'Neverland' Post Script

Michael Jackson accusers Wade Robson, left, and James Safechuck, right, flank director Dan Reed

Finished watching "Leaving Neverland" last night and there was a grand total of one thing that didn't ring true: Michael Jackson tried topping someone? People keep asking me if they should watch the HBO documentary to which I reply: It's your call. Hearing about people who got seduced and brainwashed was fascinating to me. But I used to pretend I was Patty Hearst as a child and play SLA, so ....

Beyond the Beret

I was obsessed with Patty Hearst as a young boy in the suburbs of Detroit -- it all seemed so glamorous, what with the publishing fortune! the kidnapping! the beret! -- and have always taken her at her word that she was brainwashed by the Symbionese Liberation Army and acted accordingtly. (I remember using my babysitting money to buy her memoir, "Every Secret Things," when I was about 13 and reading in in two days!) But Jeffrey Toobin's new book, "American Heiress," sheds new light on the case that symbolized the turbulent '70s better than any other and has me looking at it in a whole new way -- that Hearst might actually have just been an attention-starved girl who used the media as her personal Instagram account. (Many suspected that, but he offers some actual proof.) Titillating as the premise is, though, I probably won't be buying the book seeing as Janet Maslin's review in The Times is so fascinatingly thorough I don't need to. Read HERE.

Order HERE.