Is Michael Jackson autistic?

[TrogL]

The proper wording of this question wouldn't fit in the subject line. What I'm really trying to ask is:

Could some of Michael Jackson's more bizarre behaviours:

• hanging out primarily with people of an inappropriate age
  
• child-like demeanour/behaviour
  
• inattentativeness to consequences (baby on the balcony incident)
  
• poor relationship to body image (disastrous plastic surgery)
  
• wierd relationships with clothes (those outfits!!)
  
• socialization problems (I've never seen him actually socialize, just stand there glittering)
  

indicate problems within the autistic spectrum?

This site thinks so.

This is not to "forgive" his behaviours, just attempt to understand them.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

1. I think, in his mind, he's a twelve year old boy.

Some sort of arrested development.
You forgot the bizarre child veiling / masking whenever he takes them out. Underneath the veils, those kids look pretty white.

[Tyler Durden]

2. He is proof that you CAN have too much money and fame.

Warped.

[Spider Jerusalem]

3. He seems to have some sort of extreme personality disorder...

and also what's called "body dysmorphic disorder"; I don't think he's autistic, necessarily; he doesn't seem to have some of the other traits (such as not understanding/using body language/facial expression/vocal inflection, for instance)...I'm not sure WHAT his problem is, exactly, although it's probably as much nurture as nature (did any of the Jacksons turn out all right, besides Janet?)

[KFC]

4. You left out bad music

With the exception of the Jackson 5.

[luckyluke]

5. Autism is a medical condition...

...he may or may not be, but either way it's not something you can determine through a poll.

I'm guessing he isn't, otherwise we'd have heard about it by now.

[Cocoa]

6. bad joke

and bad info on top of it. Those aren't characteristics of autism.

[Spider Jerusalem]

7. Actually, some of them are.

For instance, from the diagnostic criteria for Asperger's Syndrome: "failure to maintain peer relationships appropriate to developmental level". Also, "immature manners". Not to mention impulsive behaviour, and poor socialisation (many or most autistics are asocial, and not wired for socialisation). And as for the "body image" thing, oddly enough a higher percentage of people with autistic disorders are transgendered, compared to neurotypicals...make of that what you will.

[FunBobbyMucha]

8. Other--C.a.a.V.

I think he is our ripest living example of Celebrity as a virus. Psuedo-autism would definitely be a symptom but not a cause. I think Elvis experienced it as well, and Sinatra. How else to explain the karate outfits/shot TVs/paranoia and chronic womanizing/rage-a-holic behaviors, respectively?

I saw the first signs back in pre-Thriller days, when MJ revealed in an interview (promoting Off the Wall) that his only friendships were with other child-cum-adult (sorry for the pun) celebrities, such as Liz & Liza. His dad, like Col. Parker before him, alternately sequestered and sucked dry his golden-egg-laying goose. It's hard to imagine anyone of us growing up normally if our only contacts in the world are either controllers or sycophants, or equally alienated friends with their own army of controllers/sycophants.

The degree of calculation in MJ's lifestyle seems to have spun out of his control, however. One of his old managers said that, for instance, the Elephant Man Bones thing was completely conceived by MJ as a publicity stunt. The manager laughed at how MJ knew how to throw something random yet calculated out there (think Andy Kaufman) that would guarantee publicity from a marrow-sucking press.

Somewhere between "BAD" and the first sexual allegation, the press & public turned on him--he went from eccentric to freaky. His machinations have been all the more desperate since that time, up to and including manufacturing the title "King of Pop" (yes, like Prince's symbol, that was completely the star's own doing, not something bequeathed by the press, as he now frequently claims), the staged marriages to Presley's daughter (which was also a continuation of his childhood celebrity thing), all culminating in greater stress for him, which no doubt made his need for an outlet (children) all the more necessary to him.

It's interesting to predict what other celebrities currently living in captivity might be afflicted with the disease:

I think Whitney Houston is suffering from C.a.a.V., and unfortunately is self-medicating for the disorder (Bobby, at best, has C.a.a.V. by Proxy, so brief and James Mason-y in "A Star Is Born" was his fame).

I think that somewhere between her respectful, interesting performance in "Out of Sight" and her first horrible album, Jennifer Lopez got infected.

Kathy Lee Gifford is an interesting example of People Living with C.a.a.V. She gave the keynote address at the PLWCAAV Conference last year. It was held at Spago's, in the back, far away from natural light.