While the authorities try to untangle Michael Jackson’s mess of finances and genetics, one question remains.

What killed Michael Jackson? In fairness, that’ll be answered soon enough as his toxicology results are returned. But that hasn’t stopped Michael Jackson’s dad Joe Jackson from speaking out now – he says that he suspects ‘foul play’.

Oh Joe, don’t do yourself down. True, you stole Michael Jackson’s childhood and have admitted to mercilessly beating him, and you’ve made a career of leeching off his success – but that hardly constitutes foul play. Oh, you were talking about someone else. Oh. Well this is awkward.

Thanks to all the other berserk details that have emerged in the wake of Michael Jackson’s death – apparently he was a bald anorexic with a body full of needle holes and a set of kids who weren’t even slightly his, for example – nobody has really had time to focus on Michael’s dad Joe Jackson very much.

And in a way, that’s the right thing to do. After all, Joe Jackson has just lost a child, and that’s obviously an unbearably sad thing for any parent to be put through – not least when your relationship with your son had become so fractured that he conspicuously left you out of his will – so keeping a respectful distance in his time of bereavement seemed like the decent thing to do.

But screw that, says Joe Jackson. When else is he going to get the chance to be on television this much? When Marlon dies? Be serious. Joe Jackson is the head of the Jackson family, and as such it’s his duty to drag his weirdly Fritzl-esque face in front of as many cameras as possible to speak on behalf of everyone. Or on behalf of those who believe that Michael Jackson’s death was the result of some sort of high-level conspiracy, at least. Yesterday, Joe Jackson told ABC News:

“I just couldn’t believe what was happening to Michael. I do believe it was foul play. I do believe that. Yes.”

Unbelievable, isn’t it? Joe Jackson actually went 21 entire words without trying to hype up his record label, or his Blu-Ray DVDs, or his shoes, or anything else that would have made him infinitesimally richer. That might just be a record. Congratulations, Joe Jackson. You’re a keeper.

The whole foul play angle is interesting, though, isn’t it? Is Joe Jackson trying to state that someone physically murdered Michael Jackson? Or is he claiming that some of Michael Jackson’s associates had realised that Michael was worth more dead than alive and had slyly encouraged his drug use in the knowledge that it could finish him off?

Or does Joe Jackson mean that Michael Jackson grew up to be a painfully fragile drug addict recluse with an uncomfortable child fixation because his dad couldn’t stop compulsively shilling him out to the world of showbusiness for financial gain when Michael was a boy, beating him when he didn’t perform exactly as ordered?

Or does he mean that chickens killed Michael Jackson? In which case he probably meant ‘fowl play’ and we’d thank him for making that distinction clearer next time. Some people, eh?

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