What Joe Jackson knows about Michael

Joe Jackson appeared on "Larry King Live" to talk about his grandchildren and his (bad) relationship with his son

Published July 21, 2009 1:22PM (EDT)

Larry King  interviewed  Joe Jackson last night, and it took several strange turns.  (Read the whole transcript on CNN).  Jackson and his son, Michael,  were clearly estranged (Joe admits he was barred from his son's home) and as King probed into their relationship the conversation veered into a weird territory.  Here's an early exchange:

KING: Where is -- where is Michael's body?

JACKSON: I don't know. You'd have to ask somebody that knows. I don't know. All I know is that...

KING: You're the father.

Later, King, having established that the father and son didn't have anything to do with eachother, pushed Joe Jackson on whether he was an abusive father.

JACKSON: Let me handle this. The media keep hollering about saying that I beat Michael. That's not true. You know what this beat started -- beat started in the slavery days. Where they used to beat the slaves and then they used to torture them.

That's where these beating started. These slave masters, and that's where that come from. But, hey, there's a lot of people in America, Larry, a lot of people in America spank their kids, you know? They say they don't, they're lying. They're lying.

Now, Michael was never beaten by me, I've never beaten at all.

KING: Ok, you're on record.

Watch:


By Caitlin Shamberg

Caitlin Shamberg is a former multimedia editor at Salon.

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