Like I Told You People Before, Michael Jackson Is Innocent.

I can remember, as a child, being in rehearsals for a performance of "OLIVER!" at Southwestern (now Rhodes) college. I carried my walkman with me everywhere and in the player, like millions of other kids, I was listening to "Thriller" by Michael Jackson. It even today is one of the most well-produced, best-sounding albums ever created. My friends and I had a pizza party to celebrate watching the first airing of "Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' Video" on MTV. He made a record with E.T. He drew out the spirit of every performer he worked with, and the mere mention of his name brought hushed whispers over rooms of adults and children alike. Michael Jackson represented the child in all of us then, and with today's verdict one might be tempted to think that still holds true.

The years of pilfering Michael's notorious goodwill by neer-do-wells, grifters, con artists, and people with an affliction related to celebrity have done much to interfere with the wunderkind of Michael Jackson's creative ability. It has affected his mental stability, his health, and yes, sadly, his career as one of the world's top performers.

The worst part, I fear, is that the verdict will not be enough to refocus people on Michael Jackson the artist. People in America don't seem to like anyone that has more money than they do, and people will use the same tired phrases to explain away the verdict -- "If I had millions of dollars, I could get off, too!" Michael's statements about sharing his bed with boys is, to people like you and me, way too repulsive to be considered acceptable -- "What other 46 year old man would you let share a bed with your child?" Too much has been said by people with an agenda, too many hard feelings have been pressed around, the sound bytes that people have picked up, convictions of the pundits and those repelled by the allure of Jackson the person will still seek to weigh him down. Can anyone tell me what O.J. is up to these days?

Michael's fascination with circus freaks, with P.T. Barnum, with what most of us deem as oddball and eccentric notwithstanding, is it such a stretch to see him as representing the sheer innocence that we each lose as we grow older? To see him as something more pure than we can understand? If we can believe that the people who have been around Michael Jackson over the last 46 years have a certain practical level of good judgement, there has to be a valid reason why reasonable people would behave differently around him than they would around anyone else. Maybe he's not such an evil, horrible creature after all.

Or maybe in his own mind, he is one of Barnum's freaks himself.

Part of me still resembles that kid rocking out to "P.Y.T." and "Beat It" in the dressing room. Part of me occasionally longs for that pizza party and my friends, most of whom I will never see again. But the way that I understand Michael Jackson will never be the same again.

It doesn't matter whether anyone ever thought he was guilty or innocent in the first place. The verdict is the verdict, and you're going to think about it whatever you thought about the whole damned thing before.

But wouldn't it be ok if we simply tried believing that there might be a love so pure in the world that it destroys all of our myths and notions about the worst in humanity?

Congratulations, Michael. On the off chance that the jurors were wrong about their decision today, maybe you should get some help.

But don't go to Love In Action for it, please?