Chris Rock drew a wave of laughter and applause at last year’s MTV awards show when, spotting the arrival of R. Kelly in the auditorium, he quipped: “Hey, better put the Olsen twins in the balcony!”

(The Olsen Twins, for those among you who know nothing of the viewing habits of under-12s, are Mary Kate and Ashley, a pert, honey-blond pair, now 17, whose amiable adventures have been stretched to half a dozen TV series and a number of feature films. Not bad little actresses, actually.)
Rock’s reference was to Kelly’s indictment on 21 counts of child pornography and to continuing police investigation of allegations that he has appeared in a video having sex with a 13- or 14-year-old girl.
Kelly says that the video is a set-up by a disgruntled former manager but admits possession of porn pictures: his defence is that while the girls pictured may look like children, they were actually all of legal age at the time the photographs were taken.
Meanwhile, Kelly’s children’s story I Can Fly!, first released in 1998, then withdrawn in February 2002 when the porn charges became public, has been republished and has again made the children’s books best-seller list. A spokesperson for publishers,Unique Expressions, says: “The public’s desire for the book since (the charges) has been greater than ever… We feel that it falls right in line with our mission to inspire readers to dream, work hard, and overcome any obstacles that try to keep them from their goals.”
Sales of Kelly’s music have also soared since his indictment. And he’s been Grammy-nominated.
Richard Goldstein commented wonderingly in the Village Voice last month: “Kelly’s troubles have only added to his aphrodisiac aura. It’s quite possible that the allegation of child abuse operates as a kind of Spanish fly... In the right circumstances, this is a crime that pays.”
Lest anyone think all this merely a reflection of the trivialising faddishness of the pop-world, note that just before Xmas, Kelly, at the invitation of the US Army, sang a set via satellite for the troops occupying Iraq.
What a contrast with Michael Jackson, disparaged, denounced, shuddered and sneered at, his career in precipitate, terminal decline.
Jackson would seem on the face of it to have a rather more plausible defence than Kelly. He concedes he took his boy accuser to bed but insists that what ensued was an expression of affection, not the perpetration of abuse. Whatever the fixation Jackson has with children, it would appear to be emotional rather than sexual. His own childishness has been widely remarked on. Many of his weird eccentricities become easily explicable if we imagine him a mischievous 10-year-old.
Perhaps in the course of his upcoming trial, we may learn more about Jackson which will tilt the plausibility of his defence this way or that. In the meantime, the most we can say is that he’s a very odd entity. But there’s something even odder about the contrasting reactions to the charges he faces and those levelled against Kelly.
Might the difference be, really, that while Jackson generally cuts a ridiculous effeminate figure, Kelly is the epitome of the husky black he-male? So we believe anything sexual Jackson gets up to has a hint of the perverted about it, but that when we say Kelly is ba-ad we give the word its coyly approving, faux-Afro connotation?
Or could the key difference be that it’s an under-age boy who figures in Jackson’s indictment, whereas Kelly is accused of abusing girls? Is the sex abuse of young girls tolerated in practice to an extent which is never formally acknowledged? Does this help explain the pattern of coverage of sex scandals in Ireland in recent years, and the different levels of disgust which appear to be directed against perpetrators? Does the insistent sexualisation of pre-teen girls in the pop mainstream provide part of the context?
What are we to make of the fact that Kelly now advertises himself as “The Pied Piper of R&B?”
And as for the giggles and cheers which greeted Chris Rock’s welcoming quip about Kelly, well, why not?, when one of the coolest websites in the US, Broken Newz, currently carries a feature counting down the time , second-by-second, to the moment Mary Kate and Ashley become “legal.” Here’s the come-on: “We have all sat and waited patiently for these two golden wonders to reach the age of eligibility… Well, now you can put your calculators and calendars away, Broken Newz has used advanced technology to assure you will not miss the day these two turn 18. Gentlemen, start your engines and get out your best booze. The countdown has begun. The Olsen Twins are waiting for you!”
The gender-specificity of responses to child sex abuse requires more study than it’s been allocated, here or elsewhere. Is the treatment of Michael Jackson inter alia an expression of hysterical homophobia? Is it possible, without distorting reality beyond recognition, to see him as an Oscar Wilde of our era?
“Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist?And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-striken air? Oh they’re taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.”

We ruminated last issue on the curious business of the Mormons baptising long-dead Jews and Christians into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I’ve thought more about it since. I’ve thought this: what’s the Catholic line on this mularkey, then?
Catholics couldn’t object to posthumous baptism because of the inability of the kaput to consent. Wander into a Catholic church almost any morning and, likely as not, you’ll hear infantile bawling echoing around the vaulted roof-space as tiny pink innocents are drenched into terrified turmoil and their souls signed up for the faith despite the plainly obvious fact that they have developed as yet no capacity for consent.
A parent who waited until the offspring had attained the age of consent before bringing it for baptism would be regarded by the Church as an incipient schismatic. Catholics have no notion of consent being desirable, much less necessary, for inclusion among the faithful. And Catholics, moreover, share the Mormon belief that souls can be saved after death. Otherwise, what’s all that pray-for-the-poor-souls-in-purgatory stuff about?
Is there not an opportunity here for Catholics to reclaim souls lured away from the path of righteousness by the wiles of Wesleyan proselytisers in post-famine Ireland?
This could be a boon for the living as well as the dead. There’s folk I know from just outside Drumshanbo who still hang their heads when entering the pubs of the locality, knowing that opprobrium lingers to this day like an acrid odour around their family, from the great-uncle of the grandfather on the mother’s side who was observed by a reliable witness sneaking up a boreen in 1849 with a bowl of soup up his jersey and a Protestant bible behind his back.
Reclaim dead Prods for the True Faith!
It’s over to the bishops, now. I say no more. Which is not to say I won’t have more to say soon.