Just when I thought Joe Jackson (Michael’s “father”) might be my poster boy for reprehensible parenting, you’ve come along to challenge him for the honor.  According to media reports, you tried to pick up your own daughter Tatum at Farrah Fawcett’s funeral, with the one-two punch, “You have a drink?  You have a car?”
 
You are quoted as telling Vanity Fair contributing editor Leslie Bennetts, “I’m a hopeless father. I don’t know why.  I don’t think I was supposed to be a father. Just look around at my work—they’re either in jail or they should be.”  You go on to say that you aren’t in touch with your children any longer and have “never been happier.”
 
Here’s a psychological newsflash:  Not recognizing your own daughter is the kind of thing that gets etched on your tombstone, under the heading SCUMBAG.  Trying to pick her up at Farrah’s funeral—or any woman’s—goes right underneath that entry.  And stating publicly that you’re happier not seeing or speaking to your own kids makes it a Trifecta.  You’re gonna keep some guy who etches letters in granite very busy.
 
No wonder Tatum was hooked on heroin and Redmond is in jail for a drug offense.  You obviously have a really bad habit of inflicting pain on people, and they turn to one or another intoxicant to try to relieve it. I mean, it’s one thing to try picking up your adult daughter, it’s another to do whatever you did to her as a little girl.  Exactly what was that, Ryan?
 
I know, you think I’m being a little hard on you, but I’m not. 
 
See, when I use the term “scumbag,” I mean it in the clinical sense, and with no hatred toward you, whatsoever.  I mean that something happened to you in your own personal development that led you to think so little of yourself and so little of others that you can’t see the beauty it is to bring a new life into this world and be able to nourish it.  You must question your own self-worth so deeply that now the only thing you can pay attention to is how to pump yourself up narcissistically and avoid the deeper questions you have about whether you’re worth anything at all—to yourself or anyone else.
 
You tell Ms. Bennetts that you’d “take back” your kids—as in, return them to their Maker; as in, kill them off.  Well, you came close, setting them up for their drug abuse.  But here’s the thing:  The real ambivalence you have at core isn’t about them at all.  It’s about you and whether you deserve to exist.  I don’t believe you could have been well-loved and turn out unable to love.  Your own family somehow made you wonder whether you deserved to be born, whether you were really a keeper.  How?
 
You did deserve to live. You were once an innocent child, full of human potential and the capacity to love yourself and others endlessly.  You were cheated of that potential, and I am sorry that happened to you.  Now, facing the particular traumas you lived through and feeling all the pain of having lived through them is the only way back to being fully human.
 
Life is an amazing journey and, even with you facing leukemia, the end isn’t written until a man’s last acts and final words.  You can still reclaim your humanity and capacity to love and offer it to the children you brought into this world.  And then very different words might mark your resting place and very different things may be said of you.
 
I have seen people resurrected by embracing the truth at 18, and at 48, and at 78.  It is never, ever too late. 

Dear Mr. Jackson:

The occasion of your child’s death is a moment when all parents, including me, offer you every wish for strength and God’s healing power in the face of your loss.  Any father or mother can sense the tragedy it is to lose a son or daughter, yet no one who has not suffered such a loss can truly know your pain.

I would write no more than this were it not for the fact that you have used the occasion of your son’s passing and the attendant publicity to also promote your own business ventures, including your new record label.  This makes me feel it important, as a psychiatrist with access to the media, to reach out to you, with other parents and their adult children “listening” in. 

The foundation of our nation assures each person in this great country of certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Great leaders and courageous soldiers have safeguarded these rights for our citizens, and they would make a decent Bill of Rights for parents raising children, too.  Fathering a child, you see, means far more than participating in a child’s conception and witnessing his birth; it means doing everything possible to optimize that child’s life.  This requires many acts of love and self-sacrifice. It pays immeasurable dividends in the growing self-confidence and autonomy you witness developing in the child you care so much about.

Somehow, perhaps because of pain suffered in your own early life experience, you stole that God-given potential for healthy development from your son.  You have admitted lashing him with a belt or a switch when he failed to perform dance steps to your standards.  According to him, you called him ugly when acne affected him as a teenager.  You brutalized him by placing your own pathologic need for control and for “success” above his needs for security and comfort and self-esteem.  In a very real way, you buried enough of his love for himself that he was no longer comfortable with his race or age or sexuality or even his great fortune.  Trying to please a father who beats you with a belt for missing a dance step will do that to you.

Now, even when saying goodbye to your son, you think of yourself and your business.  You are deprived of a purer life and love.  This makes me feel badly for you, but feel worse for the son you injured so deeply. 

Some will see you only as a monster.  I know that monsters are made through cruelties suffered in life; they never spring fully-formed onto the planet.

In your quiet moments, I hope that you can dig up the roots of the emotional and physical violence you visited upon your child.  One of the wonderful things about still being on the planet is that you always have some chance to win back the potential for real humanity buried inside you.  

Here’s a hint:  Success or failure in becoming human isn’t measured in record sales or reflected in the lenses of television cameras.  You have to look much, much deeper.