Michael Jackson, a person we should consider a true American hero, has come under a lot of fire recently. In a recent taped interview for "Primetime Live," Jackson revealed, among other things, that he considers himself to be a modern day Peter Pan.

Obviously, something is very wrong here. Millions of Americans should be asking themselves this question right now: Why was a show called "Primetime Live" showing a taped interview? However, there is much more wrong with this story, or "Jacko-gate" as I have copywrittenly dubbed it.

What is so incredibly wrong is that there are millions of people who are disgusted by the thought of a man whose face resembles the face of the protagonist in Disney’s rendition of Peter Pan. Whatever Michael Jackson has done is his own business, no matter how illegal, disgusting or vile it is.

Why do we relentlessly hound this man who has brought us such sensational albums as "Thriller," "Off the Wall" and that last crappy album he made that nobody bought. All of his shortcomings should be instantly excused because he makes great music.

Would you fault Jesus Christ if he had Michael Jackson’s insatiable lust for young, nubile boys? Most certainly not. Or would you criticize Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. if he bleached his skin to the point of translucence and had numerous surgeries to sharpen his face to a fine point? I rest my case.

Granted, Michael Jackson might have done a few things most people would consider to be socially deviant, but there is a reasonable and rational explanation for everything.

For example, many people have condemned Jackson for covering up his children’s faces with towels so that their identities are kept hidden. First of all, Jackson himself wears a surgical mask half of the time. He’s just trying to make his children follow his own dream. I’m sure many parents do the same things with their own children when they make them play youth sports. Yet those parents are not referred to as hideous freaks from hell in the media.

Another issue where Jackson has caught a lot of flak is his face. People pass judgment on him because his face has become a hideous entanglement of bone and flesh. However, plastic surgery is a completely legal endeavor in this country, even if his facial features are clinging to his face with only the assistance of plumber’s putty and kite string. Although judging from the meaty chunk dangling from his nose recently, his facial features are losing the battle with gravity.

A rhetorical question people seem to ask a lot is: I thought Michael Jackson used to be black, so what happened? There have been rumors that he bleached his skin, but there are many other possible explanations. For example, years ago Jackson might have seen a ghost and the following shock might have left Jackson pale with fear. Or there’s that disease story he made up a while ago. I guess that could also work.

However, the thing people seem to be jumping onto is Jackson’s undying love for children. Just because the man loves to play, travel and bathe with children doesn’t mean he’s a child molester. The man obviously had a very hard childhood. He was forced to perform for a nationwide audience while women threw themselves at his feet. The man just wants to regain his lost youth and he does it by having nude slumber parties with 12-year-old boys, staying up all night and talking about girls and what it might be like to be one.

But people get this image that he’s some kind of filthy lecher who yearns for prepubescent genitals. I have no idea where they get this from, except maybe from the 1993 lawsuit filed against him where a 13-year-old boy claimed Jackson molested him.

Although I’m sure Jackson had nothing to hide, the lawsuit was settled out of court; however, had Jackson allowed the case to go to court, I’m sure his innocence would have shown through like a shining, pasty white beacon made of artificial flesh and dangling from the nose of justice like an infant dangling from the window of a hotel in Germany.

Speaking of dangling babies, it would be a crime to criticize Jackson now that he has approximately three children who look up to him. Granted, they look up to him through the dishrags he covers their faces with, but they look up to him all the same.

And what’s wrong with covering his children’s faces? He obviously just wants to keep their identities secret so the vicious media doesn’t destroy their souls as it did their father’s. Jackson just doesn’t want his children to see their faces on television with bold headlines reading "child molester" or "only one quarter human." Obviously, he isn’t hiding their faces because he’s worried that people will discover they aren’t really his.

If there is a villain here, it’s the diabolical media that has portrayed this sweet, gentle pseudo-man as a child-groping maniac who can’t go fifteen minutes without having his face redesigned to look like Bea Arthur’s genitalia. The media has mercilessly attacked Jackson just because he’s famous and can be a bit eccentric at times.

Just because the man owns a stable of llamas and likes the silky smooth feeling of a little boy, doesn’t mean he’s any weirder than anybody else in this country.

Ted Williams had himself cryogenically frozen. Now that’s really messed up. Yet nobody was hounding him. And don’t give me any crap about it not being right to criticize a dead person, because, technically, Jacko has no pulse either. That is so hypocritical. You people make me sick, you perverts.