Last week was the Billboard Music Awards, which featured among other acts skateboarders doing "ollies" and "grinding" to the sound of a tie-less Avril Lavigne performing her smash hit "Sk8r Boi" and Nelly, Ali, Murphy Lee and the rest of the St. Lunatics emerging from a gigantic-ly lame oven to sing "Hott innn Herre" (some additional consonants provided by Nelly, others by the Festival). But the most shocking and disturbing event of the evening was when Michael Jackson made an appearance live via satellite to present an award.

In case you've mercifully missed the news in the last few months, Jackson has been getting steadily weirder and weirder (how it's possible at this point is anyone's guess). While appearing in court during his lawsuit accusing his record label of racism against him (I don't even think the label knows which race he's supposed to be anymore), he wore a surgical mask to hide a botched surgery that has left him basically without a nose and hobbled around on crutches like an invalid due to a bite from a garden spider on his toe. He has two children, both apparently named "Prince Michael the Second", who are only seen in public with large nets over their heads like beekeepers. No one knows who the mother of either of the children is, and he dangled the younger Prince Michael out a four-story window while in France last month (why he was in France with his children during his big trial is also anyone's guess). Add to this his past troubles keeping his hands off of other people's small children, the fact he owns a giant private ranch with carnival rides and giraffes, and the fact that he hasn't released a successful or critically-acclaimed album in at least a decade, and you've got one messed up dude with no real place in today's music business.

Yet at every mildly-significant musical award show, Michael Jackson is inevitably trotted out and paraded around for a bit. Even after his performance at the MTV Video Music Awards this year, where he gave an acceptance speech for an "Artist of the Millennium" award that does not actually exist (he was inexplicably invited on stage to receive a cake in honor of his birthday), he still managed to find his way into the Billboard show.

It would be one thing if, despite all of his eccentricities, Jacko was still a successful musician, but the fact is he isn't. He hasn't had an album with a mainstream hit single since "Dangerous" and hasn't really been a force in the entertainment industry since the 1980's. Why then is he still recognized at music award shows as a top artist rather than as a curiosity more suited for VH1 Where are They Now? More importantly, how does he have custody of children after his high-profile molestation accusations? And the most mind-numbing question of all, why does he still have legions of fans whose presence were the reason that Prince Michael The Younger made his foray out the window? Between him and Pete Rose, popular support seems to gravitate towards the odd and the criminal.