Michael Jackson: Who's Bad?

An age of innocence may be at an end as Michael Jackson, the Peter Pan of pop, confronts accusations that he sexually abused one of his young friends

HE CALLS HIS RANCH NEVERLAND. HE surrounds himself with young boys. He speaks in a child's whisper. He seems to float onstage. And he doesn't want to grow up. Michael Jackson has identified so closely with Peter Pan that for years he hoped to star in a Steven Spielberg film version of the James M. Barrie play. It might have been the first extraterrestrial autobiography.

Yet Jackson's profound weirdness -- not just the glove or the seaweed hair striping his face but the blanched skin, the pained eyes, the tremulous soul -- hinted that Pan was the wrong role for him....

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