迈克尔·杰克逊：拯救儿童
Michael Jackson/迈克尔·杰克逊
Thank you，thank you dear friends，from the bottom of my heart，for such a loving and spirited welcome，and thank you，Mr. President，for your kind invitation to me which I am so honored to accept. l also want to express a special thanks to you Shmuley，who for 11 years served as Rabbi here at Oxford. You and l have been working so hard to form Heal the Kids，as well as writing our book about childlike qualities，and in all of our efforts you have been such a supportive and loving friend. And I would also like to thank Toba Friedman，our director of operations at Heal the Kids，who is returning tonight to the alma mater where she served as a Marshall Scholar，as well as Marilyn Piels，another central member of our Heal the Kids team.
Tonight，I come before you less as an icon of pop，and more as an icon of a generation，a generation that no longer knows what it means to be children.
Today，it’s a universal calamity，a global catastrophe. Childhood has become the great casualty of modern-day living. All around us we are producing scores of kids who have not had the joy，who have not been accorded the right，who have not been allowed the freedom，or knowing what it’s like to be a kid. Today children are constantly encouraged to grow up faster，as if this period known as childhood is a burdensome stage，to be endured and ushered through，as swiftly as possible. And on that subject，I am certainly one of the world’s greatest experts. Ours is a generation that has witnessed the abrogation of the parent-child covenant.
About 12 years ago，when I was just about to start my Not-Bad tour，a little boy came with his parents to visit me at home in California. He was dying of cancer and he told me how much he loved my music and me. His parents told me that he wasn’t going to live，that any day he could just go，and I said to him：“Look，I am going to be coming to your town in Kansas to open my tour in three months. I want you to come to the show. I am going to give you this jacket that I wore in one of my videos.”His eyes lit up and he said：“You are gonna give it to me？”I said“Yeah，but you have to promise that you will wear it to the show.”I was trying to make him hold on. I said：“When you come to the show I want to see you in this jacket and in this glove”and I gave him one of my rhinestone gloves. I never usually give the rhinestone gloves away. And he was just in heaven. But maybe he was too close to heaven，because when I came to his town，he had already died，and they had buried him in the glove and jacket. He was just 10 years old. God knows，I know，that he tried his best to hold on. But at least when he died，he knew that he was loved，not only by his parents，but even by me，a near stranger，I also loved him. And with all of that love he knew that he didn’t come into this world alone，and he certainly didn’t leave it alone.
Ladies and gentlemen，love is the human family’s most precious legacy，its richest bequest，its golden inheritance. And it is a treasure that is handed down from one generation to another. Previous ages may not have had the wealth we enjoy. Their houses may have lacked electricity，and they squeezed their many kids into small houses without central heating. But those homes had no darkness，nor were they cold. They were lit bright with the glow of love and they were warmed snugly by the very heat of the human heart. Parents，undistracted by the lust for luxury and status，accorded their children primacy in their lives.
I would therefore like to propose tonight that we install in every home a Children’s Universal Bill of Rights，the tenets as follows：
The right to be loved，without having to earn it；
The right to be protected，without having to deserve it；
The right to feel valuable，even if you came into the world with nothing；
The right to be listened to without having to be interesting；
The right to be read a bedtime story without having to compete with the evening news or EastEnders；
The right to an education without having to dodge bullets at schools；
The right to be thought of as adorable even if you have a face that only a mother could love.