With the deaths of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and Michael Jackson, the summer of ‘09 marked the merciful ends to Camelot and Neverland, iconic American fairy tales whose story lines should have come to merciful ends long ago when their charismatic protagonists took dark and irredeemable turns.

Our country was not built to support blood dynasties or to elevate the rich and famous to a higher ethical or constitutional plain. But through the power of celebrity, Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Jackson worked the media to twist truths. They manipulated their constituencies and fans to obscure their misdeeds. They played the faithful to confer this manufactured innocence on the rest of us. And, in the end, they placed themselves above the law.

My condolences go to the Kennedy and Jackson families, who should not be stained by the sins of their kin. But there is no time like the present to ensure that those masterfully produced, over-the-top, all-star televised funerals don’t serve to canonize talented and charismatic men who failed to own up to their public wrongs and who continued to flaunt the behaviors that got them into trouble.

The result was Mr. Kennedy needn’t do more than show up for work to atone for his calculated selfishness. Without apology or contrition, Mr. Kennedy crafted a public career in which he spent taxpayers’ money – certainly not his own – to make up for his unspeakable behavior.

Given that President Obama’s flailing medical care reform movement is in the process of being given new life under the fallen senator’s name, our national health now depends on talking honestly. As Mr. Kennedy’s political defenders would put it, it’s time to speak truth to power.

In a time of grief, the young senator framed his future as a referendum on Camelot. And the media didn’t call him on it. The fix was in.

Forty years have passed since Chappaquiddick. Immediately after the accident, Mr. Kennedy scrambled to organize the best and brightest to save his career, rather than to save the life of 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne.

Before the facts were gathered, as her family was being prepped for a cash payoff, the Massachusetts voter – in “shock” and “denial,” the beginning phases of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s grief cycle – was asked by the senator in a carefully constructed televised speech to look away from his misdeed in the name of his family’s recent tragedies.

You can read the column in full here.

NAMBLA is an organization with a goal to eliminate age-of-consent laws. Arguing those younger than 18 have the mental ability to make decisions, they claim it is unfair to the youth to prevent them from doing so. They oppose forcing sexual relations on anyone, regardless of age. They do not advocate breaking the law, but work to change the law.

On June 15th 2005 the men of NAMBLA rejoiced when the pop singer Michael Jackson was found not guilty of all charges of sexual molestation of boys and of providing minors with alcohol. The group considered Michael Jackson’s acquittal to be a vindication for their Association. “Michael’s innocence is something that is held very dear to us,” said a representative at the time. “We can all relate to wanting to love a child. Many of us have small children that we love and many of us take small children to bed with us every night. Loving a child is not a crime and Michael has proven that to everyone.” Some NAMBLA members felt this was breaking new ground for them and hoped to see laws amended such as mandatory curfews for minors and the legal age of consent lowered to nine years of age.

The NAMBLA website is a cornucopia of at best, instructions on how to love an underage boy in an inappropriate manner, and at worst how to manipulate one into questionable physical experiences with an adult male.

In 2003, Jackson confessed to 60 Minutes about his love of sleeping with children. NAMBLA was founded in 1978, so the question begs; did Jackson get his talking points from NAMBLA for his 60 Minutes interview? In that interview The King of Pop was asked if it was okay to share his bed with children “Of course. Why not? If you’re going to be a pedophile, if you’re going to be Jack the Ripper, if you’re going to be a murderer, it’s not a good idea. That I am not.”

When asked if Jackson would allow his own children to sleep in a bed with a grown man who was not a relative or to sleep in that man’s bedroom, Jackson replied, “Sure, if I know that person, trust them, and love them. That’s happened many times with me when I was little.” This comment too is in lockstep with the mind set of NAMBLA “We feel a special love for children in our own special way and want to express it.” said a representative after the airing of that interview.

NAMBLA members don’t see themselves as Jack the Ripper because in the twisted mindset of its members they feel they’re filling a need they see in a child at the hands of their tormented past or present sickness.

Jackson left many unanswered questions about his past. Was he himself a victim of man boy love as a youth? Was his sick need to be with young boys a sign of arrested development, was he gay, or was Jackson just a modern day pedophiliac Pied Piper moon walking children to his Neverland ranch?

Only in today’s vacuous pop culture would thousands of people and all media outlets raise this man up like a Christ passing, all because he could sing and dance. If what he said about children came from the mouth of people’s neighbor, they’d have his head. On June 25th 2009 when Jackson was pronounced dead NAMBLA lost a man in common, gained a Messiah and children everywhere became safer.

I focused on his creative output and what it meant to musicians and culture as best I could in our impromptu conversation.  In other words, we didn’t dwell on the fact that it SURE seemed like he was a serial molester of male children.  His music will stand alone.  HUGE talent, obsessive artist, stratospheric career from childhood into his thirties.  Iconic images and motion pictures of him, dancing and performing unforgettably at his peak, will probably always be tainted for our generation by what he became, by what many of us now know he was for a long time.  His strange celebrity outran his music, but maybe now it will stop running… all this will be said better over the next few days and probably weeks by others.

What I’m looking forward to, after whatever period is gentlemanly to wait, is our own FBI undercover superagent, Bob Hamer dropping the…well, dropping his last name plus another “m” on the kind of man who SURE seemed like he built elaborate playgrounds to lure children to himself.

Michael Jackson (left) and Marc Schaffel (right) seen in photo with Warren Beatty (center)

When this scandal was exposed (but underplayed by the dysfunctional and enabling mainstream media), Schaffel was shown the door and Jackson’s people issued a press release acknowledging the impropriety of the situation but claimed not to have known of Schaffel’s mystifyingly inappropriate background — especially given the accusations against Jackson and his continued desire to present himself as a kid-at-heart.

Here is the statement by Jackson spokesman Dan Klores in July, 2002:

“The minute Michael and his advisers found out about Schaffel’s background, they cut the cord immediately. This was months ago. (Schaffel) has nothing to do with Michael Jackson, doesn’t represent him in any way, shape or form, and has been told this repeatedly by Michael’s attorneys.”

Well, a year later, Schaffel was back at Neverland and again acting as Jackson’s personal videographer who chronicled the taping of the famous Martin Bashir BBC documentary that later appeared on ABC in the U.S., which centered around two young brothers hanging with Jackson and Schaffel as their ‘chaperones’ at the creepy amusement park cum bachelor pad.

Why did Michael Jackson bring back the gay porno producer to use a video camera to oversee kid trips to Neverland AFTER it was admitted by Jackson’s own people the Jackson/Schaffel alliance was blatantly improper?

And why did the media drop the ball in playing up this massive scandal? Parents had an obligation to know they were sending their kids to a ferris wheel controlled by an accused molester who hung out only with young boys (as Howard Stern has said, “Where are the young girls?”) and his gay pornographer pal.

Mark Ebner and I covered this grotesque scenario extensively in our book, Hollywood, Interrupted.

I’m sorry. When Jackson didn’t fight charges of molestation and then paid a person off to the tune of millions, and later put children in the proximity of a guy whose day job was trying to find young-looking male porn stars in eastern Europe (you don’t want to see Schaffel’s casting call videos — I have!) — Michael Jackson exposed himself as a dangerous man and sick predator whose only mitigating excuse is that he was enabled by sick family and business associates and an even sicker mainstream press.

I feel mildly sorry that Michael Jackson is dead because to a great extent our overly popular culture influenced society contributed to making him the monster he was when he died. May he rest in heat.

Read Brown’s Article Here.

An interview with Jackson’s ex-wife Lisa Marie Presley by Chris Heath in Rolling Stone in April 2003 would support the “secretly sane” theory. “I was always saying [to Jackson] people wouldn’t think I was so crazy if they saw who the hell you really are,” Presley told Heath. “That you sit around, and you drink and you curse and you’re [expletive] funny and you have a bad mouth, and you don’t have that high voice all the time. I don’t know why you think that works for you, because it doesn’t anymore.”

Ms. Presley, to be sure, has a reason to portray Jackson as less bizarre than people assume. Marrying someone most people regard as an extraterrestrial freak didn’t do a whole lot for her image. (”Ok. Hello,” she expounds. “I was delusionary. I got some romantic idea in my head that I could save him and save the world.”) But it might add some genuine dramatic tension if Jackson turned out to be pop music’s version of Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, the Mafia boss who fooled the justice system for years by shuffling around the streets of Greenwich Village mumbling to himself in his bedroom slippers and bathrobe. If this were true, of course, it would also mean Jackson is just a plain old garden-variety ped, albeit one who instead of hanging around public playgrounds built his own at Neverland.

Amy Holmes, a frequent guest on CNN and HBO’s Real Time, was a speechwriter for former Majority Leader Bill Frist.