Off the Wall
ABC's case against Michael Jackson.
Michael Jackson, apparently, was covered with "spots" as a teenager and now believes that his children might be snatched in a "multimillion-pound" kidnapping.
Pounds? Spots?! Why did Martin Bashir, a British journalist, not bother to learn American English before interviewing Michael Jackson? The better to put words in Jackson's mouth?
Living With Michael Jackson, Bashir's English documentary, aired Monday in Britain, then made its American debut Thursday at 8 p.m. on ABC's 20/20. Yes, Jackson looks whittled and blanched; he spends weeks in Vegas among wax mannequins of monstrous-looking servants; and he speaks nervously about women in a way that suggests his turbulent sexuality. But Bashir's blundering misunderstandings of Jackson's idiom, and impositions of his own, force scandal even where there is none.
Take just one example.
Bashir: "How much do you think you're worth?"
Jackson: "It's way up there."
Bashir: "How much?"
Jackson: "Come on, Martin."
Bashir: "A billion dollars?"
Jackson: "It's over there."
Virginia Heffernan is a television critic for The New York Times. Her book, The Underminer, which she wrote with Mike Albo, comes out in February.
Photograph of Michael Jackson by Alexandra Winkler/Reuters.