Children Today Robbed Of Childhood Says Michael Jackson During Oxford Union Address; Cites Own Unhappy Childhood

Jet, March 26, 2001

Music great Michael Jackson recently told students at Oxford Union in Oxford, England, that society has robbed a young generation of its childhood.

In a half-hour address at the prestigious debating society, Jackson said the current generation of children have forgotten how to be children, referring to this as "a universal calamity, a global catastrophe."

"Tonight I come before you less as an icon of pop ... and more as an icon of a generation, a generation who no longer knows what it means to be children," said the 42-year-old performer, who hobbled into the brick Victorian debating chamber on crutches from a broken right foot he sustained at his Neverland Ranch in California.

Jackson said that he came to speak for "Generation O," as he calls it. "The `O' stands for a generation who has everything on the outside--wealth, success, fancy clothing and fancy cars, but an aching emptiness on the inside."

He declared that an increasingly violent and materialistic society has produced a generation of unloved children "growing more distant from their parents, grandparents and other family members."

Famed psychic Uri Geller introduced Jackson, who used the platform not to debate anyone, but to launch his new children's crusade, Heal the Kids. The charity was founded last year by the superstar performer and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who accompanied Jackson at Oxford.

He made reference to his own loveless childhood while launching the charity whose goal is "to recreate the parent-child bond, renew its promise, and light the way forward for all the beautiful children who are destined one day to walk this Earth."

Jackson argued that a "Universal Children's Bill of Rights" should be introduced in every home, which would include the "right to be loved without having to earn it" and the "right to be read a bedtime story without having to compete with the evening news."

Breaking into tears as he spoke of his hard-driving father and former Jackson Five manager, Joseph, Michael said that despite his fame he had envied ordinary children for their suburban homes, shag carpeting and games of Monopoly.

"The cheery 5-year-old who belted out Rockin' Robin and Ben to adoring crowds was not indicative of the boy behind the smile," the entertainer said.

Jackson said, "What I really wanted was a dad. I wanted a father who showed me love, and my father never did that ... He seemed intent ... on making us a commercial success. But what I really wanted was a dad."

He recalled his father's "great difficulty" in communicating with him.

"If I did a great show, he would tell me it was a good show," Jackson recalled. He added, with tears in his eyes and pausing to ask for tissue, "If I did an okay show, he would say nothing."

The soft-spoken performer described his father as "a managerial genius" who "was scared of human emotion."

"My father was a tough man, and he pushed my brothers and me hard, from the earliest age, to be the best performers we could be.

"I wanted more than anything else to be a typical little boy. I wanted to build tree houses, have water balloon fights and play hide-and-seek with my friends. But fate had it otherwise ..."

Jackson said that he wants to "forgive my father and to stop judging him."

The singer said of being a father himself, "I hope that my children will not judge me unkindly and will forgive my shortcomings." Jackson has two children, a 4-year-old son, Prince, and a 2-year-old daughter, Paris, by nurse Debbie Rowe. The couple married in 1996. Rowe filed for divorce three years later.

Heal the Kids aims to encourage parents to spend more time with their children and urges children to respect and forgive their parents-as Jackson said he had forgiven his own father.

"As an adult, and as a parent, I realize that I cannot be a whole human being nor a parent capable of unconditional love until I put to rest the ghosts of my own childhood," he said.

More than 20,000 people applied for tickets, but only 500 were selected to attend the address, which drew cheers at the beginning and the end.

After delivering his speech, Jackson was moved to tears once more when he was presented with a mortarboard and gown.