This is the thread where we talk about Martin Bashir and Jacko.

At the same time, I came away thinking his heart was more or less in the right place... he seemed like someone desperate to do the right thing by all these kids. But at the same time what was disturbing was that he just could not register Bashir's concern that he might be doing more harm than good - keeping his children veiled and away from their mother, still persisting with the trip to the zoo despite the media/security scrum around them and their obvious fear and discomfort, not even considering the fact that he might have dropped the baby over the balcony ACCIDENTALLY... not to mention the incident with the 12 year old kid.

Watching Bashir getting more and more disturbed by the whole thing as time passed was interesting too. Journalists usually seem unflappable in these circumstances, but he appeared genuinely concerned.

Now that I've seen him talk about it, I don't believe he's abused kids in a sexual way; I think the whole sex act scares him. I think he sees adults as having an agenda with him, whereas the kids don't, which is deluded. He is also the biggest argument I have ever seen against letting people do what they like purely because they have loads of money, or going along with a rich person because of what you can get out of them. Plastic surgeons etc. must see him coming and rub their hands in glee.

Dunno, I got the sense that Bashir was deliberately tip-toeing round him at first because he knew he had several interviews ahead of him that he didn't want to jeopardise. In the last one he seemed to be pulling fewer punches, but I *really* want to know what that bit they weren't allowed to show involved.

My heart sank at the start, because there was NO WAY I wanted to watch a documentary about Martin Bashir learning to moonwalk and climbing trees. Jon Ronson and Louis Theroux do the thing of putting themselves in the story quite well; it's with the intention of acknowledging journalistic fallibility blah blah. But you can't have it both ways: either you are a serious interviewer (which by the way Martin means not interrupting your subject constantly) or you are a 'quirky' personality interacting with another personality.

But things did improve. I felt a lot of pity for Jackson by the end; there was no way he was going to turn out 'normal' after his childhood and his experiences of early fame. But I really wonder how he can want to have/adopt more children when the ones he already has are going to have an inevitably fucked up upbringing. No 4-year-old should be surrounded by paparazzi like that, or have to wear a mask. (It's ironic that the press were hounding Jackson for endangering his child, while they themselves were endangering his other two children by stampeding around them.)

And I wonder what burden of unbroadcastable knowledge Bashir is now carrying...

Matt, I just found the whole 44-year-old man crying to avoid answering things completely tedious and manipulative; also when journalists 'need' their interview subject too much, they become an adjunct to the marketing department.

The bit they couldn't show was all about the Jordan Chandler case and the out of court settlement. Whenever you settle out of court there is an element of confidentiality foisted on you by the lawyers; as with my neighbour who settled a defamation suit, not even his family members are really allowed to discuss it or know the exact amount he got.

Martin Bashir specialises in celebrity confessional interviews, most famously Princess Diana afew years ago when she spoke about the breakdown of her marriage.

If only I wasn't missing a VCR right now...this is the type of thing you can have fun with, even though watching it at odd times, or even a second time, would give me nightmares.

Anyone want to paraphrase the bulk of it ?

yeah...the dumbest bit was the "I've not had cheek implants or eyelid surgery or a dimple made on my chin"/"I've had...two operations, just on my nose, to help me breathe better."/"my face has changed because I grew up." bit. and also the bit where MB said he thought it was safe to say that prince 2's mum was white and MJ seemed to say "you're wrong" just for the hell of it. oh, yeah, and the adopt two kids from every continent in the world "it's my dream"(fade to black) bit. there were lots of dumbest bits.

yeah...the scariest bits were with his children. feeding prince 2 and dumping all that material over his face etc. and jiggling him and saying "I love you I love you I love you." and how comfortable prince 1 and paris are with wearing masks the whole time. maybe they wear them around the house too. "do you try to give your children a normal upbringing?" "of course" "do they go to school?" "they have school." "like, a public school?" "never."..."so they can't have too normal an upbringing" "...no." suffer little children.

I agree with piscesboy that the "let's spell this out in one syllable for the thick viewers" was a bit irritating, and he tried too hard guide the viewers' conclusions instead of letting us make up our own mind.

But I was more bothered by the way Bashir juggled some of the moral contradictions in his position, viz:

1 an interview with Jacko was going to be hugely lucrative/career enhancing
2 he could only get an interview if Jacko believed he'd be presented in a reasonably favourable light
3 but people suspected Jacko might be a monster - child abuser, unfit parent etc - anything that smacked of sympathy with or airbrushing such a character might look morally questionable and be deeply damaging for Bashir personally
4 in the light of 3, Bashir HAD to ask some fairly hard questions, but Jacko might terminate the interview at that point and Bashir would lose out on the goodies mentioned in 1

I felt queasy about Bashir's resolution of these problems:

- keeping the persistent hard questioning until he'd enough film in the can and a walkout by Jacko would have been the icing on a sensationalist cake;
- continually hinting to Jacko that he (Bashir) took a sympathetic, indulgent view of Jacko's eccentricities while simultaneously making it clear to the viewer that he did not;
- intrusive interpolation of moralistic asides designed to ensure that the viewer knew Bashir was on the side of the angels;
- the deliberate manipulation of the chronology so that the interview with the children appeared to come in at the end, although it had actually taken place before the Berlin trip (after all, some viewers we might not have been impressed by Bashir chumminess with Jacko if they realised he'd already admitted to sleeping with 12 year old boys).

Admittedly this was all professionally and tidily done, Bashir skating on some fairly thin ice without ever looking likely to fall in the water. And it could be argued, probably correctly, that a man with more integrity just couldn't have got the interview. But it made Jacko's frequent references to the scumbag tabloids, obviously believing Bashir were another kind of animal, sound as delusional as any of his other odd beliefs. By the end of the interview I had more sympathy for Jacko, despite his obvious nuttiness, than the slimy, calculating sanity of Bashir.

"Michael Jackson has launched a withering attack on ITV's Martin Bashir, branding his documentary as a "gross distortion of the truth".

In a lengthy statement issued today, the pop star said he felt "devastated and utterly betrayed" by the interviewer's portrayal of him.

Speaking for the first time since the Granada documentary, Living With Michael Jackson, was shown on TV, the reclusive American singer said he felt "more betrayed than perhaps ever before".

Jackson has come in for strong criticism since the programme revealed he still shares his bedroom with children, with some newspapers calling for his own children should be taken away from him.

"I trusted Martin Bashir to come into my life and that of my family because I wanted the truth to be told. Martin Bashir persuaded me to trust him, that this would be an honest and fair portrayal of my life and told me that he was 'the man that turned Diana's life around'," Jackson said.

"Today I feel more betrayed than perhaps ever before; that someone who had got to know my children, my staff and me, whom I let into my heart and told the truth, could then sacrifice the trust I placed in him and produce this terrible and unfair programme.""

His sudden realisation that he's been shafted proves Bashir's point that he's surrounded by yes men who don't want to rock the boat. I would imagine that any half decent PA or PR person would realise where the questions would lead (PR meltdown) and advise against doing it.

As for what Bashir didn't ask, obv it was the about the Chandler case, but you just knew he was dying to ask if he'd ever had sexual relations with his 'sleepovers'.

1. who are these parents?
2. why would kids want this?
3. is this real?

well, the king must be entertained so lets sell him our kids.

then its so easy to blackmail him with this, all these kids can in ten years blackmail him for whatever he has done or not. it doesn't matter, he'd be too scared. he will have to pay them off the rest of his life.

Lying about plastic surgery and so on was one thing but making claims that defy the laws of genetics had me in hysterics.

Yes after seeing this I think it's highly likely that he has Bipolar Disorder.

So he does what every pop star does, only more so -- he uses his wealth and fame to create a world as much of his own design as possible. Jackson's fantasy world is to be 12 years old and live in a fairytale, which is fucking cool except: (a) no matter how much money you have, the world is not going to trust grown men to be 12-year-olds with the other kids, and (b) if you're going to be 12 you can't actually take on the responsibility of having kids.

So I've had this brilliant idea: we should make Michael Jackson the permanent legal equivalent of a 12 year old. This means he can have his friends over and play and do whatever he wants, but he'd need parental supervision, as all 12 year olds do. He wouldn't be allowed to actually have children, either, obviously -- I mean, he could have them but he couldn't serve as an adult guardian. He could really and truly just be 12 forever, which is clearly what he would want if the "real world" didn't keep intruding.

This was the funny thing about saying "how can you not see that this is inappropriate" -- I sort of wanted to slap Bashir and say "ten year olds wouldn't see why it would be inappropriate DO YOU SEE." The whole "but you're a 40-something man" argument only works if you imagine Michael Jackson to be like what 40-something men are normally like: clearly he's not, and pretending that he is just gives him license to say "you boring people don't understand anything."

I sort of want to rephrase, too: MJ's fantasy isn't just to be 12, it's to be BABAR.

Though I didn't see the second half.

Check mate!