Pues si, el que probablemente es el periodico prestigioso del mundo, el "New York Times" habla en su edicion de hoy de la manida entrevista de MJ. Para mi sorpresa, los comentarios son en general positivos.
EL link para ver la noticia completa es este, aunque hay que registrarse para leerla.
TV REVIEW | '20/20'
A Neverland World of Michael Jackson
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
artin Bashir, the British television journalist who followed Michael Jackson for eight months, should have introduced his interview floating face down in a swimming pool and speaking in a voice-over, like William Holden in "Sunset Boulevard."
Ethroned behin the gates of his private amusement park, the Neverland Ranch, Mr. Jackson comes off in this two-hour ABC special as the Norma Desmond of Motown: creepy, but almost touching in his delusional naïveté: a victim of an abusive father, of his own psyche and also of his interviewer's callous self-interest masked as sympathy.
ABC paid Granada Television of Britain about $5 million to broadcast the documentary on "20/20" Friday. If this was an effort to atone for Diane Sawyer's memorably bungled 1995 interview with Mr. Jackson and his soon-to-be ex-wife Lisa Marie Presley, the money is well spent.
Barbara Walters introduces the interview, but that is the extent of her contribution.
Mr. Bashir brings forth an older, sorrier Michael Jackson with fantasies intact but stripped of his publicity fog of marriages and platinum-selling CD sales. After assuring Mr. Bashir that he has had romantic relationships with women, Mr. Jackson later admits that surrogate mothers had his children, though he called their surrogacies "a present," and Mr. Bashir did not press him to find out how they were compensated for their gifts.
Mr. Jackson explained that he frequently invites young children on sleepovers in his bedroom and looked injured when Mr. Bashir suggested that could seem inappropriate. He denied repeatedly that his obsession is in any way sexual.
He even claimed he has had only two surgical procedures on his tip-tilted, Mitzi Gaynor nose. The ferocity of his denials, even when confronted with the entirely different face he had as a 20-year-old, was persuasive in at least one way: like the child he claims to be, Mr. Jackson seems to think that saying something makes it so.
"I am Peter Pan," he says in a soft, fluttery whisper belied by the 5 o'clock shadow creeping up his cheeks. Mr. Bashir rather boorishly corrects him, pointing out that actually he is Michael Jackson. "No," Mr. Jackson replies. "I am Peter Pan in my heart."
Whether his denials could provide fodder for future lawsuits, as they did when he told Ms. Sawyer that all the allegations made in a sex abuse case that ended in a $25-million settlement were false, is unclear. But as a public relations move, Mr. Jackson has done himself more good than harm with this latest interview.
People began to suspect there was something amiss long before Mr. Jackson dangled his baby from a balcony in Berlin last November. He may strike viewers as crazy, but insanity is a defense.
Mr. Jackson was interviewed while strolling through his private amusement park, seated before a portrait of himself as a Botticelli-esque male Venus surrounded by winged putti, and on a shopping trip for $250,000 Empire vases at a boutique in the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino in Las Vegas. However pathetic or repellent his life may seem to some, he is shown as he wishes to be viewed: as a little boy trapped in the body of Michael Jackson.
He does occasionally show glimpses of a flintier adult self. "Everybody in Hollywood gets plastic surgery," he retorted after yet another question about his nose. "Plastic surgery was not invented for Michael Jackson."
ABC is hoping that its coup will draw huge ratings, even though it is competing with special hourlong episodes of "Friends" and "Will & Grace."
In Britain, where the interview was shown on Monday, it got a peak audience of 15 million — more than watched England play against Denmark in the World Cup, and more than the Queen's Jubilee Concert. Later this month, NBC's magazine show "Dateline" plans to devote an hour to whatever happened to Mr. Jackson's nose.
Society's fascination with Michael Jackson may be unhealthy, but it is hardly baffling. Like junk bonds or fen-phen, Mr. Jackson is one of those phenomena that seem destined to be yanked from the public at any minute but are irresistible while they last.
Most celebrities have at least one disgrace that can win them a spot on a television magazine show. Last December, 21.3 million viewers watched Whitney Houston deny crack use to Diane Sawyer. ("First of all, let's get one thing straight," she told Ms. Sawyer. "Crack is cheap. I make too much money to ever smoke crack.")
Mr. Jackson talks about his a gruesome childhood: if true, it explains a lot. He describes how his father managed the Jackson Five through fear and beatings: "He practised us with a belt in his hand."
Mr. Bashir, who is most famous for interviewing Diana, Princess of Wales, about infidelity and bulimia in 1995, casts himself here as a character in a Michael Jackson reality show, cutting to himself driving pensively across city streets and country highways.
After Mr. Jackson denies having extensive plastic surgery, he mused, "I knew I had to return to the subject of his face before we were through."
He was in the hotel room during Mr. Jackson's baby dangling gesture, which was so reckless it made the front pages of newspapers.
"His behavior was beginning to alarm me," Mr. Bashir confided in a voice-over. He seemed less alarmed by the way Mr. Jackson traveled with his two older children, Prince Michael I, 5, and Paris, 4, who always wear masks in public.
The show weaves Mr. Jackson's famous hits "Billy Jean," and "Thriller" around the interviews as a kind of musical score of his arrested development.
Perhaps in a reflection of how much of a pariah Mr. Jackson has become, the show did not include any testimonials from his many celebrity friends, though he mentioned buying jewelry for Elizabeth Taylor.
The main signs of support are found in the weepy adulation of autograph-seekers in malls and hotel parking lots. And also in a defense laid out by one of his young protégés, Gavin, whom Mr. Jackson befriended when the boy was being treated for cancer. The two hold hands, and Gavin explains to Mr. Bashir that society cannot dictate when people must act as grown-ups.
As Mr. Jackson listens admiringly, Gavin explains, "You are an adult when you say you are."
EL link para ver la noticia completa es este, aunque hay que registrarse para leerla.
TV REVIEW | '20/20'
A Neverland World of Michael Jackson
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
artin Bashir, the British television journalist who followed Michael Jackson for eight months, should have introduced his interview floating face down in a swimming pool and speaking in a voice-over, like William Holden in "Sunset Boulevard."
Ethroned behin the gates of his private amusement park, the Neverland Ranch, Mr. Jackson comes off in this two-hour ABC special as the Norma Desmond of Motown: creepy, but almost touching in his delusional naïveté: a victim of an abusive father, of his own psyche and also of his interviewer's callous self-interest masked as sympathy.
ABC paid Granada Television of Britain about $5 million to broadcast the documentary on "20/20" Friday. If this was an effort to atone for Diane Sawyer's memorably bungled 1995 interview with Mr. Jackson and his soon-to-be ex-wife Lisa Marie Presley, the money is well spent.
Barbara Walters introduces the interview, but that is the extent of her contribution.
Mr. Bashir brings forth an older, sorrier Michael Jackson with fantasies intact but stripped of his publicity fog of marriages and platinum-selling CD sales. After assuring Mr. Bashir that he has had romantic relationships with women, Mr. Jackson later admits that surrogate mothers had his children, though he called their surrogacies "a present," and Mr. Bashir did not press him to find out how they were compensated for their gifts.
Mr. Jackson explained that he frequently invites young children on sleepovers in his bedroom and looked injured when Mr. Bashir suggested that could seem inappropriate. He denied repeatedly that his obsession is in any way sexual.
He even claimed he has had only two surgical procedures on his tip-tilted, Mitzi Gaynor nose. The ferocity of his denials, even when confronted with the entirely different face he had as a 20-year-old, was persuasive in at least one way: like the child he claims to be, Mr. Jackson seems to think that saying something makes it so.
"I am Peter Pan," he says in a soft, fluttery whisper belied by the 5 o'clock shadow creeping up his cheeks. Mr. Bashir rather boorishly corrects him, pointing out that actually he is Michael Jackson. "No," Mr. Jackson replies. "I am Peter Pan in my heart."
Whether his denials could provide fodder for future lawsuits, as they did when he told Ms. Sawyer that all the allegations made in a sex abuse case that ended in a $25-million settlement were false, is unclear. But as a public relations move, Mr. Jackson has done himself more good than harm with this latest interview.
People began to suspect there was something amiss long before Mr. Jackson dangled his baby from a balcony in Berlin last November. He may strike viewers as crazy, but insanity is a defense.
Mr. Jackson was interviewed while strolling through his private amusement park, seated before a portrait of himself as a Botticelli-esque male Venus surrounded by winged putti, and on a shopping trip for $250,000 Empire vases at a boutique in the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino in Las Vegas. However pathetic or repellent his life may seem to some, he is shown as he wishes to be viewed: as a little boy trapped in the body of Michael Jackson.
He does occasionally show glimpses of a flintier adult self. "Everybody in Hollywood gets plastic surgery," he retorted after yet another question about his nose. "Plastic surgery was not invented for Michael Jackson."
ABC is hoping that its coup will draw huge ratings, even though it is competing with special hourlong episodes of "Friends" and "Will & Grace."
In Britain, where the interview was shown on Monday, it got a peak audience of 15 million — more than watched England play against Denmark in the World Cup, and more than the Queen's Jubilee Concert. Later this month, NBC's magazine show "Dateline" plans to devote an hour to whatever happened to Mr. Jackson's nose.
Society's fascination with Michael Jackson may be unhealthy, but it is hardly baffling. Like junk bonds or fen-phen, Mr. Jackson is one of those phenomena that seem destined to be yanked from the public at any minute but are irresistible while they last.
Most celebrities have at least one disgrace that can win them a spot on a television magazine show. Last December, 21.3 million viewers watched Whitney Houston deny crack use to Diane Sawyer. ("First of all, let's get one thing straight," she told Ms. Sawyer. "Crack is cheap. I make too much money to ever smoke crack.")
Mr. Jackson talks about his a gruesome childhood: if true, it explains a lot. He describes how his father managed the Jackson Five through fear and beatings: "He practised us with a belt in his hand."
Mr. Bashir, who is most famous for interviewing Diana, Princess of Wales, about infidelity and bulimia in 1995, casts himself here as a character in a Michael Jackson reality show, cutting to himself driving pensively across city streets and country highways.
After Mr. Jackson denies having extensive plastic surgery, he mused, "I knew I had to return to the subject of his face before we were through."
He was in the hotel room during Mr. Jackson's baby dangling gesture, which was so reckless it made the front pages of newspapers.
"His behavior was beginning to alarm me," Mr. Bashir confided in a voice-over. He seemed less alarmed by the way Mr. Jackson traveled with his two older children, Prince Michael I, 5, and Paris, 4, who always wear masks in public.
The show weaves Mr. Jackson's famous hits "Billy Jean," and "Thriller" around the interviews as a kind of musical score of his arrested development.
Perhaps in a reflection of how much of a pariah Mr. Jackson has become, the show did not include any testimonials from his many celebrity friends, though he mentioned buying jewelry for Elizabeth Taylor.
The main signs of support are found in the weepy adulation of autograph-seekers in malls and hotel parking lots. And also in a defense laid out by one of his young protégés, Gavin, whom Mr. Jackson befriended when the boy was being treated for cancer. The two hold hands, and Gavin explains to Mr. Bashir that society cannot dictate when people must act as grown-ups.
As Mr. Jackson listens admiringly, Gavin explains, "You are an adult when you say you are."
