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12 News of Him Filming for Pepsi, he hip-hops down a flight of golden stairs. A Roman candle, spraying colors like a feather headdress, strokes his hair, which flares into a crown of flames. That day his surgeries begin: nose turned up cute as a girl’s; cheeks lifted; eyes widened; lips thinned; black skin bleached tan, then angel-white. The voice, high and pure as an angel’s, doesn’t change. Nor does he use it to blow critics into The Pit—only to build Neverland, where kids ride Ferris wheels, scarf candy, patty-cake with chimps, and—in a swimming-pool-sized bed, on pillows puffed like clouds, and smooth, winter-white sheets—join him in (he swears) innocent sleep. Naturally, persecution comes: search warrants, lawsuits, exposés, then mocking, scourging, settling out of court, along with plunging record sales, botched marriages, his bone-white children veiled as he retreats behind the mask of sorrow all gods know. Multitudes hear a doctor on TV describe their savior’s end-stage nose. A black Judas betrays him on the BBC. The press crucifies him, and he weeps—not for himself, for them, his followers say. For he so loved the world, he gave it the moonwalk and Thriller. He preached the gospel of “Black or White,” and “Beat It.” He showed how bad was good, 13 advised us to be startin’ somethin’, and not to stop till we got enough. He promised never to grow old as he appeared, hearing Not Guilty. Now, as war’s atomic lizard flames up from the sea, and we buy duct tape to seal out toxic air, we fill deflated lives with news of him. Remembering the boy who sang “I’ll Be There,” “I Want You Back,” and “Never Can Say Goodbye,” we watch him descend, again and again, the golden stairs, bringing his message of hope and joy and Pepsi-Cola, his hair flaming with celestial light. ...

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