It's not often that Michael Jackson appears to have been the sanest person on the planet.
But his much-mocked decision to mask his children whenever they were seen in public with him showed that somewhere in the singer's crazy head of his was a nugget of sanity.
He knew that merely being his children would be enough to cause Prince, Paris and Blanket a lot of problems. His own childhood was pretty unbearable, and perhaps he saw theirs would be far from ideal.
Those animal masks and floaty scarves when they were with him meant the children could be normal when they were without him. They could go to the cinema, the shops, the park, and not be followed by paparazzi, fans, picked on or mocked.
Then he died, the masks came off, and the children â€" quite reasonably â€" made the most of their new freedom.
They went to a standard school for the first time, they appeare d in public, they took centre stage at his memorial concert.
And suddenly three fatherless children were celebrities. Celebrities, moreover, who are surrounded by vast wealth and endless controversy.
They give interviews. Their relatives engage in constant spats over access and influence. Lawsuits line up as people fight over money, and a bunch of people come forward to say they’re the childrens’ real father.
With claims their grandmother was kidnapped and drugged, with aunts and uncles having stand-offs involving the police, with a former child actor claiming he’s the biological father, the surprise isn’t that Paris Jackson trie d to kill herself â€" it’s that she didn’t do it any sooner.
She’s a 15-year-old girl, a goodly number of whom feel like killing themselves most days.
I certainly did, and well remember world-ending tears, arguments, and the certain belief that no-one anywhere understood or loved me. It’s standard when you’re a 15-year-old girl.
But on top of that Paris is about to go to court to give evidence in a billion-dollar court case in which her relatives are scrapping with the company her dad was working for when he died.
On top of that she’s building a new relationship with her mother for the first time â€" the mother who signed her away when sh e was a baby.
And on top of that there have been claims of bullying at school over her father’s alleged abuse of children and drugs, and a quick glance at her Twitter account shows she is subject to a constant stream of crazy fans, love and hate which would mess with anyone’s head.
The Jackson family is so screwy their grandparents are estranged but still married, grandpa admitted whipping their dad, and dad hated them so much he left most of his relatives out of his will.
When you look at it like that, not passing on your DNA to your children and masking them in public seems incredibly sensible. It practically makes Michael Jackson Dad of the Decade.
Of course there would always have been a point where the masks would have to come off.
Paps would have spotted them one day, and as America televises its court cases Paris and her brothers would be beamed into everyone’s homes eventually.
Perhaps it would have been easier for them if the masks had stayed on a little longer, rather than being allowed into the unfriendly glare of celebrity by those supposed to be looking after their interests.
But what is inarguable is that the children of Michael Jackson are being exploited, just as he was.
Whatever Prince, Paris and Blanket do for the rest of their lives will mean that someone, somewhere, thinks they can make a buck out of it.
They will never have a friend, lover or relative they can fully trust. Even if they give all the money to charity and live in a trailer there will be someone who tracks them down, a guy in the store who says ‘aren’t you…?’
Considering who their dad was â€" and he was their dad in the most important sense, regardless of whose DNA made them â€" th at much is inevitable.
But what the Jackson children experience is just an extreme form of what a lot of other children do â€" from Hollywood child stars like Lindsay Lohan to the likes of Malaki Paul, the nine-year-old who burst into tears on Britain’s Got Talent last year.
There are rules about what children are asked to do, and the main one is that their parents must approve. Journalists aren’t allowed, in this country, to interview anyone under 16 without it.
But what do you do when their parents are dead, uninterested, or greedy? What do you do when a parent pushes their terrified child onto the stage?
Fame, in the end, is our responsibility too. Those who buy the records, the magazines, the newspapers, who thoughtlessly tweet, are part of the monster just as much as the journalists, the paps, the management or the parents. They’re the customer, and without them there’s no celebrity at all.
So let’s keep our fingers crossed that w hat happened to Paris was just the ordinary kind of teenage anguish and not the first sign that fame might do to Jacko’s children exactly what it did to him.
I for one don’t want to watch it a second time.
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