After reading Shmuley Boteach’s latest column on his pet topic – Michael Jackson – you would be forgiven for thinking that the column was actually about Shmuley himself.
In the column entitled Moral blindness and super celebrity, Shmuley goes to great lengths to paint himself as a champion of spiritual advice.
I finally broke free of our friendship in April 2001 when I saw that Michael no longer heeded my advice to rescue his deteriorating existence, and indeed was severely irritated by my constant criticism of his indolence and self-absorption.
(Irritated by Shmuley’s advice? Say it can’t be so!)
As well as a champion of morality.
I have since been a strong and consistent critic of Mr. Jackson’s reckless and egocentric behavior, and especially his public confession of the deeply immoral practice of sharing his bed with children not his own. But I have simultaneously said that, having shared an intense friendship with him, I saw nothing that would lead me to believe he is a molester. And when one is possessed of possible exculpatory evidence as to a man’s possible innocence, then one has a moral obligation to share the information in question.
(or, more likely, an opportunity to financially profit from this knowledge by writing a column)
He even suggests that the reason why it is unlikely that Michael would not have showed the accusers pornographic materials is because this would have been disrespectful to Shmuley!
All this may be true, but if it is, then I have to be ashamed at my own blindness. I was there at Neverland, as Michael’s guest, to celebrate his 42nd birthday. I was there when he first greeted the boy and his family outside his home at Neverland, and I was at the dinner that night together with my family. This was my first visit to Neverland, and Michael was intent on making a favorable impression on me. Would he really have begun showing the boy pornographic materials while I was staying there on the premises? If he did, that means he had complete contempt for me and our friendship was a sham. And if he really did respect me, as I believed at the time, then it would be inconceivable for him to have taken such risks in my presence.
But perhaps the most outrageous comment in the column is this one:
Was my own brittle ego too enamored of the light of his celebrity?
I never knew “brittle” was a synonym for “huge.”
