We are all voyeurs in the celebrity freak show

Exploited since childhood, Jackson still hasn't reached the stage when he can see the next sucker punch

The Western world is speculating about Michael Jackson's sexuality, even though I'd be surprised if his problem was anything worse than impotence. Maybe things should be turned around, though. Maybe the great spectacle here is the impotence of our culture ­ one in which one man's problems can be so very widely aired and so very little addressed.

Many millions of people have opinions about Jackson's mental state and about his fitness as a father or even as a babysitter. Bizarrely, though, only one named individual appears to have any strong practical ideas as to what should be done about this highly suspect situation.

The human rights lawyer Gloria Allred, who represented 13-year-old Jordy Chandler in a 1993 abuse case that was dealt with out of court in an $18m settlement, wants Mr Jackson's fitness to have children in his care to be inspected. She called for an investigation after Mr Jackson dangled his baby son Prince Michael II over a balcony. Again, prior to Monday's broadcast of Martin Bashir's interview with Jackson, she wrote to child welfare services in Santa Barbara, California, asking for checks to be made.

In a society that pays lip-service to the idea that the welfare of children should be paramount, this does not seem such a radical step. It is a less radical step than the one actually taken ­ for Jackson's children to be filmed over many weeks and the footage of their lives to be sold for millions as "infotainment".

If what Jackson says is right, ITV has done a terrible thing in exploiting his children in this way. But it is not just the unforgivable liberty of filming his children that Jackson is upset about. He is also castigating the film-makers, and especially Mr Bashir, for exposing his life in a manner he does not like. He is not alone among celebrities for taking such an attitude.

For example, London is awaiting the arrival next week of Mr and Mrs Michael Douglas to explain why they believe that a wedding for which they had sold media access was "private".

Such celebrities are ruthless in the maintenance of their own great assets ­ themselves. They are determined that they should exploit the media, and that it should never be the other way round. What they don't seem to realise is that it's the whole relationship, the whole value system, that is wrong. They don't want to challenge this value system, they just want to make sure that the system carries on working to their advantage. The cynical are challenging the cynical.

Whatever else you might like to say about Jackson, he is far from cynical. He is a great deal more vulnerable than the Douglases, and far too out of touch with reality to have realised what he was doing when he agreed to be profiled by the man who interviewed Diana. Exploited since childhood, the poor man still hasn't managed to reach the stage when he can see the next sucker punch coming.

But a lot of other people are out of touch with reality when their response to such a programme is to go out in their masses and buy his records. What cruel sentiment we show by professing our pity for this hopelessly damaged, vulnerable scrap of humanity, then popping down to the shops to buy the enjoyably toe-tapping products that have emerged on the road to his decline. Or rather, to his "comeback", for it is now being breathlessly said that the Bashir interview will prompt the biggest return to popularity an artist has experienced.

While the Western population, amateur psychologists all, understand that Jackson's great talent and appeal, and their exploitation since he was child, are at the root of all this tragic man's manifold troubles, it cannot hold back from continuing the process that was started, no one doubts, by this wholly inadequate father's own wholly inadequate father. Who could disagree that Jackson needs help? Who could fail to realise that it is this megastar's fame, his value as a commodity and his "status" as a "celebrity" that have been stopping him from getting that help for almost all his sentient life?

For most people ­ perhaps even the officers of Santa Barbara child welfare themselves ­ the idea of investigating Mr Jackson's fitness for fatherhood has seemed, despite all the evident cause for concern, to be, until now at least, too huge a step. But if an appraisal could be done quietly, sympathetically and without prejudice, then the outcome could be positive for everybody concerned.

But there is no hope of that, because of Jackson's high profile, and the prurient interest people have in the idea that deliberate physical, mental or sexual abuse is the only way in which children can be damaged. Letting welfare officers into your home is never seen as an admission that you may have something to learn, but simply that you do not have the wherewithal to stop such a violation being committed against you.

I think there is every likelihood that Mr Jackson is guilty of none of the deliberate crimes against children we fret so much about. But that does not make his children safe ­ not at all. Being brought up by a highly neurotic, reclusive lone parent is quite enough to damage a child with no deliberation involved. The continuing involvement of child welfare professionals at this stage in their lives could be most beneficial to Jackson's children, without him actually losing care and control of them.

But that is not likely to happen, for all the above reasons and for another connected reason. Our cult of individualism and freedom ­ with Michael Jackson being among the celebrities who embody the folly of such a cult ­ demands that no aspect of our lives can be interfered with unless we are crossing the line and committing a crime. At both extremes of capitalist society ­ and therefore down the middle as well ­ this works to our detriment. The wealthy parent can do what he likes with his children, as long as no crime is being committed. The poor parent can get little help with his child, unless the child is himself breaking the law.

At either end of the scale, the need to drift out to the extremes before attention is paid, or remedial steps taken, fosters impotence in us all ­ the desire to keep our heads down, not to get involved, to look inward, feel apathy and expect not to be able to "make a difference".

And it is absolutely certain that Jackson is out at the extremes. His mendaciously denied addiction to plastic surgery, his view of everything, even his children, as suitable for purchase or ownership, his sad, fabulous wealth and his impossible fame, all these could have been created to illustrate the old curse, that warns against getting what you wish for.

Likewise, our fascination with him is extreme, too, intrusive and ruthless, as is the way in which we routinely abuse him, in ways that we would blush to see our children doing in the playground. Wacko Jacko? The term is childish, cruel and ignorant, but it is common currency. We carry on looking in order to see just how wacko Jacko is going to get.

By turning away from troubled celebrities such as Jackson, by refusing to be voyeurs in the freak show, consumers of the product, disseminators of the gossip, we could make a difference. However, so many of us feel as impotent as he, so we cannot. Not even for the sake of three little children, who need to be helped, not made into talking points, by their father, by Martin Bashir or by me.

d.orr@independent.co.uk