Those Lips, Those Lies by Michael Musto
The money:
Yes, Jackson's aggressively weird, and inspiringly enough, this has united a nation in political disarray! His excesses bond us against a collective enemy—he's much more popular to attack than Iraq—while fueling our desperate desire for the charges to be true. No, we're not rooting for anyone to have been molested, but we want Jackson to be the repository of all our fears so we can agree on something, send him away, and bring on the sunshine. We couldn't get Rosie or Martha to melt—and we can't even find bin Laden or Hussein—but if Jacko would just agree to be a pedophile, we could have our kook and eat him too.