#god. all those talks nat and i have about being narcissists don't help me be any less of a narcissist

[boricuacherry-blog]

Some quotes from the Rabbi Schmuley Boteach tapes:

You've had Belafonte, you've had Sammy, you had Nat King Cole. People loved their music, but they didn't get adulation, they didn't get crying. I was the first one to break the ice, break the mold, where white girls, Scottish girls, are screaming, 'I'm in love with you, I want to - ' And that gave a lot of the white press, they didn't like that, and that's why they started the stories. Anything to turn people against me. They tried their hardest.

Why don't you hang out with those celebrities, more Hollywood people?

They love the limelight and I don't have anything in common with them. They want to go clubbing and afterwards they want to sit around and drink hard liquor and do marijuana and all kinds of crazy things that I wouldn't do.

And despite being one of the most influential entertainers of all time, Jackson says he never understood why he still couldn't catch a break from the press, even when he wrote ballads like 'Earth Song' and focused on making the world a better place.

I've been an ambassador of goodwill all over the world, spreading this message. What I don't understand is just singing about sex and 'I want to get in a hot tub with you baby and rub you all over' and, but I get battered in the press as a weirdo. And the press, they wait with knives really -

For you to fail?

Absolutely. They try and shred me apart. Because when you are the top-selling artist of all time, the records that are broken, they wait. You're the target now. Get him down, get him, you know what I mean?

So what gave you the strength to persevere?

Believing in children. Believing in young people. Believing that God gave me this for a reason, to help my babies. I would love to come back as a child that never grows old, like Peter Pan.

As he opened up, Jackson could sometimes sound narcissistic.

Going to my shows, it's like a religious experience, because you come out, you go in one person, you come out a different person.

Do you feel that God gave you a certain healing power?

Yes. And I've seen children just shower me all over with love. They want to just touch me and hug me and completely just hold on and cry and not let go. And mothers pick up their babies and put them in my arms. 'Touch my baby, and hold them, touch my baby, touch my baby.'

You're healing him [Gavin Arvizo], not just speaking to him?

Everytime I talk to him, he is in a better spirit. I KNOW I'm healing him. He says, 'I need you Michael.' Then he calls me, 'Dad.' I go, 'You better ask your dad if it is ok for you to call me that.' He goes, 'Dad, is it ok if I call Michael 'dad'?' And he says, 'Yeah, no problem, whatever you want.' Kids always do that and I always feel that I don't want the parents to get jealous that it happens sometimes and it rubs fathers in a strange way. And the kids just end up falling in love with me as a person and my personality. Sometimes it gets me into trouble, you know, but I'm just there to help.

He says he could have changed Hitler.

Yes, I think I could have. I really do. I think nobody really talked to him. I hate to say - brownnosers - but that's what they were. That's what he wanted. That's what they did.

He talks about Madonna.

They admire you and know you're wonderful and great but they're jealous 'cause they wish they were in your place, wish they were in your shoes. And 'M' is one of them. Madonna. She's not a nice, she hasn't been kind -

She's jealous?

Absolutely. She's a woman and I think that's what bothers her. Women don't scream for other women. Men are too cool to scream for women and I get that. I get the fainting and the adulation and the notoriety but she doesn't. She can't get that.

Michael showed me a full-page picture in The New York Post of him walking out of a meeting with the Dalai Lama the day before. He said that he found his conversations with me more enlightening than those he had had with the Dalai Lama. Flattered, and a bit embarrassed, I responded that the Dalai Lama was a truly great man and that I was not in his league, not a guru of any kind, but simply a man who had chosen to be a rabbi as a direct consequence of his parents' divorce and that I was trying to figure out the labyrinth of life using the profound moral code found in God's law, the Torah. Along the way, I sought to share with others about mastering life and establishing an ethical and spiritual foundation into which we could all anchor our lives. Michael asked if I could take him to a synagogue. I took Michael to the most musical of all the synagogues in New York City, the Carlebach Schule founded by legendary Jewish folk artist Schlomo Carlebach, whose beautiful and soulful melodies have become justly famous. He later told me that that evening at the synagogue was one of the happiest of his life.

On the third day of my visit, a low-level diplomat from an obscure European country came, whom he thought could help him get a UN Ambassadorship to fulfill his vision of being a kind of international spokesman on children's issues. Michael asked me to join the meeting, I assume, to vouch for his character. Michael came across as desperate, thus conveying the impression even he acknowledged, given the 1993 allegations of child molestation, that he was damaged goods and no one would be interested in him.

I told him that if he wanted to be a credible global spokesperson for children, he was going about it all the wrong way. "What you lack above all else is credibility. Only through a major lifestyle shift - a moral makeover - can you gain back the respectability you've lost," I said.

He eagerly asked, "Would you be able to help me do this?"

"If you are serious, and you take it seriously," I said, "then, yes, I will be prepared to help you. You need to surround yourself with respected thinkers, authors, statesmen, and especially, childrearing experts. And you can never be alone with a child that is not yours, again. Ever."

Michael immediately agreed with me. He verbalized his commitment to never being alone with kids.

I had a click of insight that the solution to Michael was to work with parents and caregivers rather than kids. After all, the problem for many kids was that they were being raised by proxy because parents were too busy, too stressed, or too uninterested to give children what they needed most - time and love, family dinners, bedtime stories.

"Work on bringing your message to the world's parents," I said. "You will help the kids and the world will be grateful."

I also told him, "You have done a very poor job of explaining yourself to the world or responding to these incessant attacks. You have never explained why you have chosen to remain so childlike and people do not understand it. In light of the 1993 allegations, and in the absence of such explanations, people are bound to conclude that a forty-something adult who refuses to grow up is either spoiled or has a screw loose."

Finally, I told him that he had to make sure that he had the ingredients of a wholesome life. I could see that they were mostly absent. There was no regular Sunday church attendance. Aside from his personal faith, God seemed to be entirely absent from the life of Michael Jackson. His children had no other kids to play with and their degree of isolation was unhealthy.

"I'm desperate and I think you're the only one who can help me," he said. "You're my friend and I know you can help me."

To be sure, it was extremely seductive and flattering to have a man as influential as Michael telling me that I was the only one who could help him. It certainly made me feel special.

Was this a cosmic drama that was playing out? Could it be that a rabbi and a rock star could team up to help make the world a better place? Could the dream that I had harbored, ever since I watched my parents' divorce at the tender age of eight, of healing and strengthening families, come to fruition through the agency of Michael's fame and extend the effect of the writing and speeches I'd already been giving around the world? Or was my natural, internal brokenness, coupled with my desire to be recognized as an exponent of values, simply grabbing onto a rickety foundation to anchor itself? Only time would tell.

As a rabbi, I am the representative of a culture that values family and children above all else. And now I was being asked by one of the most recognizable names on earth to assist him in his work to improve the lives of children around the world.

The trust between us was total - at least that's what I was led to believe.

I would say to him, "You have to get up at a normal hour, and you have to go to sleep at a normal hour. Life needs structure. Your kids have to play with other peoples kids, and they have to go to parks and to school. Even if you are divorced, your children need access to both parents to be as secure and well-balanced as possible. You need normal friends who can tether you to the earth and to whom you are accountable. Most of all, you need God, the architect of humanity and the source of all blessing, who gives us rules by which we all thrive. You have to stop making the rules up as you go along."

In truth, I felt bad for him. True, I never left him alone with my kids, but I didn't think he would ever have harmed them, God forbid.

Three years later, he would be arrested on charges of child molestation with Gavin Arvizo.

-Rabbi Schmuley Boteach, The Michael Jackson Tapes

[outofbodyinjury]

sometimes I think about everything I’ve written and even though it took me a very long time I’m like wow that’s very nice maybe I’m great at this :)