My Life and Times

Pool photo by Joshua Gates WeisbergMichael Jackson arrived at court Thursday in Santa Maria, Calif., for the first day of closing arguments in his child-molesting trial.

June 3, 2005
Final Arguments in Jackson Trial Paint 2 Portraits
By JOHN M. BRODER

SANTA MARIA, Calif., June 2 - As they did through three months of sometimes bizarre testimony, lawyers for both sides in the child-molesting trial of Michael Jackson painted widely divergent portraits in their final arguments on Thursday of a singer whose fame once rivaled that of Elvis and the Beatles but who has in recent years retreated into a strange and private world.

Soon a jury of eight women and four men will be asked to cast a verdict on the man and his world, with incalculable consequences for his career, his fortune, his reputation, even his health. But whatever the jury finds, Mr. Jackson has been indelibly damaged by his tribulation in a central California courtroom, his secrets laid bare and his psyche picked apart as if by carrion birds.

The trial here is only the latest in a decade of reversals for Mr. Jackson, whose music career is stalled and whose debts are piling up at a dizzying pace. Even if he is acquitted, many people will continue to believe that he harbors an unhealthy fondness for young boys, whom he openly admits inviting into his bed. He insulates himself from reality at his 2,700-acre Neverland Valley Ranch, surrounded by zoo animals and well-paid loyalists who do not question his odd behavior.

Ronald J. Zonen, a senior deputy district attorney, called Mr. Jackson a "predator" who feasted upon weak boys from fatherless homes, luring them into his bedroom with long conversations and lavish gifts, then softening them up for sexual molesting with alcohol and pornography. The accuser in this case, a 15-year-old recovering cancer patient, is but the latest in a line of victims that goes back more than a decade, the prosecutor said.

By day, Mr. Zonen said, the boys played at Neverland, driving customized go-karts, playing the latest video games, enjoying carnival rides and gorging themselves on candy and ice cream.

"At night," Mr. Zonen said, "they entered into the world of the forbidden in Mr. Jackson's bedroom. Mr. Jackson's room was a veritable fortress, with locks and codes which the boys were given. And they learned about human sexuality from someone who was only too willing to be their teacher."

Mr. Jackson's lead lawyer, Thomas A. Mesereau Jr., dismissed the prosecution's account as a lurid fantasy woven by enemies of Mr. Jackson and a family seeking to exploit his fame and riches to become wealthy itself.

Mr. Mesereau described the accuser and his family as "con artists, actors and liars" who had insinuated themselves into Mr. Jackson's life and the lives of many other celebrities as part of a pattern of fraud and deceit. He said Mr. Jackson, whom he described as "childlike and different and offbeat and na?ve," had been the victim of such hustlers repeatedly in his life. That is why he is in constant financial trouble and frequently the target of schemers, Mr. Mesereau said.

The jury listened raptly to the two lawyers' arguments, which took all day on Thursday and are expected to be completed by midday Friday. A few of the 12 jurors and 8 alternates took notes. Mr. Jackson, clad in a dark suit and plaid vest, appeared to be paying attention, but his facial expression rarely changed.

Mr. Zonen flashed pictures of Mr. Jackson and a succession of young boys he had befriended, and, Mr. Zonen suggested, sexually abused. He also showed covers of pornographic magazines featuring young female models and pictures of nude adolescent boys from books found in Mr. Jackson's home.

Mr. Mesereau's visual aids consisted chiefly of slides reminding jurors of inconsistent testimony and a timeline of the alleged molesting that he said was utterly incredible.

In the seats directly behind the defense table sat the defendant's brothers Tito and Randy, members of the original Jackson Five, accompanied during the afternoon by Dick Gregory, the comedian and social activist.

Mr. Jackson's parents, Katherine and Joe, sat in the second row, as they have most days during the 65 days of at times excruciating testimony about their son's taste in pornography, the figurines of nude women in bondage outfits found in his bedroom, his alleged heavy drinking and his supposed practice of licking the heads of young boys - all of which Mr. Zonen reminded jurors of on Thursday.

The Santa Barbara County district attorney, Thomas W. Sneddon Jr., who has sought to put Mr. Jackson behind bars for more than a decade, chose to allow his deputy to deliver the closing argument. Mr. Zonen proved during trial to be a more effective questioner than his boss and appeared to have better rapport with the jury.

He delivered his argument in rapid-fire style with a tone of barely suppressed outrage at Mr. Jackson's behavior.

"This case is about the exploitation and sexual abuse of a 13-year-old cancer survivor by an international celebrity," he said at the beginning of his statement. He then tried to defend the boy's mother, whom the defense has portrayed as a grifter, as an abused spouse struggling to raise three teenagers and who never asked anyone for money.

Mr. Zonen acknowledged that she had committed welfare fraud by claiming benefits within days of receiving $32,000 in a civil settlement in a case she filed against J. C. Penney. "That was a bad mistake on her part, and she may yet have to suffer the consequences before this is all over with," he said.

Later, he described what he called Mr. Jackson's "grooming" of boys for sexual molesting. It begins with the selection of a vulnerable child, Mr. Zonen said.

"The lion on the Serengeti doesn't go after the strongest antelope," he said. "The predator goes after the weakest."

He said the accuser's testimony was credible and consistent and sufficient grounds to convict Mr. Jackson. "The suggestion that all this was planned and plotted and was part of a shakedown is nonsense," he said. "It's unmitigated rubbish."

Mr. Mesereau, whose tone ranged from angry to sarcastic to scornful, noted that Mr. Zonen had spent a sizable chunk of his time for closing arguments in an attack on Mr. Mesereau and what Mr. Zonen called Mr. Mesereau's broken promises to the jury in his opening statement.

"When a prosecutor does that, you know he's in trouble," Mr. Mesereau said, looking straight at the jury. "This is not a popularity contest between lawyers. This is about the life, the future, the freedom and the reputation of Michael Jackson. That's what is about to be placed in your hands."

He said the prosecution's case rose or fell on the credibility of the accuser, his brother and his mother. "You've got to believe them beyond a reasonable doubt," he said. "You've got to believe them all the way. And it's impossible."

Mr. Mesereau said the prosecution had introduced the pornography found at Neverland into the trial without any direct evidence that the singer had shown any of it to the accuser. He said it was part of a "mean-spirited, nasty, barbaric attempt to demonize Mr. Jackson."

He added: "They have dirtied him up because he's human. But they haven't proven their case. They can't."

He said the accuser and his brother were cunning and street-smart youths from the east side of Los Angeles who had been coached by their parents to ingratiate themselves with celebrities and then wheedle money out of them. They raided the liquor cabinets at Neverland and brought their own "girlie" magazines, Mr. Mesereau said.

According to the prosecution, he said, "it was all Michael Jackson taking these innocent little lambs and corrupting their minds, and it's baloney."

Mr. Mesereau said that this case had turned Mr. Jackson's life "topsy-turvy," and had left him lonely and unable to trust anyone around him. "But he's not a criminal," Mr. Mesereau said.

As he was leaving the courtroom at the end of a draining day, Mr. Jackson was asked how he felt. He tented his fingers before him and whispered, "I'm O.K."

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June 3, 2005
Free Internet Site: A Portal to AOL's Future?
By SAUL HANSELL and GERALDINE FABRIKANT

Last month, America Online convened a meeting broadcast on the Web to its 14,000 employees. The purpose was to show off the free Internet portal that it is about to introduce at AOL.com, the third attempt in three years to offset AOL's steady loss of subscribers.

Before the unveiling, Richard D. Parsons, the chief executive of Time Warner, AOL's parent, spoke. "AOL is not for sale," he said, according to two people who were in the audience.

"AOL is not for spinout," he added. "AOL is for keeps."

But a few days later, Mr. Parsons was quoted as saying that he was, in fact, open to spinning off some AOL shares to the public. Then Barry Diller, an established Internet bargain hunter, said publicly that he had been interested in adding AOL to his holdings last year, but had turned up his nose at hints that the price would be $20 billion.

Whether or not AOL is about to be cast off, its reversal of fortune is striking. Five years ago, when its merger with Time Warner was announced, America Online alone was valued at $164 billion. Now, as it sets out to reinvent itself, its place within Time Warner is in question.

The merger has long since become a symbol of the misbegotten assumptions and skewed calculations among old and new media at the height of the technology bubble. And as Mr. Parsons's varying statements indicate, what to do about AOL is a pesky puzzle.

The new portal will offer sections on news, sports and business, much as Yahoo does, along with some original programming, like music videos, and an emphasis on interests like women's fitness. The challenge is how to create a free Internet site compelling enough to attract traffic and advertising - with much of the content it previously reserved for paying customers - without hastening the demise of its subscription business.

AOL thinks its risks are low because few of its members join simply for the content, and some of its specialized content will still be reserved for subscribers. In any case, if the payoff is a bigger share of the resurgent Internet ad market, it calculates that a further loss in subscribers is a risk worth taking.

Almost from the time of the merger - in which AOL was, lest it be forgotten, the acquiring party - the online service has been in decline, dragging down Time Warner's share price. Some analysts say AOL is now worth just $8 billion, even as Internet companies like Google and Yahoo have surpassed it as hot properties.

Any day now, Google's market value, currently $80 billion, could pass Time Warner's $81 billion value. Google's annual sales last year came to $3.2 billion, against Time Warner's $42 billion, but investors see Google as the future, and Time Warner and AOL as the past.

AOL has also been a drag on Time Warner's reputation as the Internet unit went through three years of criminal and civil investigations of its accounting practices. Those cases were resolved in recent months through settlements that cost the company $510 million and forced it to restate past revenue. Related shareholder lawsuits remain outstanding.

All the while, AOL has kept shrinking - to 21.2 million subscribers in January from 26.5 million in 2002 - as the dial-up customers it brought online shift increasingly to high-speed access from their phone and cable companies.

Now, with the free portal, Mr. Parsons is about to embark on the most fundamental effort yet to revive AOL.

If AOL's latest attempt to tap into the booming online ad market works, it could provide a much-needed source of growth. If not, it may be tempting to simply jettison the online service - which many Time Warner executives blame for the evaporation of much of their retirement savings - before its value falls any further.

Mr. Parsons declined to comment for this article. But Donald Logan, the chairman of Time Warner's media and communications group, which includes AOL, said the company was committed to keeping the online unit.

"We have never put AOL up for sale," he said. "There is nothing going on and no thought of doing anything other than making AOL work."

When Mr. Parsons says AOL is for keeps, he may well be saying that he has no other choice. For now, there is probably no prospective buyer willing to pay Time Warner more for AOL than it is worth to keep. AOL still sends its parent nearly $1 billion in cash each year and, largely through cost-cutting, has remained highly profitable. Moreover, any sale would most likely bring large capital-gains taxes.

Mr. Parsons evidently harbors some hope that if AOL can find a path toward growth, it may again add some pizzazz to Time Warner's stock, which has lingered under $20 for three years. (The shares were above $46 when the merger closed in 2001, already in retreat from the $73.75 price when the deal was announced.)

But if AOL is to provide a boost, it will have to find a way to rival the investor appeal of companies like Yahoo and Google, said Richard Greenfield, a media analyst at Fulcrum Global Partners.

"The question remains, How does AOL fit into that new world?" he said. "Is there a place for AOL in the Internet? How long do you keep spending to reinvent AOL? Or do you just harvest the cash out of the dying Internet access business?"

All this puts no small amount of pressure on Jonathan Miller, the chief executive of the AOL unit, based in Dulles, Va., to make the latest turnaround strategy work. When he was hired in mid-2002, Mr. Miller talked of a future for AOL as a hub for online shopping and transactions, which he argued was a more reliable business than advertising.

But he quickly realized that his principal mission was to stem the rapid defection of AOL subscribers to faster Internet service offered by cable and telephone companies.

Mr. Miller spent several years and many hundreds of millions of dollars building a $15-a-month product called AOL for Broadband that included content like music videos and services like antivirus protection, but not the actual Internet access. It succeeded in retaining five million AOL members who might otherwise have canceled their service (and lost their AOL e-mail addresses). But it largely failed to draw new customers.

So AOL, which virtually invented Internet advertising, has spent more than a year playing catch-up with rivals like Yahoo and MSN. It has just finished replacing its own publishing system so it can take ads in the same standard Internet format as other sites. And Michael Kelly, a longtime Time Warner executive brought in to run ad sales, has started to repair AOL's reputation on Madison Avenue.

"Their sales force is now very focused and very competitive," said Greg Smith, executive vice president and director of media practice at Carat Interactive, an online buying agency. "They are much more willing to work with you."

Now those sales efforts are focused on the elaborate Internet portal planned at AOL.com, a site that has been largely used by its paying members to check their e-mail while at work, executives of AOL say. AOL.com will draw much of its content and its tone from the AOL service, with its flashy headlines, big photographs and instant polls.

But AOL will not give away those aspects of its paid service that its research shows are most appealing: special features for children with access controls for their parents, Spanish- language pages, protection against viruses and spam, and e-mail addresses at AOL.com. (The free service will offer e-mail at AIM.com.)

Of course, AOL's Internet service, which costs $23.90 a month, is facing ever more competition from low-price dial-up providers and even some broadband providers. This week, SBC Communications started offering high-speed Internet service to new customers at $14.95 a month.

AOL hopes to leapfrog its rivals by using the latest technology in its new portal, particularly with video. The site will begin public tests this month and should be generally available by the end of the summer. AOL will try to draw traffic to the portal from its assorted free properties, including Netscape, Mapquest, Moviefone and most important, the AOL Instant Messenger chat system. Collectively, those services are used by more than 50 million people a month who are not AOL members.

AOL also hopes that by moving its content outside its members-only service, its pages on many subjects, as diverse as musicians and diets, will be indexed by Google and other search engines.

"My biggest problem is the walled garden," said Mr. Kelly, who runs all of AOL's Web properties in addition to ad sales. "The world can't see the good stuff we do every day."

By sometime next year, if ad dollars are flowing in and investors start to bid up Time Warner shares, the bet will have paid off.

If AOL.com is doing well but Time Warner shares are still flat, Mr. Parsons may be interested in selling a partial stake in America Online to the public. This sort of spinout in theory would let investors put an independent value on AOL and allow the online unit to make acquisitions with its own stock.

The questions will be tougher if Mr. Miller's portal flounders as badly as AOL for Broadband has.

If Mr. Parsons is then inclined to sell, not many media or technology companies would have the combination of resources and need to spend $8 billion or more for a shrinking Internet service business. Microsoft is the most logical buyer because it could fold in its own Internet service, but pursuing a business with little growth potential is hardly Microsoft's style.

AOL's huge audience, and especially its instant-messaging franchise, would be of some appeal to Yahoo and Google, but such a deal would sharply curtail their earnings growth. Mr. Diller's company, InterActiveCorp, does not shy from complex deals, but Mr. Diller likes to buy things on the cheap and Mr. Parsons does not want to look as if he was taken advantage of.

In theory, a private equity firm might be the perfect buyer for a shrinking AOL. Michael Gallant, an analyst with CIBC World Markets, said that AOL's pretax operating profit could well double if a buyer simply wanted to cut marketing and product development costs and squeeze every last dollar out of its existing customers.

"The business is easily worth $15 billion in the slash-and-burn scenario," he said.

Roger McNamee, an experienced technology investor, said that "seems like an obvious deal-in-waiting, given the disastrous results today." Still, he said, the financing for an AOL buyout would be tricky.

In the end, he said, "AOL is worth more to Time Warner than it is to a private equity firm."

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Oliver Meckes/Nicole Ottawa/ Photo Researchers, Inc.

One gene, apparently by itself, creates patterns of sexual behavior in fruit flies.

June 3, 2005
For Fruit Flies, Gene Shift Tilts Sex Orientation
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL,
International Herald Tribune

When the genetically altered fruit fly was released into the observation chamber, it did what these breeders par excellence tend to do. It pursued a waiting virgin female. It gently tapped the girl with its leg, played her a song (using wings as instruments) and, only then, dared to lick her - all part of standard fruit fly seduction.

The observing scientist looked with disbelief at the show, for the suitor in this case was not a male, but a female that researchers had artificially endowed with a single male-type gene.

That one gene, the researchers are announcing today in the journal Cell, is apparently by itself enough to create patterns of sexual behavior - a kind of master sexual gene that normally exists in two distinct male and female variants.

In a series of experiments, the researchers found that females given the male variant of the gene acted exactly like males in courtship, madly pursuing other females. Males that were artificially given the female version of the gene became more passive and turned their sexual attention to other males.

"We have shown that a single gene in the fruit fly is sufficient to determine all aspects of the flies' sexual orientation and behavior," said the paper's lead author, Dr. Barry Dickson, senior scientist at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. "It's very surprising.

"What it tells us is that instinctive behaviors can be specified by genetic programs, just like the morphologic development of an organ or a nose."

The results are certain to prove influential in debates about whether genes or environment determine who we are, how we act and, especially, our sexual orientation, although it is not clear now if there is a similar master sexual gene for humans.

Still, experts said they were both awed and shocked by the findings. "The results are so clean and compelling, the whole field of the genetic roots of behavior is moved forward tremendously by this work," said Dr. Michael Weiss, chairman of the department of biochemistry at Case Western Reserve University. "Hopefully this will take the discussion about sexual preferences out of the realm of morality and put it in the realm of science."

He added: "I never chose to be heterosexual; it just happened. But humans are complicated. With the flies we can see in a simple and elegant way how a gene can influence and determine behavior."

The finding supports scientific evidence accumulating over the past decade that sexual orientation may be innately programmed into the brains of men and women. Equally intriguing, the researchers say, is the possibility that a number of behaviors - hitting back when feeling threatened, fleeing when scared or laughing when amused - may also be programmed into human brains, a product of genetic heritage.

"This is a first - a superb demonstration that a single gene can serve as a switch for complex behaviors," said Dr. Gero Miesenboeck, a professor of cell biology at Yale.

Dr. Dickson, the lead author, said he ran into the laboratory when an assistant called him on a Sunday night with the results. "This really makes you think about how much of our behavior, perhaps especially sexual behaviors, has a strong genetic component," he said.

All the researchers cautioned that any of these wired behaviors set by master genes will probably be modified by experience. Though male fruit flies are programmed to pursue females, Dr. Dickson said, those that are frequently rejected over time become less aggressive in their mating behavior.

When a normal male fruit fly is introduced to a virgin female, they almost immediately begin foreplay and then copulate for 20 minutes. In fact, Dr. Dickson and his co-author, Dr. Ebru Demir of the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology, specifically chose to look for the genetic basis of fly sexual behavior precisely because it seemed so strong and instinctive and, therefore, predictable.

Scientists have known for several years that the master sexual gene, known as fru, was central to mating, coordinating a network of neurons that were involved in the male fly's courtship ritual. Last year, Dr. Bruce Baker of Stanford University discovered that the mating circuit controlled by the gene involved 60 nerve cells and that if any of these were damaged or destroyed by the scientists, the animal could not mate properly. Both male and female flies have the same genetic material as well as the neural circuitry required for the mating ritual, but different parts of the genes are turned on in the two sexes. But no one dreamed that simply activating the normally dormant male portion of the gene in a female fly could cause a genetic female to display the whole elaborate panoply of male fruit fly foreplay.

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