Monday was going to be a rough one for Michael Jackson. He was scheduled to appear in London's High Court to answer breach-of-contract charges from Bahrain's Sheik Abdulla bin Hamad Al Khalifa, who loaned The Gloved One $7 million American and took him in after he fled the United States on a distracting molestation scandal. But the principals have agreed on principles, and all the free advertising the scandal aroused will no doubt pay off for both down the road.
"As Mr. Jackson was about to board his plane to London, he was advised by his legal team to postpone his travels since the parties had concluded a settlement in principle," spokeswoman Celena Aponte explained to the Associated Press. "Therefore, he will not be attending court on Monday."
And to think that the Sheik felt his money was being wasted.
After all, he helped Jackson pay his prodigious bills, hide from the stalkarazzi, and land a $300,000 lifstyle guru, only to watch the cultural influential back out of a contract for an album, a play and a biography. So it sure looked like bin Hamad Al Khalifa had something to cry about. But after outing Jackson as a grifter and threatening to put him in a courtroom, where he has historically gone from weird to worse (as the Associated Press article takes humorous pains to point out), the Sheik has landed something his millions could not buy. Crazy, crazy publicity.
this audio or video is no longer availableWe're happy to help. This bizarro merge of the musical, legal and geopolitical is just too good to pass up. Now, back to your regularly scheduled culture jamming
Photo: Wikipedia
