MICHAEL AND R.: Richard Goldstein, the Village Voice's resident Angry Gay Man, is usually way off the charts (as evidenced by his Howard-Dean-is-butch piece in The Nation this month), but I've gotta give him credit for his piece in the Voice this week which points out the double standard between pop music's two foremost accused child molesters, Michael Jackson and R. Kelly.
Why, Goldstein asks, has Kelly both maintained his status as a sex symbol and continued to have a successful career, while Jackson is seen almost universally as a freak whose career is over? Part of the answer, of course, is that Jackson hasn't helped himself with his grotesque looks and non-stop erratic behavior, but also true is that of course there's one standard for those accused of molesting girls and another for boys. And besides, Kelly's assertion that "only Osama Bin Laden knows what I'm going through" was as questionable as anything that's come out of Jackson's mouth.
Would Roman Polanski have a single defender anywhere had he fled the country after sexing up a boy? Could anyone in hip hop continue to have a career if a videotape surfaced of him having sex (or urinating on) an underage male? I'm guessing the answer to both questions is "not fucking likely."