Beat it!

Tara Abrahams Clivio
Thursday, January 08, 2004



Tara Abrahams Clivio
We Jamaicans have something in common with Michael Jackson. He claims to suffer from a rare skin disease that has caused him to appear "white". In Jamaica we call this rare skin disease "bleaching". I personally suffered from the disease recently as my new blue night shirt that I was particularly fond of was splattered. And as always when the helper was questioned she explained, "The bleach get wey from me!"

Well, clearly "the bleach got wey" from Michael's dermatologist resulting in him taking a drastic step from being a negro to appearing to be a badly-jaundiced Eskimo. He claims his racial changes were unintentional and we might have believed it, were it not for the fact that coincidentally it seems that the plastic surgeon just let the scalpel "get wey" as well. If Michael's new look was not an accident it is clear that his plastic surgeon has watched entirely too much Disney, because Michael bears a striking resemblance to Simba from Lion King, and his profile had to have been inspired by Tweety Bird. That is, if you can see it through the dust mask. Admit it: you loved Thriller, Beat it was cool, and as a child he was a pint-sized knock-out. Now he is just a freak!

Michael's recent woes have more relevance to Jamaica than his desire to "bleach out im skin", and the fact that "Billie Jean is not my lover, she's just the girl who says that I am the one" may have been an early inspiration for our own hit, "It wasn't me!". When Michael Jackson held his infant child upside down by his foot off his fourth-storey balcony, the world was outraged, but that was the extent of it. He was not arrested, his child was not taken from him, he just made an apology and we all went about our lives. This was an act that we saw from one of the most private celebrities. Imagine what we did not see! Now it seems officials are making up for lost time, they locked him in a room with faeces or "doo doo" as he calls it, they jumped on his bed and made a mess in Never Never Land and basically hurt his feelings. Yet, in my opinion, they got the wrong guy.


Michael Jackson
Any parent that willingly allowed their child to spend 10 minutes with Michael-Simba-Tweety-Pale Face-Jackson in their absence should be sent to jail. Such a visit could not serve any possible real benefit to the child; and according to many well-publicised accusations could cause them serious harm. If you want to go to Never Never Land, rent the DVD but don't put your child intentionally in harm's way. Just as Michael endangered his child by dangling it out the window, so did the parents of the boy who allowed him to spend nights with Michael unattended. Likewise, if my husband invited Ted Bundy over for dinner and disappeared for a long walk, I'd be a little concerned.

Here in Jamaica it seems as parents, we often take negligence to the extent of murder. A child who walks out onto a busy highway is run over, the police immediately press charges against the driver, when who should really go to jail is the parents who left the toddler unattended. We regularly hear of children burning in houses, we watch as the community mourns but we never hear of charges being pressed against guardians who abandoned these infants and toddlers. Other children are raped or abused by adults they know and whom their parent(s) know; often the parents know of the abuse but do not complain owing to their financial gain from the situation. These parents need the swiftest of blows from the law, and the blows should be publicised to teach others the lesson. I recently met a child at the Mustard Seed home - as with most of the children at the home they did not know who were the parents of this child - she had been found tied in a scandal bag, still attached to her placenta. It struck me that she is the one child they should know the parents of, the police should have investigated the area and I'm sure they would have found the mother, at which point she should have gone to jail for attempted murder, and that is where you should still be able to find her. Yet the only one who was punished in this instance was this baby who is now six years old but brain damaged, blind and very easily startled.

It is time that as a country we hold parents responsible for their children, while offering them assistance to be good fathers and mothers. We need to educate ourselves on parenting, safety and general child care, and those who won't abide by good morals and good sense should be punished by law. I have no idea if Michael Jackson molested any child, but what I do know is that if a 45-year-old man asked my son to spend the night, I'd tell that man in no uncertain terms to "beat it!"

BTW, where is Sis HR? Lata