Michael Jackson Angry Over GQ Spoof Photos

Michael Jackson is not happy about a GQ spoof piece entitled “Where’s Michael?”

A recent GQ article spoofing Michael Jackson has the singer demanding the magazine apologize and pull the issue from circulation. In a statement released Friday, Jackson’s representative, Raymone K. Bain, said Jackson is “furious” about a series of photos featuring a Jackson impersonator in the magazine’s May issue, now on newsstands.

The photos accompany an article called “Where’s Michael?” which documents writer Devin Friedman’s quest to find Jackson in Bahrain, the Middle Eastern country where he lives. In one photo, a Jackson look-alike sits in a darkened movie theater amid a row of children. Another photo shows him standing in the desert draped in a black cloak and headscarf, with his trademark glittery white glove.

The statement said: “Mr. Jackson is furious that his image has been used in such a misleading way, and is demanding an apology from the editors of GQ, and its publisher, Conde Nast. Mr. Jackson is also demanding that the magazines be pulled from newsstands.”

Jim Nelson, GQ editor-in-chief, responded with a statement Friday: “It is very clear that the pictures in the story … are satirical, whether it’s a picture of a Michael Jackson imitator sitting in a Bahraini cinema or an image of The Gloved One standing flamboyantly in the desert. “Mr. Jackson may feel that the person in the photographs is an `impostor,’ but he is merely an imitator,” said Nelson.

The feature is currently available online, although only one of the photos is included.

The obsessed know that Michael Jackson has been living in the tiny nation of Bahrain for almost a year. Possibly as a cross-dresser, a drug addict, a Muslim, or at least a still weird human being. After his acquittal last June, he vacated Neverland, ï¬‚ew east, and disappeared into the desert, presumably to escape an entire nation that no longer loved him.

In the intervening year, those who had been searching for it will have found some coverage of Michael Jacksonâ€™s life in the Middle East. Sunday Mirror, September 18, 2005: Seen cruising Bahrain in a red Ferrari he had shipped from America. New York Post, November 14, 2005: Went shopping for toys. Daily News, November 15, 2005: Spotted in the womenâ€™s bathroom at a mall while visiting Dubai, wearing womenâ€™s clothing and applying makeup. (After which Michael Jacksonâ€™s spokeswoman in Washington, D.C., issued a statement in response, which was picked up by the Associated Press: It was all a mistake! Wrong door!) Some of the news coverage has been sensationalistic: One plotline has it that Michael Jackson is taking forty Xanaxes a day, delivered via secret ï¬‚ights from California. Which is somehow tied to some underpants that investigators had found at Neverland that tested positive for trace amounts of cocaine but were never introduced at the trial because, you know, anyone could have been handling those underpants (unclear how it all links up, but underpants and cocaine: a bad combination for Mr. Sleepover). And the Jackson family, having caught wind of this addiction, was supposedly set to stage an intervention in which theyâ€™d ï¬‚y to Bahrain and get him the help he needs, thereby preserving the life to which he is now hanging on to by a thread.

I could see where Jackson might be angry. The piece is not presented as a satire, so it could conceivably confuse some readers. Jackson might have a case here.

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Michael Jackson Angry Over GQ Spoof Photos

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