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tv   Piers Morgan Tonight  CNN  September 18, 2011 9:00pm-10:00pm PDT

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>> jermaine jackson, who he blames for his brother's death. >> do you think there was some sort of cover-up? >> what do you think? i've -- i would think as a family member, yes. >> emotional true story of michael's life. >> it's like they pushed and pushed this bird who was injured, his wings were injured. and they wanted him -- they pushed him off the cliff and expected him to fly and he failed. >> and his death. >> what we're concerned about, their jobs or my brother's health? >> the real story behind all those scandals? >> you don't think it hurt him when people called him whacko jacko, crazy and all that? >> the family behind closed doors. >> the crap and garbage written about my family for so many years, all these books that went unauthorized. people saying things that didn't know us. >> jermaine jackson, primetime exclusive, this is
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"peer -- piers morgan tonight." jermaine, i want to start with the imminent trial of conrad murray. hugely significant for your family and the world to try and discover through the process of trial if we work out what really happened to your brother michael. as we approach the start of this trial, what are your feelings? >> my feelings are just as well as the family the truth is going to come out. it's something we've been long awaited for. it's up to the point now where it's been a lot of speculation and hearsay. but i think we're all going to -- it's not going to bring closure, but it's just going to give us a clear understanding of what really happened. i think it's important that the fans and the public and as well as ourselves need to know what really happened. what took place. there's so many things that happened that we weren't aware of as a family because we were kept away.
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>> do you think conrad murray was solely responsible for your brother's death? >> my gut feeling is the fact that conrad was present during his death. there's a lot of questions to be answered. we don't know yet. until the trial unfolds and we -- we sort of get the facts, whether they'll come to the facts or not, but doing the book, i got a clear understanding of a lot of things that i didn't know from -- from the past and how all these things came about with michael's life and who he interacted with during his business and all those things. up to present day. >> it seems to come down to this. i would imagine conrad murray's defense is going to be that he was encouraged to prescribe this propofol drug to michael that night. the drug that is believed to have killed him. i would imagine that on your
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side, you will be arguing as a family and, i'm sure the prosecutors will, too, that this was all conrad murray's decision. it then comes down to addiction. whether michael was addicted. what he was addicted to, and whether the prescription of this drug was just a part of that addiction. what do you think of that? >> well, i think that, first of all, being a cardiologist and not an anesthesiologist, is a big difference. conrad murray had no business giving my brother propofol. which i just learned about this drug doing the book. in terms of them trying to say my brother was an addict or addicted, we know my brother was on prescription drugs. whether it was demerol because of excruciating pain or him wanting to have sleep. >> that's the powerful part of your book. michael just had this chronic inability to sleep. i mean, i knew having worked in the media for years that he had
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a difficulty with it. i had no idea how bad it was. he would literally be unable to get any sleep at all. night after night. >> just coming off the stage and there's like 180,000 people out there and your adrenalin is going so high and you're doing so much, and it's hard to just put your head on the pillow and sleep. because it just goes on and on even after you're off the stage. he always said that he didn't want to tour because he didn't want to have the problems of not sleeping and having to take demerol and things like that, but he wasn't addicted to it because his behavior wasn't to the point that he was an addict. he was looking to this for sleep. and he trusted whoever administered these things to him. he trusted them. >> and when people hear about drug addictions, like with celebrities they tend to think, you know, cocaine or ecstasy or heroin or whatever it may be. clearly, we're not in that kind of situation with michael. these were not drugs to make him
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high or get any kind of high experience. the drugs he was taking were all for pain and all for sleep. >> exactly. >> could it have been, though, by the end, after years of insomnia, he had become, in a way, addicted to any type of drug that would get him the sleep he craved? do you think that's possible? >> i really don't know, but i do know that it's a difference between demerol and propofol. and -- >> tell me about propofol. you studied this for your book and it's fascinating what you found out. it's a much stronger drug than people realize. >> it a much stronger drug. it puts you out, and it's basically used when people are under the knife and they want to -- to not feel the pain. but the key to this is, when you're a proven anesthesiologist and you're in the proper settings and the right medical field, you know how much to
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administer to the patient to keep him above the line, but not so above where he'll feel the pain. and keep them from going below the line. >> is propofol considered by most physicians to be an anesthetic rather than just a sleeping pill? >> i really don't know. but i do know, for michael to get sleep he had to be knocked out. this wasn't just this one night. this was administered in him on an ongoing basis, which was causing his body to deteriorate and him to act differently and have different symptoms in his behavior. >> you as a family, you were probably the closest to michael of all the family. collectively, you must have all known he had this ongoing chronic problem with sleep in particular. when did you see conrad murray that night in the hospital? >> i saw conrad when i first went to the hospital. then when i came back from seeing michael, i went back to
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the room where my mother was. i was sitting on the other side of the table. i'm here. the table is between us. my mother's here. and you're conrad. we weren't this close, though. i didn't know who he was, but i said, something strange about this guy. he's acting strange. i had formed that opinion before i had found out who he was. >> and when you say "strange" do you mean -- >> his behavior. >> -- suspicious? did he look guilty? did he look concerned? >> everything. all of the above. it was just something that just wasn't right. it just wasn't normal. >> did you talk to him? >> no, no. >> did he say anything to any of the family? >> he wanted to come in, i guess, and say his -- something to my mother, his condolences or something. but i felt uneasy with him. >> did you know that he had been with michael that night? >> i found out, yeah, that he was with michael. he was there.
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but, see, this is a strange case because this is treated as a homicide and the lapd who did their investigation and then there's the whereabouts of who came in and out of the house. those tapes are erased. so we really don't know. there's a lot of questions. >> which tapes were erased? >> the surveillance tapes were erased. >> they're all gone? >> some of the tapes were erased to the whereabouts who were coming in and out during the time, out the house. >> who do you think erased them? >> well, they're in the hands of the police department. what do you think? >> do you think there may be some kind of cover-up? >> what do you think? i -- i -- i would think as a family member, yes. >> michael's last tour, why jermaine said it was too much for him. sglz they were only concerned about the show. moving the show forward. ♪ different rates.
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♪ if you watched "this is it" which i've done several times, you cannot dispute the fact that he seems to be in pretty good physical shape. the rehearsals are going great and the show looks amazing and he looks excited. this is not a portrait of a guy who is on the verge of death. so i, as a fan of his, was shocked when i watched it to try and work out how it came to his death. you as a family member, it must be ten times as shocked. because you presumably were talking to him most days. >> yes. >> how often did you talk to michael? >> we spoke to him not that much during rehearsal. but we last saw him may 14th. >> do you know how long he had been given propofol? >> see, with "this is it" there was a lot of footage that was
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taken out that no one saw. because that was the edit before the edit. and it's just -- so much went on. so much went on. >> is that footage damaging? do you see a guy in a bit of a daze? a bit of a zombie? i mean, what is the stuff we didn't see? >> things that we noticed. and this is why the defense is going to try to paint my brother out to be a drug addict and he was very dependent on drugs, and it's not true. how could someone be dependent on drugs and since 2008 he was dancing four hours a day and he had a five-year plan of starting a new life and -- >> let me throw something at you about this. i know somebody who's a very famous tv star. very famous, one of the biggest stars in the world, who's a friend of mine, who takes sleeping pills every night to sleep because he finds the adrenaline, too much going on. he's been doing it for years. that was a form of addiction. i was on ambien for three weeks
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after breaking some ribs and when i had to stop, it was like having a form of cold turkey. these are strong drugs. propofol is significantly stronger than anything that this friend of mine takes or that i was taking at that time. so if michael was getting this stuff over a regular period of time, he could still be performing perfectly well but as you say, underneath it, the damage would be pretty intensive, i would say. >> but that's the question. michael has always had an anesthesiologist around him when he was taking things. >> someone who knew -- someone who knew about the process of knocking somebody out for the purposes of sleep? >> and, plus, he's lived all this time doing demerol and sleeping pills and also, pain pills, but, the symptoms from propofol, it's like no one knew that he was -- well, the public didn't know it. he was complaining about his body.
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one side being an ice cube. another side being very warm. >> do you know how long he had been taking it? is there any evidence that you've seen? >> i really don't know, but -- >> what is the family's belief? what is the theory that you think about that? >> our belief is that we knew he was doing prescription drugs to sleep and pain. we didn't know about propofol. i just found out about this drug which i can't even pronounce, hardly. but the symptoms, the reason why i'm going to talk about the symptoms, because if you look at the past tours, we've never heard of these symptoms. michael jackson not knowing whether to go right or left when he comes on stage. >> who was he telling about the symptoms? the family? >> no. these are people that were around him. him not being able to lift himself out a five-pound prop or
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something and repeating himself. him losing, just, unbelievable weight. these are signs of toxic in your body. >> are these signs from what you've been able to work out, of propofol abuse? in other words, long-term use of that specific drug? are these side effects that you've identified? >> these are symptoms of that because of the fact that it was administered in him outside of a hospital setting, the person wasn't adequate enough to do this, and the fact that the night that he died, he was -- he had just arranged a $15 million payment on a house. that's saying that he had plans of going beyond "this is it." >> michael was a tough character when it came to business. he knew his own mind. he was the most fabulously successful entertainer of his generation. and by common agreement, when it
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came to his business, his craft, he could be a tough, demanding task master of people and also quite obstinate. is it possible, do you think, to be fair-minded to conrad murray for a moment, be dispassionate and take yourself out of the family position for a moment, is it possible knowing michael, that he could have just ordered and demanded that conrad murray give him this drug? that conrad murray is, i believe he's going to claim he tried to resist it but eventually succumbed to pressure. is that possible? >> whether it's possible or not, being a doctor, you take an oath to care for your patient. not to kill them. you take an oath to do things that are proper in the medical world. not to administer something outside of a hospital setting that's not even your area. you're a cardiologist, not an anesthesiologist. >> even if michael had been pressuring him, he should have said no.
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>> he trusted doctors. dr. murray should have said no. under no circumstances, no. the fact that these symptoms went on around everybody there weren't concerned about how he felt, they were only concerned about the show. moving the show forward. >> these are people working for aeg? >> these are people working for aeg and working for him. working for the show. >> i mean, there was always a bit of a circus around michael and his life. how many of the people directly around him at the time that he died, do you think, are culpable for a form of responsibility for his death? >> see, that's the question i have. that's a question we have as a family, because i've said in the book, why didn't somebody call me or jackie or tito or marlon or his family, to say, come down here. your brother is not acting
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normal. had we been called, he'd be alive today. because we would have taken him to the hospital. >> why do you think they didn't? >> because they wanted the show to go on. they knew -- it's the same thing of knowing that it wasn't his voice 100% on those songs that were releasted. it's all about -- this is a story about greed and power and money. and not looking at the person in michael. what i've tried to do in this book is to show my little brother, us growing up the jackson five, kids with a dream. the human side of him. no matter how great the success had became, he's still from a family. we're humans. and -- >> you basically, i believe, as a family, reading the book, that the pressure from the people who were putting on this huge extravaganza, this amazing tour -- i had tickets to the first night in london. i was very excited about it. i saw him perform live a few times. the greatest live performer i've
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ever seen. there were people there who had nearly billions of dollars, certainly, tens, hundreds of millions of dollars at stake of this tour being successful. and all the commercials. it's not in their interest to raise any alarm bells about his health, is it? >> no, because the fact that still, if you have tens of billions of dollars, you still want more. but this was an event that was going to put money in everybody's pockets. at the same time, his health was ignored. it's like they pushed and pushed this bird who was injured, his wings were injured. and they wanted him -- to push him off the cliff and expected him to fly and he fell. he fell. >> when you saw michael after he died in the hospital, how did he physically look to you? obviously, he was dead but how did he look in terms of the michael you knew? was it the same kind of body that you would expect? >> no.
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he had gone from 150, 155, to 136. he was frail. he was thin. i touched his face. his face was still soft. i kissed his forehead and then i pulled one of his eyelids back because i wanted to look in his eyes. and i couldn't believe that what i saw wasn't my brother. and for people who had been around him all these years, to see that and not say something, it bothers me and it bothers us as a family. what were they concerned about? money, their jobs, or my brother's health? >> do you believe you're going to get answers from this trial? cl or is this simply just not going to be enough evidence? >> to tell you the truth, piers, it's -- the defense is going to try to paint my brother out to be the most horrible person, and he wasn't. he was most concerned about the
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world and healing the world and children who are starving. and he didn't just sing about it, he did it. he showed the action. that's not the behavior of a drug addict. that's not the behavior of a person who is irresponsible and just wants to be high all day. he was never the type of person to take drugs for recreation who was irresponsible or didn't care. so my point, to answer your question, we're not going to get michael back. whether conrad murray goes to jail or whatever happens, i really don't know. we lost an incredible human being, a brother who -- my little brother who just really yes cared about the world. to answer your question, we really don't know. we really don't know. i've written this book to show the world and to show the fans this is who we are as a family. it was a long process. and it opened my eyes to a lot of things that i didn't know.
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the crap and the garbage that has been written about my family for so many years and all these other books that were unauthorized and people saying things that didn't know us. and then thinking, we're from a small house in gary, indiana, with humble beginnings. so we weren't privy to crooks and people who had hidden agendas. >> will any of the family attend the trial? >> oh, yes. >> will you be there? >> absolutely. >> every day? >> i'm going to try to be there as much as i can, yes. >> how do you think you'll feel when you see conrad murray standing there? >> i didn't feel good about him before i knew him. so i'm going to feel the same way. but what i want from this whole thing is not for michael's death to be a question mark in people's heart and their mind. too many people loved him. do you know, michael, he was -- he touched the hearts of many people around the world.
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and that's important. that's why the world cried when he passed because they understood him. >> i want to take a break now, jermaine, and then come back and go back to those early days. go back to the young michael and the dreams that he had and that you all had as a family. >> sure. >> i reached out the aeg, producers of michael jackson's tour declined to comment and they ignored michael jackson's frail health or pushed him too hard. ♪ this ason, you needtruck le e silvera to take on that list oyours. t'chevy season of ding. and there isn a tt time for a truck, with chk rk after mark of pe doing per. ♪ z ♪
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jermaine, you've written jermaine, you've written this extraordinarily honest, frank and open book. it's called "you are not alone: michael through his brother's eyes." you were his big brother. what was he like as a young guy? describe the michael before it all became like a circus. >> michael was a very joyful kid. he was very fast on his feet. he was always into things. he was a bit nosey at times. but he was a kid who always had dreams, and he wanted to play store. and i'd tell a story of how we were looking out the window and
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singing the christmas songs and watching the snow fall and looking at our neighbors' homes because we weren't allowed to have christmas being jehovah's witnesses. and these are things he missed. if you know the song "childhood" it says a lot about his life. >> do you ever wish as a family, and i've interviewed janet and la toya this year and they've been quite revealing about this. do you ever wish that you hadn't gone through the door marked superstardom, fame? >> that's a good question. i've always been told that i've never left and i'm still that boy back in gary. because no matter where we come from, we never forget that little house and my father being laid off at the inland steel and picking up potatoes to feed us and the ongoing rehearsals all
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the time and being taught to stick together. stick together. you're a family, not a business. you're a family. >> we're here in california now. you have this beautiful home. very luxurious. amazing stuff you've collected on a material level. the badges of great success that you've enjoyed with you and your family. but do you have peace of mind? did you lose peace of mind getting to where you got to? >> no, because we've always known that this is just an illusion. success is nothing. it's what you share with one another as a family. it's like -- to prove my point, michael was loved by so many people and during the trial, the whole world was accusing him of child molestation and saying the most horrible things. and all this stuff happened, and at the end of the day, what has true value is seeing his family there supporting him.
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all this material stuff has no value at all. i mean, he's gone. he can't take neverland with him, the catalog, nothing. he left a lot of good deeds. >> michael was a contrary figure. i interviewed him once and he had a very gentle, sweet voice when talking about his family and children and so on. when i talked to him about business, it was like his voice dropped a couple of octaves and he switched into game mode. and it was very revealing to me that he was quite a chameleon. he had different characters depending on what you were discussing and i guess, who he was with and he had a tough streak. but i also felt that he was not addicted to fame but he loved a lot, being a huge star. he played that role very well. and he played up to it. he would go on million-dollar shopping sprees, amazing cars, jets, neverland, a large part of it which he loved, which he craved. >> there's no question.
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he loved enjoying his life. but at the same time, he became a victim of his success. and he became withdrawn. and then when the "thriller" of it came and it was a major success and that's when all the whacko jacko and all this came out. and this is someone who has never forgotten how we were taught. you care about people. people have feelings. he had a lot of feelings. you don't think it hurt him when people called him "whacko jacko?" when they called him crazy and this and that? there were moments of things that happened -- >> don't you think he slightly encouraged that impression by people? i mean, he would do strange things quite deliberately, i always felt, as a marketing tool. it made him much more interesting. and so he played up to a lot of the whacko jacko things, didn't he? >> not so much of the whacko
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jacko. the incident with the child. he got caught up in the moment. >> you mean when he dangled the baby. >> when he dangled the baby. >> let me ask you again. let me play devil's advocate a little bit. when he did that, i couldn't imagine you doing that with any of your kids. michael -- he didn't play life rules by the same rules that we all do. i mean, i would never have done that to one of my children. i don't think you would have done it, it's so obviously dangerous -- >> but, piers, see, we do things with children without knowing it. i agree, he got caught up in the moment. it was just an exciting moment. but we've always -- we've all taken a child and tossed them up in the air and caught them, we've all done it. >> not over a balcony. >> no, no. exactly. but when children are falling, they lose their breath. so we've all done things. he was showing the fans his child. i agree. it wasn't the smartest thing to do, but he got caught up in the moment.
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>> i always felt when he did stuff like that, was it kind of -- it propagated the myth that he wasn't entirely normal. did you feel that you lost the little brother you once had? that he became something else? how did you feel as his brother? >> michael was -- he was very, very much normal. how could someone write the songs that he wrote and -- "man in the mirror," "heal the world," "earth song," and not be concerned about the most important things in life, about preserving this world and making this place a better place to live for one another. these were the most important things. these are the things we don't look at but at the same time he's a human being. those final nights of "this is it" i wish people would have looked at the human person. and not the superstar. and say, we ought to get him help. we need -- there's something wrong. ♪ e done safely and responsibly. at exxonmobil we know the answer is yes.
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♪ trying to live without your love is one more sleepless night, let me show you girl i'm no longer right ♪ >> your father was a tough guy, wasn't he? >> my father was tough but that's still love. because you care to discipline your child and to show them the right path. >> the most interesting aspect from the book, i think, which is the racism that your father endured when he was young. and how that may have been a very motivating, driving factor
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for the way he became. that he was determined to combat that, not just for him but his family as well. >> we didn't want color to hold us back. we were taught, we knew there was racism, but we wasn't going to use that as a card. but we knew that it existed. but at the same time, we wanted to go beyond color. we wanted to have a music and a message that transcends color. so we knew that it existed, but it didn't stop us. we wanted to go beyond that. we wanted to bring -- that's why we love the peacock, because of the different colors coming together. the whole thing was coming together. >> as his big brother, what is the truth about michael's skin color change over the years? was any part of that a reaction to all this stuff that was going on when he was young? all this race, violence threats and so on? was any part of him wishing he wasn't so black?
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>> no, not at all. michael was happy -- michael suffered from a disease called vitiligo and the pigmentation on his skin. on his body. which i said in the book, there was one morning he had slipped and fell and he went to the hospital. and so i came over and my mother was there and my father was there and he was very upset because he said -- he's the most misunderstood person in the world and he pulled off his shirt and just batch -- patches of his brown skin. that's why he wore the umbrella, because the sun would just make it worse. there was a stage of lupus that he had, too. and just one of those things. >> all this stuff, again, that people used against michael to make him out as slightly crazy. you as a family member, close to him, big brother, saw that it wasn't that at all? >> but, see, this book is so important because all the
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questions that people had in their mind, i tried to answer these questions by giving the facts. and i defy anybody who reads the book and not tell just up to his death, that something doesn't smell. something smells. and those are the questions as a family member that's in my mind and my mother's and father's and we're waiting for this trial, but what is it really going to do for us? we really don't know. we really don't know. >> we'll take another break and when we come back we'll talk more about michael and what he became like as an adult. how difficult he found it when "thriller" became the biggest selling album in history. [ courier ] the amazing story of whether bovine heart tissue
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♪ when michael became the biggest star in the world after "thriller" did it change him, do you think? i mean, you were his big brother. how did you see that impact on him as a human being? >> well, i do know that he wanted to sell the most albums ever. and he wrote it on his mirror in his bathroom at the haveners' house. he would look at it, see it, believe it, live it. that's what we were taught when we were young. he would visualize that and he wrote it on his mirror. and also, to sell out stadiums. >> the strange thing about him,
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as he got ever more successful and richer, his self-esteem levels seemed to deteriorate. and to illustrate that, he kept having more and more plastic surgery to, i guess, in his eyes improve his look. when i talked to janet she also talked of self-esteem issues and la toya did, too. michael, i think, clearly had it, otherwise, why would he keep trying to change the way he looked. what was your view? >> i think he wanted to change the way he looked because he wanted to improve things. i mean, it's like if you have a zit on your face, you -- you want to pop it. if you see something on your face with your ears too big, your nose is too flat or your chin is too long, you want to improve it. i wouldn't say it comes from self-esteem. but there are surgeons out there, especially in hollywood, and for people in hollywood to talk about this, most of hollywood has been up under the knife. and his whole thing was he
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wanted to correct things and to make things look better. but i wish that he would have looked at the beauty of himself. >> he was a good looking guy to start with. >> he was just a natural beauty within and out. >> doesn't that tell you -- i don't want to hammer this point. but doesn't that tell you he must have had -- it wasn't just about wanting to look better. it's more to do with not being happy with how he looked. >> well, yeah, not so much not being happy but just wanted to make things better. >> it was like making a record for him. was he just a perfectionist? >> i think in his mind he had something that he was going after, but with these things, once you start you get caught up into it and you want to do a little here and there and there. but he was still the michael that we knew, the eyes, the heart, the feeling, the emotions and how he felt for people. that will never change. >> you clearly feel, jermaine, that your brother is going to
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get trashed in this court case? >> well, look what they did in the child molestation case. they painted him out to be the most horrible person and saying the most horrible things. and i'm sitting there and just imagine you being michael. you're sitting there, and you already want to do nothing but good. and you're hearing these things, and people you trusted to come into your home is now sitting on the stand lying and saying the most hurting things. it's hard. it's been tough for him. >> i remember. i remember, and it just always struck me that i didn't know enough about the reality of the truth, certainly not in the position that you were. it just seemed to me that michael, he did stuff that was to the public, just a bit inappropriate. especially as he got older. did you ever think of as his big brother, of warning him, it may not be a good idea to have sleepovers with young boys because people won't get it. they won't understand what you're doing? >> i'm the same way because
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what's wrong with sleepovers. what's wrong with sleepovers with kids? it's only the demented mind that think something different. michael said it best. why do you relate the bed to sex? we can have sex standing up or in the car or outside on the ground. and during those times when he was sharing his bed he was on the floor. but at the same time, these are people's minds who were demented like they were saying, neverland was used to bring in kids to molest them. and when you go to neverland, there are wheelchair ramps going up the rides. he was concerned about bringing the joy to kids who were termnially ill, dying of all types of diseases. this is a man who lived his life according to god's will. he really cared about people and it's so sad because this world didn't look at that until after he was dead. and he was trying to save this all along when he was alive.
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>> when you watched the martin bashir interview, clearly, michael did that to set the record straight, but made it ten times worse. what did you feel when you saw that interview? >> first of all, martin bashir needed to be slapped and he never should have been around michael. there again, michael trusted. and, you see, there's a question for us, why does people in the media want to say the most horrible things about someone knowing that they have all the right intentions to do good? >> i guess the answer, if i'm putting my media hat back on, because i worked in newspapers at the time of all that, is that it's not normal, and i use that word just in a straightforward way, for a guy with say at 44 to be sharing a bed with a boy of 12. that is not what most men of 44 do. >> how do you know that? how do you know that? >> i'm just guessing.
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i don't know anybody -- >> you can't guess, because, see, that happens all over the world and people don't think of that as -- >> but do you believe? >> yes. yes. >> you think so? >> absolutely. absolutely. yes, he does. >> i'm not -- i'm saying i don't think it does happen all over the world. was michael too innocent for this modern world do you think? >> absolutely. >> you really believe that, he was from a different era? >> he was from the era that we were from. i wish that we were around him more to tell him, michael, get this person away from you because they have a hidden agenda. whether it was the -- all the people who accused him of the child molestation, but at the same time, he saw the good in people, the good. >> when we come back, the trial and why jer main doesn't want michael's children there. >> i think they should stay away from the tv because they're going to say the most horrible
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♪ this is a celebration of his life. of his legacy. >> he was caring and funny. honest. pure. and he was a lover of life. >> daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine. >> how are his three children? >> very, very, very well. we made sure that they were in a
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school and were constantly monitoring their whereabouts and their interactions with kids at school because today there are drugs in schools and private schools and public schools and everything. but see, it's hard to sort of shelter them and keep them from it -- they have to grow up and be human beings. >> do they use the internet and stuff like that? >> we do, but we don't like it. >> there's so much stuff about their father, it must be difficult. >> it is very hard. we want them to stay off the internet, and that is very, very tough. that's gotten to monitored more. >> do any of them show any signs of wanting to follow in michael's footsteps as entertainers? >>' they're very, very much int film. they know about directors and producers and movies. they have interest to be in front and behind the cameras.
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>> who do you think has the most chance of being an actor or actress? >> paris is a star and prince -- i think prince is into film now too. they are going to acting -- >> but here's the thing, you have the choice now, because you're one of the elder family members here who can control the way these kids's lives go. given everything that happened to you and michael and your family, does part of you want to stop the train right now for the kids and say, go and be a banker, go and be a doctor? go and be something different, do not go down this path because there are so many pit falls or does the good that you have enjoyed from all of this outweigh the bad? >> the good definitely outweighs the bad, but the advice i would give, no matter how great the success is, family comes first. when you've got your family, the
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vultures, the crooks, they can't penetrate that circle because there's strength in numbers. when the family is strong, nobody can get in between that. michael had gotten away from the family. >> how will you handle the trial with regard to the kids? are they going to go to the court? are they going to be able to watch it on the television -- it will be a huge news story for several months. >> that's my mother's call. i don't think they should be there. i think they should stay away from the tv because they're going to say the most horrible things. they're going to try to, and they don't need to hear that because they know who their father was and we know who our brother was. that was a defense approach. >> michael's not here to protect himself now. when this trial starts, if you feel he's getting unfairly
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trashed in there, how are you going to deal with that? >> michael has done so much good and so many good deeds, he's well protected. it hurts every day, it hurts my mother, hurts my brothers, my sisters, it hurts his fans. but the life that he lived on this earth, it was a good life, but it was a bad life, because they were after him. they were after him because they didn't believe the good. the good in him. >> it's going to be a tough time for you and your family for next few weeks so i wish you luck, jermaine. thank you for being so honest and extraordinary book and i commend people to read it. i think they'll get a much better understanding of what your brother was like. thank you very much. >> thank you very much. >> it's been a pleasure. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com tonight, the president's job plan. how is