Michael Jackson (50 page)

Around this time, John Branca received a telephone call from Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole asking if Michael would
donate ‘Beat It’ as background music for a thirty-second television commercial and sixty-second radio spot on drunk driving.
When John presented the idea to Michael, his reaction was swift. ‘That's tacky,’ he said. ‘I can't do that.’

John told Michael he would call Elizabeth Dole and tell her that they were not interested. However, Michael then got an idea.
‘You know what?’ he mused. ‘If I can get some kind of an award from the White House, then I'll give them the song. How about
that?’ he said, now excited. ‘See what you can negotiate with them, Branca.’

‘What do you want?’ asked John, bemused.

‘Well,’ Michael said, like a kid coming up with a Wish List. ‘I want to go to the White House. I want to be on a stage with
the President [Ronald Reagan], and get an award from him. And I sure want to meet Nancy [First Lady, Nancy Reagan]. The whole
works. Why not? You think you can do that, Branca. Can you get me an award from the President?’

John laughed. ‘Well, I can sure try.’ The next day, John Branca went to work on the idea. He telephoned Elizabeth Dole and
told her that she could have the song for her drunk-driving campaign if she dreamed up some kind of humanitarian award that
the President could present to Michael. She agreed. The President agreed, as did the First Lady.

The presentation was set for 14 May 1984. It had started out as an exciting day. In fact, it was said that there hadn't been
that much excitement at the White House since the day the hostages came home from Iran. For the occasion, the President wore
a navy blue suit, navy blue and grey striped tie and white shirt. Nancy was chic in a white Adolfo suit trimmed with gold
buttons and gold braid. It hardly mattered what she wore, though, for anyone standing next to Michael Jackson that day would
pale in comparison. Michael appeared resplendent in an electric-blue sequined jacket adorned with sequined braid, a sequined
gold sash, and sequined gold epaulets. He also wore his trademark single white, rhinestoned glove.

Hundreds of White House officials and secretaries, many of them clutching cameras, gathered on the sun-speckled lawn to catch
a glimpse of Michael. More than a hundred yards back from the stage, the White House fence was lined solidly with fans, many
wearing a single white glove like the one Michael sported.

Two thousand people cheered as Ronald Reagan stepped on to a stage on the White House South Lawn with Nancy and Michael. ‘Well,
isn't this a thriller,’ he said. ‘We haven't seen this many people since we left China. And just think you all came to see
me.’

As Michael, the President and the First Lady walked to the Oval Office, one middle-aged White House office worker standing
across from the Rose Garden shrieked, ‘I saw his foot. I saw his foot!’

A special metal detector was constructed in the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden to screen Michael and his entourage of eight security
men; Frank Dileo, John Branca and publicist Norman Winter. There was also a young man with Michael, a person no one seemed
to know, except for Michael. He was dark, in his early twenties, and good looking. Dileo, Branca and Winter were perplexed
as to who this person was, and when Michael was asked how the man should be identified to the press, he said, ‘He's a close
friend of mine. I don't care what you tell people. It's no one's business.’ Norman Winter must have known that the presence
of this mystery friend would raise some eyebrows. In order to protect Michael from controversy, he identified the man as a
Secret Service agent.

Once at the podium, the President noted that Michael was ‘proof of what a person can accomplish through a lifestyle free of
alcohol or drug abuse. People young and old respect that. And if Americans follow his example, then we can face up to the
problem of drinking and driving, and we can, in Michael's words, beat it.’ After the President handed him a plaque, the only
words Michael nervously spoke – or whispered, rather – were, ‘I'm very, very honoured. Thank you very much, Mr President.’ A pause.
‘Oh, and Mrs Reagan, too,’ he added as an afterthought. Then, he giggled as if it suddenly occurred to him that yes, he really
was
standing there with the President of the United States.

Six news photographers covering the event wore white gloves on one hand as they shot pictures of the Reagans and Jackson.
The whole event took about nine minutes. Afterwards, nine police motorcycles and several vans and mounted police escorted
Michael from the White House.

But before they left, the entourage was given a special tour of the White House; Michael was particularly fascinated by a
portrait of Andrew Jackson in a military jacket very much like the blue-sequinned one he wore that day. After the tour, the
group was scheduled to spend time with the President and the First Lady.

Things took a turn for the worse, though, when Michael arrived at the Diplomatic Reception Room where he was to meet privately
with the Reagans. He had been told that only a few children of staff members would be present. Instead, there were about seventy-five
adults. Michael put one foot into the Reception Room, took a quick look around, and then ran out, down the hall and into the
bathroom off the Presidential Library. Frank Dileo and the rest of the entourage followed him. However, before they could
reach him, Michael closed the door and locked it.

‘Hey, Mike, come on out,’ Frank said.

‘No. They said there would be kids. But those aren't kids,’ Michael shouted back.

‘But there
will
be children. We'll go get the children,’ a White House aide promised. Then he turned to an assistant. ‘Listen, if the First
Lady gets a load of this, she's going to be mad as hell. Now you go get some kids in here, damn it. Get James Baker's kid.
She's cute. [Chief of Staff James Baker had brought his six-year-old daughter, Mary Bonner.] I don't care
who
you get, just get some kids in here.’

Frank then addressed the closed bathroom door, again. ‘It's okay, Michael. We're going to get the kids.’ His voice had a patient
tone, as though he were soothing a disturbed child. John Branca stood near by, watching with a bemused expression on his face.

‘Well, you'll have to also clear all of those adults out of there before I come out,’ Michael warned.

‘Done.’

Someone ran into the Reception Room. ‘Okay, out!’ he said. ‘Everybody out. Out, out,
out!
’

Senior staff and cabinet members cleared that room so quickly, an observer might have thought there had been a bomb threat.

‘What's happening?’

‘Where's Michael Jackson?’

‘Has he left?’

Everyone spoke at once as they were ushered from the room.

The aide then ran back to the bathroom door, where a cluster of men with worried looks had congregated. He conferred with
one of Michael's people. ‘Okay. You can come out now, Michael,’ Norman Winter said, finally. ‘Everything is okay.’

‘Are you sure?’ came back the soft voice.

Frank Dileo knocked on the door with his fist, one loud thud. ‘Okay, Mike, outta there. I mean it.’

The bathroom door opened slowly. Michael appeared. He looked around, slightly embarrassed. Frank put his arm around him. ‘I'm
sorry,’ Michael told him, ‘but I was told there wouldn't be so many people.’

Michael was then ushered back into the Reception Room, where awaiting him were just a few officials and their children. Elizabeth
Dole was the first to approach Michael. She handed him a copy of
Thriller
and asked him to sign the record jacket.

Then Ronald and Nancy Reagan arrived and led Michael into the Roosevelt Room to meet some other aides and their families.

Nancy Reagan whispered to one of Michael's staff. ‘I've heard that he wants to look like that singer Diana Ross, but really,
looking at him up close, he's so much prettier than she is. Don't you agree? I mean, I just don't think
she's
that attractive, but
he
certainly is.’

The First Lady waited for a response. There was none.

‘I just wish he would take off his sunglasses,’ she said. ‘Tell me, has he had any surgery on his eyes?’

The aide shrugged. He knew better than to discuss Michael's private life, even with the President's wife.

She studied Michael closely as he spoke to her husband on the other side of the room. ‘Certainly his nose has been done,’
she observed, her tone hushed. ‘More than once, I'd say. I wonder about his cheekbones, though. Is that makeup, or has he
had them done too?’

By this time, the First Lady didn't act as if she actually expected an answer, but the aide shrugged again anyway.

‘It's all so peculiar, really,’ Nancy observed as Ronald Reagan shook Michael's hand. ‘A boy who looks just like a girl, who
whispers when he speaks, wears a glove on one hand and sunglasses all the time. I just don't know what to make of it.’ She
shook her head in dismay, as if at a loss for words.

Finally, the Jackson employee broke his silence. ‘Listen, you don't know the half of it,’ he said, rolling his eyes. He looked
at her with a conspiratorial smile, expecting her to laugh. She didn't. Instead, she stared at him for a cold moment. ‘Well,
he
is
talented,’ she said as she walked away, ‘and I would think that's all that
you
should be concerned about.’

Michael may have been treated like an American hero in May 1984, but the tide would turn in June when the plan for distribution
of tickets for the Victory tour – now scheduled to begin in Kansas City on 6 July – was announced. Joseph Jackson, Don King and
Chuck Sullivan came up with a unique concept: tickets would be thirty dollars each and sold in lots of four
only.
Ordering tickets did not guarantee getting them. The names of those who ordered would be selected at random by a computer
drawing coupons that had to be cut out of advertisements published in local newspapers. Therefore, the Jacksons fan had to
send a $120 postal money order
^*
–
plus
a two-dollar service charge for each ticket –
and
the coupon, all in ‘a standard Number Ten envelope’, to the ticket address printed in the advertisement.

Promoters predicted that as many as twelve million fans would mail in $1.5 billion in money orders for the twelve-city, forty-two-concert
Victory tour, but only about one in ten applicants would actually receive tickets. In order even to be considered, the money
orders were to be postmarked at least two weeks before the concert. With the delay in returning money to the unlucky ones – four
to six weeks – the promoters and the Jacksons would have use of it for six to eight weeks. Assuming the tour sold $144 million
in tickets, as the promoters estimated, $1.4 billion in excess payments would have to be returned. In a common money-market
deposit account in a bank, which paid about 7 per cent interest, that money would earn eight million dollars a month for the
promoters and Jackson family. The Jacksons' spokesman, Howard Bloom, said that whatever interest that would accrue on each
$120 order would go toward costs of handling and postage for unfilled orders.

If you were a lucky winner and allowed to see the Victory show, you wouldn't know if you were going to go – or which show you
would attend – until two days before the concert. If the mail was delayed, the tickets could easily arrive
after
the concert.

The tickets were obviously priced too high for even white middle-class kids if they had to buy them in lots of four. It's
almost impossible to imagine that many of Michael's most loyal followers, kids from the ghetto, would be able to afford the
luxury of seeing the concert.

Making matters more distasteful, The Jacksons and their promoters said that they would like to not have to pay for the advertisements
from which the coupons were to be clipped, saying that those ads should be run free of cost as ‘public service advertisements’.
Of course, most newspapers didn't see it that way. ‘It's just a way to make more millions for the Jacksons,’ said Bob Haring,
executive editor of the
Tulsa World.

Before the outrageous plan was announced, Michael and John Branca met with the brothers to try to talk them out of it.

‘We got to get as much as possible for the tickets,’ one of the brothers said. ‘The sky's the limit.’

‘No,’ Michael argued. ‘That's not the way to do it. There's going to be a backlash. The tickets shouldn't be more than twenty
bucks each. And the mail order idea is terrible.’ In fact, the tickets for concerts by the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen
at this time were sixteen dollars each. Michael had wanted a simple twenty dollar ticket price, no lots of four, no money
orders, no coupons.

The brothers voted against Michael, five to one.

‘Okay, that's it,’ Michael decided later in a meeting with John Branca and Frank Dileo. ‘This is going to be my last tour
with the guys. I'm very serious. So I don't want you to try to run anything. Let them do it all their way. I'm just one vote
out of six. Let them do their thing. This is their last shot. I'm out of it.’