| So Michael Jackson, according to the New York Post, has sold his rebuttal video to Fox TV. It includes about five minutes of cobbled-together video of interviewer Martin Bashir kissing up to Jackson to get a better story. (Big surprise there!)
It also apparently includes testimony from Debbie Rowe, the mother of Jackson's two eldest children, endorsing Michael as a dad.
One problem: Rowe is not exactly an unbiased observer. This column reported last summer that Rowe gets regular payments from Jackson that are quite huge.
This information was discovered when Jackson's former business manager, Myung Ho Lee, sued him for $14 million. Included in the court papers was a monthly budget of Jackson's expenses. Among the ledger items was "payment to Debbie Rowe" of $1.5 million.
Is Debbie going to bite the hand that feeds her so well? It's highly unlikely. Rowe has already told British Granada TV that she didn't want children, that she gave Michael the kids as a gift, and prefers not to be called "mother."
Jackson said in his interview much the same thing, and noted that the kids think they don't have a mother.
So I'd be interested in knowing more about Rowe's mental state than Michael's at this point. What kind of person is a baby-for-money factory? Maybe we should be looking into that.
Jackson can release all the videos he wants at this point — it's not going to make much of a difference. The American public, having seen him hold hands with a 13-year-old boy, has read the complaint by 13-year-old from 1993. It has a graphic depiction of Michael seducing the boy. You can read the particulars at www.thesmokinggun.com.
On Monday I spoke to Larry Feldman, the lawyer who represented the boy's family and cut the $20 million deal with Jackson. Feldman's name is on the court papers, but he is adamant that he had nothing to do with their release.
"You can say that categorically we did not release the complaint," he said.
Is he angry about it?
"I don't want to categorize my emotions," he replied. Oh, lawyers!
Feldman, by the way, says he has not spoken to the family in years.
As for Michael, the consensus now is that his goose is cooked at all the major record labels. If he wants to release a record, he's going to have to do it with Opus Media, the medical ID company he formed a joint venture with last October (and reported here exclusively).
Otherwise, he's done at Sony Music and it's pretty certain that Universal Music Group won't touch him. The latter might have been a possibility before all this, but now that ship has sailed, according to my sources. | |
