This is a slightly different article about the Michael Jackson trial from the angle of childhood remembrances and men's legacies of abuse. I have to include a link because it is just too long otherwise.
by Max Gordon
February 24, 2005
I
With the announcement that the jury had finally been selected for Michael Jackson’s trial on charges of child molestation came this memory: when my friend Douglas and I were twelve, Douglas was the first to have Michael Jackson hair. He came to school one Monday morning with a clear, disposable shower cap over his head. Over the weekend, his mother had taken him to get a jherri curl. He’d been begging her for months. A jherri curl was a serious expense in 1982 and cost between eighty and a hundred dollars; a big difference from the ten dollar haircuts Douglas and I got once a month at the barbershop. It was a luxury that required a beauty parlor and an entire afternoon. I’d wondered on Saturday why Douglas hadn’t been able to go bike-riding, why he hadn’t answered the phone all day. When I finally reached him on Sunday, he told me he’d see me the next morning at school with a big surprise.
http://memoriesofmichael.blogspot.com