Randall Sullivan's book "Untouchable"

Based on this Amazon com review and the author I would say no. We need a real fans review ..
Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, November 2012: Does the world need another book about the late King of Pop? Do you want to read one? Before opening onetime Rolling Stone editor Sullivan’s massive (775+ pages) book, I would surely have screamed NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Everybody knows the story: adorable musical prodigy grows up into weird, plastic surgery–addicted, money-obsessed celebrity who may or may not have been a pedophile but is doubtless sexually stunted. And how could he not have been, given the horrific treatment he received from his father, who apparently couldn’t decide whether to beat him to death or just pimp him out as a performer? Sullivan hits all those notes, of course, and while the recitation of Jackson’s many debts and trials verges on wearying, the sheer accumulation of detail and unusual amount of access to longtime Jackson advisors and relatives also makes you realize, once and for all, the extent of the damage done both to and by the guy the British press dubbed “Wacko Jacko.” From the very first scene--in which Joe and Katherine Jackson trick their way into their son’s home--the Michael Jackson that emerges here is both hero and villain, a loving father (truly!) and a screaming egomaniac, a sometimes brilliant businessman who was also pathetically naïve. Go on: Check out this train wreck of a life. I dare you to look away. --Sara Nelson

An excerpt from Sullivan's latest article in Daily mail
THE JARFUL OF STICK-ON NOSES
In his closet at Neverland, Jackson kept a big jar of fake noses of various shapes and sizes, surrounded by tubes of stage glue.

‘He told me they were for disguises,’ recalled Adrian McManus, one of his staff at the ranch. At this point, Michael was disguising the result of at least six rhinoplasty operations: a pair of nostrils surrounded by a rim of shrivelled, shrunken, discoloured cartilage.

The singer had been a skilled make-up artist since his teens, and in 15 minutes at the mirror could create an appearance that fooled most people.

Plastic surgeons had been speculating on TV since as early as 1990 that the tip of his nose had been replaced by a prosthetic of either bone or plastic.

By about 2001, the way his nose changed from year to year, sometimes from week to week, had given him away.
But he managed to salvage something from this personal disaster: at least he could now have the nose he had always wanted – Bobby Driscoll’s. The most famous child star of the late Forties and early Fifties, Driscoll had for years been an icon of Jackson’s to rival Shirley Temple.

There is footage from 2002 of Jackson standing amid an enthralled crowd outside the Virgin Megastore in Times Square, New York, his Bobby Driscoll nose raised to the sky as if to declare: ‘I am Peter Pan.’
 
Here are some more excerpts from the book:

From The Daily Mail:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...th-life-took-vanload-death.html#ixzz2BrhvKsHS
Curse of Michael's millions: How Michael Jackson's family preyed on his wealth and took it by the vanload after his death
New biography expose how the Jackson family used the King of Pop for his money
By RANDALL SULLIVAN

In the late summer of 2001, Michael Jackson’s family were after him again. It was two days before his scheduled departure for New York, where his 30th Anniversary concerts were to be staged at Madison Square Garden.
Performers would include Destiny’s Child, Ray Charles and Whitney Houston, and friends Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando had been recruited to deliver televised speeches.
Michael wanted his family in New York as well; his brothers to perform a medley of hits from their days as the Jackson 5, while his parents sat in special box seats. The Jacksons insisted that they should receive appearance fees and it was agreed that family members would get honorariums of $250,000, even those who would just be there to watch the show.

Just days before the first concert, though, Jermaine Jackson read an article that said his brother would be making as much as $10 million from the two shows and convinced his parents that Michael should pay the three of them another $500,000 apiece.
Jermaine and his father Joe drew up a contract and, with mother Katherine in tow, chased Michael around California to try to get him to sign.
Michael took refuge for several days at the house of his friend Marc Schaffel, co-producer of the event, then made a dash north to Neverland Ranch. He and his two young children, four-year-old Prince and three-year-old Paris, had barely set foot inside the house when Joe, Katherine and Jermaine appeared at the gate.

Michael told the security guards to tell his family he wasn’t there. Joe Jackson, though, refused to budge. ‘I’m his father,’ Joe told the guards. ‘I need to use the bathroom. His mother needs to use the bathroom. Let us in.’
Frantic, Michael phoned Schaffel. If they got through the gate, his family would hound him to sign this contract, he explained. But he couldn’t keep his mother locked outside when she was pleading just to use the bathroom.
He told Schaffel he would instruct the guards to tell his family again that Mr Jackson was not on the premises, but to admit them so that they could use the facilities.
But as soon as Joe and Jermaine were through the gate, they drove to the main house and pushed their way inside. ‘They literally ransacked the place,’ Schaffel remembered.
Michael retreated with Prince and Paris to a hiding place concealed behind a secret door at the back of his bedroom closet and phoned Schaffel from there. He was in tears, literally whimpering into the phone.


‘You see what they do to me? Do you understand now why I don’t want anything to do with my brothers, why I hide from them and refuse to answer their phone calls?
‘I’ve supported my brothers, supported them all,’ Michael cried. ‘I’ve put their kids through school. But they still come after me, still wanting more. It never ends. And my father’s worse than they are.’

Michael choked up, Schaffel recalled, and then sobbed: ‘The worst part, the part that kills me, is that I have to lie to my own mother. Do you understand, Marc?’ Michael asked. ‘Do you understand now why I am the way I am? How else could I be?

For someone who so often professed his loneliness, Michael Jackson spent a remarkable amount of time avoiding people. He wore disguises, broke off relationships, and changed telephone numbers, but still paparazzi, delusional women, and desperate men pursued him. The saddest part, though, was that the people Michael took the greatest pains to elude were the members of his own family.

Until the time he found a way to live off his sons’ talent, his father Joe had worked the four-to-midnight shift as a crane operator amid the blast-furnace heat of the Inland Steel Mill, in Gary, Indiana. He earned barely enough to sustain the family home – a tiny aluminium-sided cube in which 11 people shared a bathroom.
Michael’s memories of early rehearsals all centred on the father/manager who bellowed at them constantly, smacking his sons or throwing them into walls if they made a mistake.
When the band signed to Motown, Michael was quickly singled out as the star. Jackie and Tito possessed only modest musical talent and Marlon had none at all. Jermaine had an adequate singing voice.
Such was Michael’s talent that just one year after signing with the label, the group delivered a debut record, I Want You Back, that shot to the top of the Billboard Hot 100.
In February 1970, the Jackson 5 released their second single, ABC. And with The Love You Save and I’ll Be There, they became the first group ever to send their first four releases to the top of the charts.
Between tours, Joe and his sons returned home to a five-bedroom, six-bathroom mansion in the Los Angeles enclave of Encino. There was an Olympic-size swimming pool, sports facilities, luxury cars and servants’ quarters.


By the mid-Seventies, the Jackson 5 were in professional decline – in sharp contrast with Michael, the true star of the group.
His brothers had wanted to work on the Off The Wall album with him, but Michael refused, even when his mother attempted to convince him that he owed them. Released in 1979, it sold nearly seven million copies worldwide.

Then came the release of Thriller in December 1982, which turned him into, as Rolling Stone put it, ‘quite simply, the biggest star in the pop music universe’. Off The Wall had already made him wealthier than the rest of his family put together, now he would earn more than $200 million from sales of the Thriller album.

No longer his manager, his father was as calculating as ever. He knew that playing the boys against one another was a winning strategy. What a great idea it would be, he suggested to Jackie, Tito, Marlon, and Randy, to capitalise on the success of Thriller by including Michael in a ‘reunion tour’.
Michael resisted. He was tired of touring, he said, tired of all the attention, tired of travel and hotel rooms. Tired of his family, period.

The brothers first tried using guilt to sway him. Marlon was going through a divorce and couldn’t even make his mortgage payments. Maybe he should sell up and buy a smaller house, Michael suggested. The brothers then called a meeting at which they showed up with a life-size poster of Michael and told him they were going to put it onstage in his place. Michael wouldn’t relent. It was time to play their ace in the hole.
During a private meeting Katherine requested with Michael, she implored him to join his brothers on the tour. They needed the money, she told her son. Finally, when all else failed, she pulled out the big gun: ‘For me, Michael, please?’

It was a choice between the only two things Michael had, his mother’s love and his career. He chose his mother’s love, of course.
At the first stop in Kansas City, Jermaine told a reporter: ‘Even though Michael is very talented, a lot of his success has been due to timing and a little bit of luck. It could have been him, or it could just as easily have been me.’
Michael distanced himself from his brothers as the tour progressed, refusing to stay on the same hotel floor with them. He insisted his attorneys be present at the business meetings that, within the first few dates, became the only conversations he had with his siblings. The other Jacksons insisted upon collecting their payments immediately after each show.
No one in his family, though, was prepared for the shout-out Michael gave on December 9, 1984: ‘This is our last and final show. It’s been a long 20 years and we love you all.’
Michael looked at the shocked expressions on his brothers’ faces and couldn’t suppress his smile.
Now established as one of the most famous families on the planet, life among the Jacksons was becoming a soap opera, and a sordid one at that. Michael was determined to distance himself.

The public humiliations seemed endless. In 1983, Jackie’s affair with Los Angeles Lakers cheerleader and future television talent-show judge Paula Abdul blew up his marriage. In March 1987, Jermaine showed up for Marlon’s birthday party carrying his three-month-old son by a woman named Margaret Maldonado, while his wife looked on with an expression of bewilderment.
During their divorce, Jermaine’s wife Hazel would allege that her husband had attempted to rape her.

By 1990, Michael had moved to Neverland, his personal amusement park in Santa Barbara County, California.


He made no comment when newspapers reported that Randy’s wife Eliza was accusing her husband of beating her throughout her pregnancy. The Jackson brothers were all just like Joe, Eliza told a reporter, except for Michael.
Though they depended on his money, usually dispensed through their mother Katherine, his siblings weren’t averse to criticising their brother in public.
Michael’s relationship with his sister La Toya was shattered in December 1993, when she responded to the Jordan Chandler scandal by holding a press conference in Tel Aviv, at which she declared her belief that the accusations against her brother were true.


‘I can’t remain silent,’ she squeaked into a bank of microphones. ‘I will not be a silent collaborator in his crimes against small, innocent children.’
[Jordan was a 13-year-old boy whom Michael has been accused of sexually molesting. The claims, which Jackson always denied, resulted in a payment of more than $18 million to the boy’s family. He would later describe the decision to make a deal with the Chandlers, his lawyer said, as ‘the worst mistake of his life’.]

In 2003, when Michael’s world was collapsing all around him, amid his arrest on further child molestation charges, of which he would be acquitted two years later, Jermaine had gone to New York publishers with a ‘tell-all’ book proposal.
The Jacksons viewed youngest brother Randy as the most conniving among them. He was a chip off the old block, far more like Joe than any of his brothers, visitors said – and that wasn’t intended as a compliment.
Joe Jackson had been hiding from creditors since 1987. He was living mostly on hand-outs from Katherine (who divvied up the $25,000 cheque Michael sent to her each month among needy family members) and was incessantly looking for opportunities to draw his most famous son into business deals.

THE JARFUL OF STICK-ON NOSES
In his closet at Neverland, Jackson kept a big jar of fake noses of various shapes and sizes, surrounded by tubes of stage glue.
‘He told me they were for disguises,’ recalled Adrian McManus, one of his staff at the ranch. At this point, Michael was disguising the result of at least six rhinoplasty operations: a pair of nostrils surrounded by a rim of shrivelled, shrunken, discoloured cartilage.
The singer had been a skilled make-up artist since his teens, and in 15 minutes at the mirror could create an appearance that fooled most people.
Plastic surgeons had been speculating on TV since as early as 1990 that the tip of his nose had been replaced by a prosthetic of either bone or plastic.
By about 2001, the way his nose changed from year to year, sometimes from week to week, had given him away.

But he managed to salvage something from this personal disaster: at least he could now have the nose he had always wanted – Bobby Driscoll’s. The most famous child star of the late Forties and early Fifties, Driscoll had for years been an icon of Jackson’s to rival Shirley Temple.


There is footage from 2002 of Jackson standing amid an enthralled crowd outside the Virgin Megastore in Times Square, New York, his Bobby Driscoll nose raised to the sky as if to declare: ‘I am Peter Pan.’
‘They all looked to Michael as an ATM machine,’ observed the Los Angeles attorney and radio host Leo Terrell.
Within hours of Michael’s death on June 25, 2009, the battle over the estate began. The King of Pop was going to be worth a billion dollars, maybe two billion, maybe more. The women of the clan initiated what became a week-long occupation and search of the Carolwood Drive chateau in Los Angeles where he died.
The first night, La Toya Jackson and her boyfriend Jeffre Phillips demanded to be admitted to the house. Three hours later, Katherine went inside after them.
It was mid-morning in London when Michael’s children’s former nanny Grace Rwaramba received a call from Katherine.

According to Rwaramba, Katherine began the conversation: ‘Grace, the children are crying. They are asking about you. They can’t believe that their father died. Grace, you remember Michael used to hide cash at the house? I’m here. Where can it be?’
But security guards said it was La Toya, along with her boyfriend, who loaded black rubbish bags filled with cash into duffel bags and placed them in the garage. La Toya would later insist that nearly all of Michael’s money was gone by the time she arrived at the house.

It did not become obvious that the Jacksons intended to remove whatever valuables were inside the house until the next morning, when Janet Jackson arrived at the front gate and demanded that it be opened to admit the moving van behind her.
A couple of hours later the van left with La Toya’s boyfriend Phillips at the wheel.
Katherine and her daughters made it clear they wouldn’t be leaving any time soon. ‘They camped out for most of a week,’ the head of the security firm recalled, coming and going ‘whenever they felt like it.’

Michael’s will came to light about a week after his death; its executors were to be a lawyer, an accountant and a former record company executive named by Michael. It stipulated that 40 per cent of his estate was to be held in trust for Prince, Paris, and his third child Blanket. Another 20 per cent would be assigned to various charities; the remaining 40 per cent would be used to support Katherine, who would be guardian of Michael’s children. After Katherine’s death, her share would revert to the children.
In the meantime, the executors had ‘absolute discretion’ to decide how the money from the Katherine Jackson Trust would be distributed. There was no provision for Michael’s father or siblings.

Moneygrabbing: LaToya, pictured with Paris, and her boyfriend allegedly drove to Michael Jackson's house after his death and stuffed binbags with cash
Over the next two years, the clamour among Katherine’s children to collect their mother’s share of the estate grew ever more threatening. For some time, almost nothing was left over for Katherine’s children; according to the executors, Michael had made it clear that he did not intend to provide for his siblings.
Even when Katherine’s monthly stipend was increased to $8,000, several of her children demanded that she challenge the estate’s administration.

The opening act of the craziest Jackson family drama since Michael’s death began on July 14, when Katherine, 82, was flown to a spa resort in Tucson, Arizona, without the knowledge of her grandchildren, but accompanied by a group of her children.
Within a few days, the media were reporting on a letter that had been signed by five of Michael’s siblings – Randy, Janet, Jermaine, Rebbie, and Tito – demanding that the executors of Michael’s will resign and stating that the will itself was ‘fake, flawed, and fraudulent’.

The adults responsible for Michael’s children, including his nephew TJ Jackson, became convinced that Michael’s brothers and sisters intended to gain a conservatorship [a legal form of control in America] over Katherine, possibly by demonstrating her incompetence to serve as the guardian of the children. The money, as everyone knew, would follow those three children.

Still more outlandish, though, were the events of Monday, July 23. Shortly after 1pm, Prince and Paris were in an SUV returning home to the Calabasas estate through the double gates when another SUV, loaded with passengers, pulled right up to its bumper.
Randy Jackson was at the wheel of the tailing vehicle, which made it to the inner gate just as the barrier was coming down.


‘He just drove through and broke the arm off,’ recalled Sandra Ribera, an associate of Katherine’s lawyer, who was watching from the pool house. ‘All of a sudden the doors open and there’s this swarm of people pointing cameras all around.’
Ribera said the people in the driveway were Randy Jackson, Janet Jackson, Jermaine Jackson, and several of Prince, Paris, and Blanket’s cousins. It was friendly at first, with hugs all round.

But Katherine’s security team, who were guarding the house, quickly realised that the other Jacksons were there to take Michael’s children. Janet went for her niece Paris, while Randy approached Prince and Jermaine engaged the guards, all three of them still using their cell phones as video cameras. When Janet and Randy told Paris and Prince they were coming with them, both teenagers flatly refused to go.
Prince turned his back on Randy, but Jermaine pulled the boy aside and told him this was something that had been in the planning for three years and that it was important for him to join in with the rest of the family.

Prince shrugged off Jermaine and continued walking toward the house. Paris, meanwhile, made it clear to Janet that she wouldn’t be leaving.
The TMZ entertainment website would initially report, based on anonymous sources, that Janet told Paris she was a ‘spoiled little bitch’ and that Paris answered: ‘This is our house, not the Jackson family house. Get the f*** out!’
When security guards blocked his way, Randy, who had been smiling up until then, began to snarl warnings about not interfering in a family matter.

One of the guards suggested perhaps he should leave the property and Randy became enraged, cursing in the man’s face, which was when Trent Jackson, a cousin and a member of the security team, grabbed him. The two grappled, then the bull-strong Trent put Randy in a headlock.
The scuffle ended when Trent withdrew with Prince and Paris into the house. Those who were staying at Calabasas would say later that the saddest thing about the entire scene was the way Jermaine had used his sons.
‘Jermaine is cursing as bad as you can curse in front of these kids and fighting and doing all this stuff, and he’s telling his kids to videotape it,’ Ribera recalled. ‘And Jermajesty [Jermaine’s son] . . . is just sobbing. His face is covered in tears. He’s taping, but he’s sobbing.’
A sheriff’s car answering an emergency call arrived at the front gate and everyone froze. The sheriff’s deputies persuaded Randy, Janet, and Jermaine and their group to leave.
‘Gotta love fam,’ Paris tweeted to her followers shortly after they were gone.
On July 26, Katherine was finally brought home. That series of clumsily plotted scenes left her brood more divided than ever. But it was a comfort to her to know that, in the end, they would all be together again.
Katherine’s deal with Forest Lawn Cemetery to acquire Michael’s crypt in the Sanctuary of Ascension had included the purchase of 11 other burial spots. In death, Michael Jackson would be surrounded by the family he had tried to keep at a distance for most of his life.
Roger Friedman:

http://www.showbiz411.com/2012/11/1...-misses-great-stuff-cobbles-together-old-news
Review: New Michael Jackson Book Misses Great Stuff, Cobbles Together Old News

11/10/12 11:06pm Roger Friedman 0

Part 1: If Randall Sullivan’s 700 page book about Michael Jackson, called “Untouchable,” had footnotes on its pages it would look like a mathematics printout. So Sullivan instead simply wrote his book, then tacked on a couple hundred pages of ‘chapter notes’ and explanations for how he mixed together thousands of pieces of previously published pieces about Jackson to make them look original. And got most of it wrong.
As it is, this part of “Untouchable” is more interesting than the book. It’s where I found my own name cited at least 87 times in the book--and not always favorably. (He does say some nice things about me, for which I am certainly grateful.) I don’t know Randall Sullivan, I’ve never spoken to him or met him. He’s never tried to contact me. I’m sure I’m not the only person from whom he’s constructed his story. David Jones of the UK’s Daily Mail will find a lot of his work in there.
And 87 times isn’t enough. He’s made it seem like he reported a lot, but it’s just noted at the back, separately. Not credited to me: Michael Jackson’s prosecutors throwing a victory party before the verdict came in. Here’s the original story, which the Drudge Report picked up from me on June 11, 2005 as its top story with a flashing ambulance siren: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,159140,00.htm l
Indeed so much of “Untouchable” comes out of my old stories, reading the book was like re-encountering long lost friends. Sullivan is very odd about the 2005 molestation trial because he wasn’t there. And strangely, he does quote Fox News’s Wendy Murphy, who was a commentator but didn’t report on the trial. I was in Santa Maria, California for months but never met her. But Fox had Trace Gallagher and lots of good people on the ground whom I saw often.
Because he wasn’t at the trial, Sullivan’s missed two of the funniest moments. At one point Janet Arvizo, the crazy mother who accused Michael Jackson of molesting her son, told defense lawyer Tom Mesereau on the stand that she thought Michael was going to kidnap her kids and take them away “in a hot air balloon.” It was one of Mesereau’s more stunning moments. And it’s too bad Sullivan didn’t get it since he lavishes praise on Mesereau for speaking with him. Mesereau’s dazzling performance in that courtroom still has not been adequately portrayed.
This is from my trial notes, and the printed transcript:
Mesereau to Janet Arvizo: Now, you told the sheriffs at one point you thought your family might disappear in a hot air balloon from Neverland, correct?
Witness: I made them aware that they had a variety of ways of getting my children out and that was one of them.
Also, Sullivan, I guess, never actually saw the outtakes that Jackson’s own videographer had of the Martin Bashir interview. Michael, drunk on wine from a Coke can, tells Bashir he wanted to throw a celebrity going away party for Bubbles the Chimp. Lassie wouldn’t be able to attend, Michael said, because he was probably dead. The press saw that video four times in the courtroom, and we even threw our own “Celebrity Animal Party” one night. It was the high point of a long, pointless four months.
More in Part 2, coming up…

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/Jackson_terror_of_kin_friends_cWqVJHnus0oQ0Ur48UCPjI/1
Jackson’s terror of kin, ‘friends’, New York Post

New book exposes Michael’s torment and naivete

By LARRY GETLEN
Last Updated: 1:00 AM, November 11, 2012
Posted: 12:47 AM, November 11, 2012

EXCLUSIVE

Michael Jackson may have been the King of Pop, but he could barely buy a friend.
In journalist Randall Sullivan’s shocking new book, “Untouchable: The Strange Life and Tragic Death of Michael Jackson,” out this week, family and “friends” take the superstar for all he’s worth — demanding payment for favors and looting his house after his death.
In one instance in 2001, two tribute concerts were planned at Madison Square Garden for Jackson’s 30th anniversary in music.
The Jacksons sought to profit from the event, demanding $250,000 each to attend, even for those who would simply be watching from the crowd.
AP

And even that wasn’t enough.
When Michael’s brother Jermaine learned that Michael’s take from the shows would reach $10 million, he convinced his parents that they should demand another $500,000 each.
After hiding out from his family for several days, Michael stopped at the Neverland Ranch with his kids to pick up a few items before the trip to New York. Almost as soon as he arrived, his family turned up at the gate.
Michael tried to have them sent away, the book reports, but they claimed that Michael’s mother needed to use the restroom. As soon as they barged their way inside, “they literally ransacked the place” searching for Michael to get him to sign the contracts.
The singer, meanwhile, “retreated with the kids to a hiding place concealed behind a secret door at the back of his bedroom closet.”
In tears, he called an associate and cried, “You see what they do to me? Do you understand . . . why I hide from them?”
His family weren’t the only ones whose love was for sale. Jackson’s “good friend” Marlon Brando, whom the singer took acting lessons from for years, charged him $1 million for his rambling video tribute — an awful investment, it turned out, since the Madison Square Garden crowd wound up booing Brando’s nonsensical ramblings.
By comparison, his famously close relationship with Elizabeth Taylor came cheap. When Taylor was once asked to participate in a video to help counter some horrible press Jackson received, all she demanded for her time was a $638,000 necklace.
Another of the book’s themes is Jackson’s inability to deal with normal life. During a 2003 trip to Las Vegas for a business meeting, Jackson’s partner needed to use the bathroom and asked him to wait, but the pop star decided to return to his room. Problem was, he didn’t remember where that was.
“He just walks up some stairs and starts knocking on doors, waiting for the bodyguards to open one,” says the partner, Marc Schaffel.

The space around him was “filling with excited people who were following Michael Jackson down the hallway.”
“The entire hotel is in an uproar,” Schaffel recalled, “and Michael just keeps moving from door to door, knocking on each one, getting more and more frantic to escape the crowd gathering behind him. Michael would have just kept going until somebody showed up to take care of him.”

This wary relationship with the adult world also led to Jackson’s many plastic surgeries, which Sullivan lays out in detail. While the first two, starting in 1980, occurred after Jackson broke his nose in a fall, they continued, driven by insecurities propelled by the horrendous acne he had suffered as a teen, and childhood taunts by his father and brothers, who called him “big nose” and “liver lips.” Jackson told one of his doctors how he was “upset by photographs of himself standing next to Diana Ross; her nose was so thin and his was so fat.”
AP

(Jackson told one of his doctors how he was “upset by photographs of himself standing next to Diana Ross; her nose was so thin and his was so fat.”)
He began bleaching his skin as early as the late 1970s and had many surgeries throughout the ’80s, including “permanent eyeliner tattooed around his eyes . . . and a pink tattoo [that] defined the perimeter of his lipstick.”
While many felt Jackson sought to make himself look less black, the likely truth was more heartbreaking — that he wanted to look less like his father.
“If he couldn’t erase Joe from his life,” said one family friend, “at least he could erase him from the reflection in the mirror.” Another friend said, “Michael insisted upon having white children because ‘he did not want to take the chance that a child of his would look like Joseph.’ ”
Although Jackson was having surgery done about every two months by the 1990s, it’s possible he had fewer than he thought, as one of his doctors was accused by four of his nurses of staging “elaborate hoaxes” in which he’d place Jackson under anesthesia, “but only pretend to perform an operation,” waking the singer with a bandaged nose.
By the early 2000s, Jackson barely had a nose left — one doctor said he was down to “two blow holes” — and so he “made do with prosthetics,” keeping “a big jar of fake noses” in his closet, “surrounded by tubes of stage glue.”
Within his whirlwind of chaos, Jackson sought some refuge. Some of his few happy moments came when he stayed with a family of longtime, non-celebrity friends in Franklin Lakes, N.J. Jackson would visit with his kids and revel in the mundanity of household tasks such as loading the dishwasher and dusting the furniture, taking “delight” in vacuuming the floors.
For him, “normal” was an escape.
As Jackson himself told the friend on the phone as he hid from his family in his panic room: “Do you understand now why I am the way I am? How else could I be?”
 
Re: Randall Sullivan's new book "Untouchable" - a hot tabloid mess

According to the autopsy report, Michael had his nose in tact.

According to the autopsy report Michael had vitiligo.

He uses Adrian McManus, one of the proven liars and thieves from the 2005 trial as a source for the nose.

Fans need to go to Amazon and start writing reviews correcting all the crap he's printed so far:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/080211962X/ref=cm_cr_mts_prod_img

People shouldn't be allowed to get away with easily disproven junk.

He also has a Facebook page set up for the book:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Untouchable-by-Randall-Sullivan/129002437250309?ref=ts&fref=ts
 
Re: Randall Sullivan's new book "Untouchable" Tabloid Mess [Threads merged]

It's all very sad. We need to vote it down.
If I buy it after all, I'll post a PDF here, so people can read it and write honest reviews.
 
Re: Randall Sullivan's new book "Untouchable" Tabloid Mess [Threads merged]

This makes me sick to my stomach. And along with everything else in the New York Times article, I also can't believe that after the autopsy report stated for a fact that Michael had vitiligo, the media are still pushing that "skin-bleaching" mess.
 
Last edited:
Re: Randall Sullivan's new book "Untouchable" Tabloid Mess [Threads merged]

I'd appreciate it if people who are familier with details of these stories give an opinion about the credibility of the information in the article.

Somehow I doubt the story about the prosthetic noses, but I could very well imagine the part about Michael's family be true - him avoiding to meet his siblings, not wanting to do anything with them. This was really so sad to read. No wonder if all Michael was to them was... an open bank account.
 
Re: Sullivan's book

I find that Amazon review similar to the writing style of Sullivan. Either it is him, or some person who likes tabloid trash. I only hope many fans will not buy yet another attack book against Michael, because it is portrayed as showing up Michael's family and those around him, but who really comes under attack here is Michael. If you doubt it look at the way Michael is described in the little information we have so far.

When was Michael obsessed with money as this review states. It was the people around him who were after his money. Oh and here is the typical ideas about his sexuality--"he was sexually stunted." It does not matter how many people say Michael had sexual relationships, they will always write their opinions showing Michael as a man who was either afraid of sex, did not like it, remained a virgin way into the 90s, loved only boys--they can't make up their minds.

What is stunning is that this guy was an editor.

The thing is there is so much false information mixed up with some truth, that it takes a long time to respond to the falsehoods. I grew up with Michael and believe me there was no lightening of his complexion in the 70's--where did Sullivan get this one from? Too many things are made up, and we have only seen some excerpts. Gee, even Roger is mad, but to me they are birds of a feather.
 
Last edited:
This wary relationship with the adult world also led to Jackson’s many plastic surgeries, which Sullivan lays out in detail. While the first two, starting in 1980, occurred after Jackson broke his nose in a fall.

I've read this story about Michael broking his nose in a fall many times and always wondered if it's true or not. Can anyone confirm?
 
Re: Randall Sullivan's new book "Untouchable" Tabloid Mess [Threads merged]

I've read this story about Michael broking his nose in a fall many times and always wondered if it's true or not. Can anyone confirm?

I remember reading way back when that Michael did have a nose job. This was around the late70s. He was practicing and fell and damaged his nose, so he had to get a second one. Now whether this was true or not I do not know, but I do remember looking at him around when he was about 17 and noticing that his nose was slightly different, so again Sullivan is wrong. Michael did not have his first nose job in 1980.

Then, he talks about how this guy said Michael could not find his room and look at what conclusions he made with this. It is like everything Michael does and say has to be analyzed. So if I cannot find my hotel room it means that I cannot take care of my daily life? I don't know about Sullivan and his source, but I have been to some of the hotels where Michael stayed, and believe me it is like a maze when you get upstairs. I remember at the Ballagio having to walk back and forth on my floor looking for my room the first time I left it. I had a stupid look on my face as I tried to read the numbers placed on signs and still I had to back track trying to find my room. An older couple saw me, and the woman said, "you look just how I look when I am trying to find my room." I had to laugh, but finally found it and I still do not know how. So obviously what happened to Michael could happen to anyone, especially if you do not have your key with the number on it. It seems he was trying to remember from memory and all the guy had to say the first time Michael was lost, was hey your number is XYZ.
 
Last edited:
Re: Randall Sullivan's new book "Untouchable" Tabloid Mess [Threads merged]

I remember reading way back when that Michael did have a nose job. This was around the late70s. He was practicing and fell and damaged his nose, so he had to get a second one. Now whether this was true or not I do not know, but I do remember looking at him around when he was about 17 and noticing that his nose was slightly different, so again Sullivan is wrong. Michael did not have his first nose job in 1980.

Then, he talks about how this guy said Michael could not find his room and look at what conclusions he made with this. It is like everything Michael does and say has to be analyzed. So if I cannot find my hotel room it means that I cannot take care of my daily life? I don't know about Sullivan and his source, but I have been to some of the hotels where Michael stayed, and believe me it is like a maze when you get upstairs. I remember at the Ballagio having to walk back and forth on my floor looking for my room the first time I left it. I had a stupid look on my face as I tried to read the numbers placed on signs and still I had to back track trying to find my room. An older couple saw me, and the woman said, "you look just how I look when I am trying to find my room." I had to laugh, but finally found it and I still do not know how. So obviously what happened to Michael could happen to anyone, especially if you do not have your key with the number on it. It seems he was trying to remember from memory and all the guy had to say the first time Michael was lost, was hey your number is XYZ.

Yes, I remember reading about this story that Michael was practicing and fell and broke his nose from a pretty much credible source, but don't remember which one.

And Sullivan's source for this hotel room story is Marc Schaffel. A very credible person don't you think?
 
Michael's first nose job was either in late 1978 or early 1979. Not 1980. The "nose jar" story is from Adrian McManus, someone who Michael sued in the 90s and has even been caught stealing from her own young nieces and nephews.

He says Michael moved into Neverland in 1990, Michael bought Neverland in 1987 and moved in in early 1988.


Roger Friedman is embarrassing himself trying to show Randall up:

Exclusive: Lenny Kravitz Nearly Replaced Jermaine Jackson in Family Group

11/11/12 2:49pm Roger Friedman 0


Here’s an exclusive scoop, one that you will not find in the new Michael Jackson book. Lenny Kravitz almost replaced Jermaine Jackson in the Jackson 5 reunion at Michael Jackson’s 30th anniversary concerts in 2001. Jermaine would not agree to take a ‘favored nations’ contract payment that all the artists got on that show– $1,500 plus expenses, airfare and hotel for the artists and family.
Both Frank Cascio and Stacy Brown were there. Stacy drew up the contracts. Frank went looking for Lenny at Michael’s request. In the end, Jermaine acquiesced and the show went on. Stacy Brown says, “Michael flew in all the families, even Jermaine’s mistress. And they had a big fight at their hotel.”
None of that is in Randall Sullivan’s new book. Sullivan actually admits in his voluminous author notes that he never even bothered to read Cascio’s book, “My Friend Michael Jackson.” He never contacted Brown, who has known the Jacksons for decades and helped Bob Jones write his own book about Michael after the pop star allowed Jones to be dismissed without notice after 30 years of service.
Sullivan should have done a little more research. Here’s the clip from 2001 in which Michael washed his hands of Jermaine at that point. Eccentric promoter David Gest, Michael’s friend, issued a statement on July 24, 2001 “wishing Jermaine well on his solo career.” That brought Jermaine back to his senses and he took the money as offered. http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=103470&page =1#.UJ_9poawX5M
READ THIS LINK about Jermaine Jackson: http://www.showbiz411.com/2009/08/12/20090812michael-jackson-brother-jermaine-shocking-2003-book-proposal
http://www.showbiz411.com/2012/11/1...in-family-group/comment-page-1#comment-135709

Roger using Stacy Brown as a credible source that shows Randall up? Stacy Brown who admitted to lying on the witness stand in 2005?

Does he think people don't remember that? Talk about great Mesereau court room moments:

8 RECROSS-EXAMINATION [of STACEY BROWN]
9 BY MR. MESEREAU:
10 Q. Mr. Brown, what I think the prosecutor just
11 elicited is the following: When he[BOB JONES] was broke, he
12 said there was licking. And when he didn't have
13 financial problems, he said there wasn't any, right

14 A. Well, if that's how you --
15 Q. Right?
16 A. -- break it down, yeah, I guess.
17 MR. MESEREAU: Thank you.
18 MR. AUCHINCLOSS: No further questions.


All these leeches and fantasy fiction writers really are living it up.
 
Re: Randall Sullivan's new book "Untouchable" Tabloid Mess [Threads merged]

Another piece of trash book. Don't waste your time on it. And Roger Friedman is no better.
 
Re: Randall Sullivan's new book "Untouchable" Tabloid Mess [Threads merged]

And Sullivan's source for this hotel room story is Marc Schaffel. A very credible person don't you think?

Schaffel? "Very credible"?????? No!

Back in 2006 Schaffel made insinuations that Michael was a pedo, just to try to make him settle with him in a court case. I hope you don't consider such a person very credible.
 
Re: Randall Sullivan's new book "Untouchable" Tabloid Mess [Threads merged]

I don't understand the fans who want to believe only in parts about his family :ph34r: : Blink:
I'm not a fan of them, but not worth giving credibility to excerpts from this book just because you do not like the Jacksons, from what I read here this book is based on pure BS and strongly believe that not only in the passages that are about Michael.

this double standard of not believe tabloids or sensationalist journalism only when it comes to Michael is very damaging! "believe when it is convenient to believe!" OMG :unsure:
 
Re: Randall Sullivan's new book "Untouchable" Tabloid Mess [Threads merged]

^ The only parts about the Jacksons I believe comes from Katherine's lawyer Ribera, who's had accurate info about the Jacksons over this summer.

All the other stuff seems obviously from Schaffel and people like that, nobody I'd ever give any mind to even if they said Mike had vitiligo, was innocent, blah blah, the only kind of crap I'd believe from them would be their silence. I imagine the anonymous unidentified sources he has for some things are even worse.

And I found it amazing Randall would use that TMZ source about Paris/Janet fighting, even when both of them had ages ago put that to rest. It shows he just liked the trashiness of it all too much to resist, which speaks volumes about the rest of his stuff.
 
Re: Randall Sullivan's new book "Untouchable" Tabloid Mess [Threads merged]

And more:

Michael Jackson
Fought Mark Wahlberg
Over 9/11 Escape Jet


Whoever is more famous, gets the private jet ... so said Sony, when Michael Jackson and Mark Wahlberg came to verbal blows over who could use the record label's ride to escape the aftermath of 9/11 -- and MJ won.

According to a new book called "Untouchable" by Randall Sullivan ... Michael, his kids and several relatives hightailed it to White Plains, NY a few days after the Twin Towers were hit in order to catch a private plane back to L.A.

But according to Sullivan, when M.J. arrived he was confronted by Mark Wahlberg and HIS entourage ... who were also waiting to use Sony's sweet ride.

Sullivan says the duo exchanged verbal blows over who got the plane ... until Sony honchos sent word down that M.J. (as the bigger celeb) was the victor.

Sullivan says Jackson eventually changed his mind at the last minute and wanted to get to L.A. by bus ... so his entourage flew without him. The book claims Jackson then changed his mind again and sent his mother and some relatives on the bus -- and Sony was forced to send a second plane.

The moral of the story is to work for Sony ... they had TWO planes!!!

Read more: http://www.tmz.com/2012/11/11/michae...#ixzz2BxYaK9uk

Mark Wahlberg
Michael Jackson, 9/11
Plane Story Is BS

EXCLUSIVE
It's an amazing story -- Michael Jackson and Mark Wahlberg fighting over a private plane in the days after 9/11. The only problem ... IT'S JUST NOT TRUE ... this according to sources close to Wahlberg.

A new book, entitled "Untouchable," recounts the tale of MJ and MW both jockeying for a Sony private jet. Sony eventually let MJ have it, claims the book.

But sources close to Wahlberg tell TMZ the whole thing is a work of fiction. We're told Mark had no need for a plane from Sony to fly back to Los Angeles because he had his own.
 
Re: Randall Sullivan's new book "Untouchable" Tabloid Mess [Threads merged]

Yes, I remember reading about this story that Michael was practicing and fell and broke his nose from a pretty much credible source, but don't remember which one.

And Sullivan's source for this hotel room story is Marc Schaffel. A very credible person don't you think?

It is just the way that Sullivan analyzed the incident to form a conclusion that irritates me, since anyone who does not have a key to the room will be lost. Because Michael is lost does not mean he cannot handle his life. That is my point, not whether the source is credible. Anyway I do not know why I am irritated, since I should know that they will take any simple incident and turn it into something to show how Michael was psychologically & socially lacking.
 
Re: Randall Sullivan's new book "Untouchable" Tabloid Mess [Threads merged]

Michael's first nose job was either in late 1978 or early 1979. Not 1980. The "nose jar" story is from Adrian McManus, someone who Michael sued in the 90s and has even been caught stealing from her own young nieces and nephews.

He says Michael moved into Neverland in 1990, Michael bought Neverland in 1987 and moved in in early 1988.


Roger Friedman is embarrassing himself trying to show Randall up:

All these leeches and fantasy fiction writers really are living it up.


^^I agree with your whole post. The nose was done in the 70's initially and the 2nd one was done because of an injury.

If we go through that book with a fine tooth comb we will find several sensationalized untruths. It could be a college thesis to read each "fact" and make notes next to it to show the reader what the actual story is.

About Roger, well they are all from the same cloth. Roger is trying to show up Sullivan and then laments that Sullivan did not talk to Brown. Is Roger on crack? They are all the same: Roger, Sullivan Brown, Jones, Jermaine. You can also add Gest and Schaffel to that list. It is just a question of which of the worst is the less harmful.

As we said there is truth about the incidents he writes about like issues surrounding MSG, Michael having surgery, people searching his home, but the problem is that the details are filled with lies and written in a manner to show up everyone in the book as greedy, psychos, etc., including Michael. We have only seen excerpts for the book, so can you imagine how much more junk the 700 pages have in them!!

They are beginning to cut each other's throats trying to see who could write the worst story about Michael.
If I had twitter I would tweet Roger over and over to take Sullivan to court if he feels Sullivan ripped off his story and stop fighting on the computer. They are all a bunch of cowards. How brave it is to write a bunch of lies after the person is no longer here to defend himself. One wonders why Sullivan did not write this book before 09.

OPPs: Sorry for double post
 
Re: Randall Sullivan's new book "Untouchable" Tabloid Mess [Threads merged]

I am no fan of the Jacksons. But some of the stuff about them in that book sounds like garbage to me. Stories that were debunked a long time ago are suddenly re-appearing in the book as if they are fact. The whole thing is an absolute mess from top to bottom. If I were the Jacksons, I would waste no time in filing a big fat lawsuit. The Jacksons would of course say that the book is full of lies if they were to release a statement. So they need to let the public know the truth about themselves and take this trash-fest collection book business to court because everything will be made public sooner or later via the media. If the Jacksons ignore this, it's not going to go away. It will undoubtedly get much worse, in my opinion.
 
Re: Randall Sullivan's new book "Untouchable" Tabloid Mess [Threads merged]

^^ So now we have the friends of Mark Wahlberg saying the story is BS. OK Wahlberg join all the others who were maligned in this book and let's go to court. That is the only way to deal with the Sullivans. Of course he will claim innocence and say based on the Shield he cannot say who his source is and it is not his fault if a source told him it was the truth. Hopefully we will have 150 people end up in a class action against Sullivan and have him pay settlements. That would be great since he may end up with only $8.50.

King of Pop By the end of the week more people will show up saying it is all lies.
 
Re: Randall Sullivan's new book "Untouchable" Tabloid Mess [Threads merged]

I have the book and reading it. It's such a crappy book filled with mistakes. He calls Aldo Cascio as Eddie all through the book. He says TJ has 3 sons, he doesn't. Has Mark Lester's paternity claims, a lot of talk about plastic surgery, says Michael is a virgin and so on. This is not a good book for anyone.
 
Re: Randall Sullivan's new book "Untouchable" Tabloid Mess [Threads merged]

What did he say about the allegations? I am just curious.
Does he speak about Franck Branca?
 
Last edited:
Re: Randall Sullivan's new book "Untouchable" Tabloid Mess [Threads merged]

Schaffel? "Very credible"?????? No!

Back in 2006 Schaffel made insinuations that Michael was a pedo, just to try to make him settle with him in a court case. I hope you don't consider such a person very credible.

No lol. I should have made clear that I was being sarcastic. Sorry.
 
Re: Randall Sullivan's new book "Untouchable" Tabloid Mess [Threads merged]

Well if Ivy has it and is reading it, I am hoping less fans buy it because Ivy will surely highlight the details.

They really need to work on that law to protect the dead.
 
Re: Randall Sullivan's new book "Untouchable" Tabloid Mess [Threads merged]

Schaffel? "Very credible"?????? No!

Back in 2006 Schaffel made insinuations that Michael was a pedo, just to try to make him settle with him in a court case. I hope you don't consider such a person very credible.

Do you have a link or anything where he said that? I never heard him speaking bad of Michael. Neither have I heard him making things up. His story here in the first chapter is pretty much aligned with what Wiesner wrote in his book. I don't see any screaming lies (except that he mistakes Aldo for Eddie, but he could have forgotten - too many kids in the Cascio family, I don't blame him).

I don't exactly know what to think of Schaffel. I know he was a porn director and he sued Michael at one point, but as far as I understand, Michael really owed him money. It's unfortunate that it came down to a lawsuit, but it wasn't all Schaffel's fault, let's put it that way. And in the end, Schaffel did a lot of good things for Michael: What More Can I Give, Take II, PHM and then MJ Commemorated which was a decent tribute. Actually, if we look back, 3 out of 6 documentaries that have been made about Michael (featuring Michael) by present moment were done by Schaffel, and all three were good for Michael and appreciated by fans. So why do fans so wholeheartedly dislike him?

On a different note, his memories of the Bashir documentary and November 18 are heartbreaking :(
 
Last edited:
^^

The source of Roger's story here is Schaffel:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,202306,00.html

It's obvious that he was the source because he and his lawyer were making insinuations about that alleged $300,000 in court and court documents as well. Also about Michael's sexuality:

"In earlier court papers, attorney King said that if Jackson made this claim, Schaffel would reveal "their intimate discussions" and discuss "Jackson's sexual proclivities."

http://blogcritics.org/culture/article/michael-jacksons-dilemma-fighting-bogus-claims/

(If you are interested in what was going on at the time also read the comments below the above article, because in them fans do a good job calling out the article's author and Schaffel.)

Earlier Schaffel claimed he had damaging tapes about Michael talking about his sexuality. Later (of course, because there were no such tapes) he changed his story to "intimate discussions" between them.

Later in court it turned out that the story about $300,000 had no basis in reality. He clearly made this claim, as well as making insinuations about Michael's sexuality to try to extort Michael, put pressure on him and make him settle with him. It's very transparent in Roger's article as well, when he finishes his story by saying:

"The Schaffel case continues Thursday in Santa Monica, although I cannot understand why Jackson doesn’t borrow the money and settle out of court. More testimony in this direction, no matter how oblique, cannot be good for him."

It also came out during that trial that Schaffel stole money from Michael.


You still think Schaffel is trustworthy and never did anything harmful to Michael?
 
Last edited:
Back
Top