World mourns child-molesting song & dance man, and hat-lover
Posted By Steven Lewis on June 27, 2009
Convicted paedophile Dennis Ferguson. If only he could sing and dance.
Channel Nine’s breakfast television in Australia today (Saturday) dedicated the whole morning to the death of Michael Jackson; in print The Sydney Morning Herald and the Daily Telegraph have pages on the death. Yet in the 30 minutes or so I was watching the TV, there was no mention of the “much-loved superstar’s” fondness for young boys. The newspapers gave it no more than a couple of sentences in all those column inches.
In Australia, as elsewhere in the world, paedophiles get run out of town. But this one was rich and entertaining; that and he tipped his victims and their parents generously. How much easier would Dennis Ferguson’s life be if only he could dance?
Michael Jackson and Jordan Chandler, whom Jackson paid to drop his case against him.
Somewhere along the line years ago it became unacceptably mean to bring up that Michael Jackson was a known child molester. The poor man had endured a troubled childhood and he had that awful skin condition that he’d told Oprah all about. Hadn’t he suffered enough? Leave him alone. (Oddly it was socially acceptable to cringe at his disturbing friendship with Elizabeth Taylor. You were allowed to think that was creepy and beyond the pale.)
Despite his record-setting in the music business, Michael Jackson was unusual for a pop star (let alone the “king of pop”) in that nobody wanted to be Jackson so he had no influence on hats as fashion despite fedoras being a signature part of his look. It’s not that we didn’t notice that fedoras were an important part of his wardrobe. Just look at the role the fedora is playing in the tributes and cash-in attempts that have followed his death.
 Sand sculpture of Michael Jackson with fedora (right) on the beach at Puri, India. |
 Michael Jackson memorial fedora T-shirt on eBay |
 "Drawing / Painting of a Fedora Hat in Memory of Michael Jackson" by Michael D. Edens |
Justin Timberlake puts on a trilby and young boys the world over grab a stingy brim; Harrison Ford wears a fedora in a period film and the Akubra Federation IV is born for today’s snappy dressers (my bias); but Michael Jackson puts on a fedora as part of a contemporary street outfit and no one follows.
I was a teenager when Michael Jackson was in his heyday but no one I knew coveted a fedora because Jackson wore one. And we weren’t less impressionable than today’s Timberlake teenagers: all the girls had their Madonna fingerless black lace gloves while I and every other boy wore black shirts and white pencil ties because of whoever started that.
Maybe now that one of its chief celebrity endorsers is dead, the fedora will come have a chance to emerge from the trilby’s shadow.
Update 9 July 2009: It isn’t often I agree with Bill O’Reilly but this is one of those times.
About the author
We have had 1000’s of MJ hat inquires and supplied a number of these hats to collectors and also to impersonator people doing Mj the world over. It is an extremly popular hat with some crowds but pales in comparrison to IJ’s hat that was NOT the Akubra Fed IV.
That’s fascinating, Charlie. Perhaps in death Michael Jackson will start a fedora trend he didn’t in life. It would be interesting to hear from you how long the demand keeps up.
You’re right that the Fed IV isn’t the hat Indiana Jones wore but it was conceived as a direct response to “Indiana Jones fans and hat collectors who wanted a genuine pre World War 2 fedora” (Hats Direct website). Michael Jackson, on the other hand, didn’t lead to a similar hat homage.
You just lost a reader with this one.
I’m sorry to hear that, Thomas, and also to hear that you read only what you agree with.
I wonder if you’d feel differently if it were OJ Simpson who had died and the world and its media had gone soft on his memory.
Good on you for saying it how it is Steven. Whilst it is taboo to talk about the recently departed it would be a greater shame if fame and money can be used to cover up something like child molestation.
@thomas – you don’t have to agree with Steven, but that doesn’t mean you can’t continue to read his views. After all, if our views are never challenged how do we know how strongly we feel about them?
You people make me sick….Michael Jackson was ACQUITTED!!!!!!!>>>NOT GUILTY!!!!!!!! That makes him NOT a pedophile nor a child molester, just being accused tarnished him as a human being….Bill O’Reilly is a racist person period, and Peter King is a bad representive for his state. Apparently they havent learned anything from being a vulture, thats what the media people are, VULTURES!!!!! They dont have anything better to do then sit there at the desk and rip someone’s life to pieces, as they are all doing on every network. Give Michael credit for what he did do instead of continuely tearing apart every aspect of his life. CAN’T YOU FIND SOMETHING ELSE BETTER TO DO THEN FURTHER DESTROY MICHAEL?????? He was and ALWAYS will be the BEST entertainer of ALL time, there will never be another like him. Maybe everybody that is talking negative about him needs to listen, and I mean really listen to Michael’s song “Man In The Mirror”, because I am truly confident that you all have skeletons in the closet.
It’s true that MJ was acquitted but so was OJ. My argument isn’t about not giving Michael Jackson credit for what his music, it’s about his music not entitling him to a whitewash about his inappropriate relationships with children. I don’t know whether he was the best entertainer of all time but, as I argue in the post, talent doesn’t excuse molesting children.
Of course nothing excuses child molesting but you have no evidence that Michael Jackson did such a thing. He does not fit the profile of a pedophile. He hang around hundreds of kids throughout his lifetime and what 2 reckons that he molested them?
He was framed by these the parents of both these kids who were after his money. The parents of the first boy, went to a lawyer first before the police found out. Who goes to a lawyer when their kid gets molested and who would accept money for it? I would want the bastard thrown in jail. In the second case, he was acquitted. Because there was no evidence of the crime, for example: the kid´s older brother says he saw Michael Jackson´s penis and described it circumcised and in fact it was not.
Being childish wanting to hang around kids is NOT a crime.
What doesn OJ have anything to do with Michael Jackson, what because he was a black celebrity too? Get your facts straight.
It would be more useful if you tried to find out who were the actual makers of Michael´s Jackson´s hat and the specifics of the fedora hats he wore in the Smooth Criminal (white) and Billie Jean performances (black.)