a real possibility, a sad desperate opportunist, juvenile flibbertigibbet, gutter tabloid hack, a tool and an actually after reading what I have, frankly something of a moron. Somehow by accident he's actually managed to publish one paragraph of truth amongst a sea of very well-trodden, prototypical, formulaic, dribbling tabloid gossip, slurs and attributions (that are not celebrity specific) which actually explains the rest of his article, yet seems completely unaware of the fact.

There you go.

And the Daily Mail have demonstrated themselves yet again as a vehicle for all of the above.

Although I do enjoy some opinion in the Mail, I have thought for some time that the Mail has actually not served conservative England properly at a number of times. There's a gap in the tabloid market for something more serious, and if people ever start making real newspapers the Mail is in trouble, and I'm sorry to say that as someone who has more or less supported it implicitly. Unfortunately it's shameless opportunism, its ability to leave things out that are politically inconvenient and its showbiz stuff gone so extreme is just making it look like it's begging for readers, and its affecting the thin but vitally important bit of credibility of everything else it publishes.

I'm sure we will quote the Mail here in the future partly out of convenience, and sometimes they do have some good headlines and opinion but we deserve real newspapers as well and the Mail has demonstrated it's simply not up to the description of a real newspaper.