Publisher's Synopsis
A must-read for those who believe he truly loved children but are not so sure about his innocence... Michael Jackson spent the wedding night of his second marriage not with his bride but with his best man – an eight-year-old boy. His first marriage ended in divorce after he had been on holiday with two young boys – without his wife. To kneejerk loyalists, the King of Pop’s love of children was innocent: end of story. For the more reflective among us, whether we are intrigued, baffled, appalled, empathic, or even all these things, Michael Jackson’s Dangerous Liaisons provides the definitive review of his numerous ‘special friendships’. Armed with insights from a range of disciplines – psychology, sociology, moral philosophy – Carl Toms spent many years researching the megastar’s ‘boy-love’. He delves deeply into the sources of Michael’s enigmatic identity, soul and genius – while keeping a sceptical eye on the assumptions and values of the King’s detractors. Toms’ is the only book to examine thoroughly Michael’s trial on child abuse charges without losing sight of the increasingly well documented – but surprisingly little known or understood – facts about earlier allegations. It exposes the falsity of persistent efforts to whitewash the record by inventing for Michael a phoney ‘normal’, or ‘plain vanilla gay’, sexuality. The author probes Michael’s intense identification with Peter Pan, the eternal boy, acknowledging the profound significance of this attachment but discarding the welter of dated Freudian psychobabble it has spawned. Refusing to settle for the easy clichés about Michael’s ‘lost childhood’, Toms examines groundbreaking research into intimate man-boy contacts in order to illuminate the real nature of Michael’s ‘dangerous liaisons’ – and the surprising challenge they present to our moral certainties.
