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Jacko Pal: TV's Webster Coined 'Rubbaheads'
Yesterday's news reports about Michael Jackson's unearthed personal belongings were long on innuendo and short on fact. They'd also been reported earlier in People and The National Enquirer, but that's another story.
Much has been made of some kind of secret club Jackson may have had called the "Rubbaheads," which had typed rules and regulations.
A note to other Rubbaheads was found in the Jackson family storage bin purchased by a man in New Jersey. There's an implication that because Jackson called some boys "Rubbas," it connotes any number of unseemly things.
So I asked one of the boys, now grown, about the alleged Rubbahead Club of 10 years ago, when all this happened. He says when he heard about all this a few weeks ago and again yesterday, he was stymied.
"First of all, there was no Rubbahead Club. Rubba was a name Emmanuel Lewis, who played Webster, came up with," he explained. "Everyone called everyone Rubba. It didn't mean anything. What we did have was the Applehead Club, and that was from 'The Three Stooges.' Everyone was an Applehead because Michael loved 'The Three Stooges.'"
This was 10 years ago, when a number of well-known 13-year-old boys were coming and going from Neverland. They included Macaulay Culkin, Wade Robson, Lewis, the young man I spoke with and the young man from the Jackson case 10 years ago.
"It's nothing sexual," my source continued. "Michael even called one of the younger kids Baby Rubba. It didn't mean anything."
So what about the typed list of rules found in the storage bin? They included requiring members to be "idiots and act crazy at all times"; be vegetarians who fast on Sundays and avoid drugs; watch two episodes of "The Three Stooges" daily; know the Peter Pan story by heart; and when seeing another member, "give the peace sign, and then half of it."
In fact, insists my source, "there were no rules at Neverland. The whole thing was about not having rules and having a good time. It was all from Peter Pan. There was no club, no initiation, and I never heard of a 'club kit' or anything else."
What's clear about all this is that, when witnesses are called in the Jackson trial next winter, many things will be left to interpretation. What may seem prurient to the public on first impression may turn out to be completely innocent. It will be up to Jackson's lawyers to help a jury understand that.
Ironically, there was a serious misinterpretation in yesterday's reports about the meaning of a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called "The Children's Hour." In the poem, the narrator addresses three little girls, not little boys, which was the impression given in the reports.
I say "ironically" because a play called "The Children's Hour" by Lillian Hellman, inspired by the poem, was about two female teachers whose lives are ruined because of unfounded gossip that they are secretly lovers.