La Toya Jackson sat down with Barbara Walters for a tell-all interview on 20/20 about Michael Jackson’s death, burial, and the family’s grief.

“I don’t think we’ll find a person as talented, a person who thought the way he thought,” La Toya says. “A person with the heart that Michael had.”

“People aren’t that way anymore. He was special. He wasn’t God, but he was certainly godlike. He was the closest thing to a god that I knew.”

La Toya reveals that she is the one who signed her brother’s death certificate and later became the legal guardian of his body.

La Toya talks about the day Michael died and her thoughts on Dr. Conrad Murray.

“Something went wrong,” she said when asked if the doctor killed her brother. “Something went wrong.”

Actually, several somethings appeared to have gone wrong, not least among them Murray’s hide-covering decision to call Prince Michael into his father’s room to witness his hopeless attempts at resuscitating the pop icon.

“He called Prince…Prince…watched him do this, Barbara. And you don’t do that to a child. You don’t do that to a child, especially when you knew prior to asking that child to come up, that Michael was no longer alive.”

WOW!!! That poor kid.

As for the controversy surrounding Michael’s other children, La Toya said the question of paternity was moot.

“It doesn’t really matter; those are Michael’s kids. He raised those kids. They were in his arms when they were born; the minute that they were they were right there with him. They only know Michael as their father.”

While the mother of Michael’s youngest son, Blanket, has never been identified, La Toya said that the boy is Hispanic. As for his older children, Prince and Paris, La Toya said they have not seen their birth mother—let alone grasp who she is—since their father’s death.

“They know who Debbie Rowe is. Whether or not they know she’s their mother, I’m not so sure. They haven’t seen her since he’s passed. But they’re more than welcome.”

As for Michael, while La Toya isn’t coming straight out and blaming Murray for her brother’s death, she does point the finger at who she believes to be at fault. (Michael’s death was ruled to be a homicide.)

“I blame any and everybody who was instrumental in Michael’s life providing him with drugs because it was wrong,” she said. “It was terribly wrong. They’re doctors! This is going against their license, Barbara. You don’t do things like that.”

Setting aside what may have killed Michael, La Toya says he is finally resting in peace. And a rather stylish peace at that.

“He was dressed in all white pearl beads going across, draped across,” she said of Michael’s burial. “A beautiful big gold belt. Like…like a belt that you win being a boxer. Full makeup…his hair was done beautifully, his makeup was done beautifully.”

He looked, in his sister’s words, “absolutely fabulous.”

With him in the casket were sunglasses, his iconic white glove and several other personal items, including 11 stones placed on his chest by daughter Paris.

The family’s grief was captured on camera during the public memorial service for the pop superstar, as Michael’s 12-year-old daughter, Paris, delivered tearful remarks in which she declared her undying love for her father. La Toya told Walters that during the service, Paris “wanted so badly to say something to her father.”

“I think it was … Stevie Wonder that was on. And she said, ‘Auntie La Toya, can I go on now and say something to daddy?’ And I started thinking, I said, ‘You know what, Paris? At the end we’re all going to say goodbye and go on stage and thank the audience and say goodbye.’ I said, ‘I think that would be a great opportunity for you to go then.’ And she said, ‘OK, I’ll do it then.’”

The interview will air tonight, September 11, 2009, at 10:00 PM on ABC’s 20/20.

 

Star Jones is talking about how she was treated during her departure from The View in 2006.

“Those girls were hateful,” Jones says of her former co-hosts.

In a new interview in the November issue of Essence magazine, Jones also opens up about “falling into a depression” after losing her self-titled Court TV show last year; her ongoing dispute with Barbara Walters (says Star: “Barbara set me up”); and her divorce from Al Reynolds, which was finalized in September.

Responding directly to Reynolds’s infamous YouTube videos, in which he stated he “still loves” Star, Jones responds bluntly: “I’m not in love with him.”

Jones, who laid low after the abrupt cancellation of her Court TV show, is currently in talks to make a non-scripted TV comeback. The reason she’s ready to start over? A sense of renewal she says she gained after spending an Under The Tuscan Sun-style summer at an Italian villa with girlfriends, including Natalie Cole.

Posing poolside in a white dress and fireside in a slinky black number for the interview, the surprisingly svelte Jones – who dropped 160 lbs. after a 2003 gastric bypass surgery – also talks about getting back to dating.

While she doesn’t directly address her new relationship with executive chef Herb Wilson, whom she was photographed smooching in the stands at last month’s U.S. Open, she tells the magazine, “I want to fall in love again. I’m ready to love 24/7. I want happiness.”

We watch The View regularly and we were always under the impression that Elizabeth Hasselbeck enjoys arguing.  Why else would she interrupt the other co-hosts as much as she does?

According to the National Enquirer, Elizabeth is tired of fighting the perception that the public has of her because of The View. 

Where will she go?  Elizabeth might transport herself from The View, to republican heaven-on-earth, Fox News. 

Elisabeth is reportedly considering the job. A source said: “Elisabeth feels she can’t win at The View, but she’s been told by friends at FOX News that they’d find a spot for her without hesitation.” Elisabeth is just as tired of the ladies at The View as they are of her! She feels she constantly has to defend herself. Besides that, when she gets passionate about her opinions, the others make her look like she’s hysterical. But when she doesn’t talk enough, she’s accused of ‘pouting,” says the tattle.”

I have a feeling that if Elizabeth bounces, her seat would get filled with another conservative anyway, to keep things juicy.

Star Jones responds to Barbara Walters’ memoir, Audition.

In the book, Walters claims Jones forced her to lie about her gastric bypass surgery on The View. Walters also reveals that she had an affair with then-married Senator Edward Brooke during the 1970s.

“It is a sad day when an icon like Barbara Walters, in the sunset of her life, is reduced to publicly branding herself as an adulterer, humiliating an innocent family with accounts of her illicit affair and speaking negatively against me all for the sake of selling a book,” Jones responded. “It speaks to her true character.”

Meow! Barbara was on the Oprah show that aired yesterday. Barbara did talk at length about Star, but let’s face it, we all wanted to know. Barbara explained that Star had been the most well-liked co-host on The View, but after she got the gastric bypass surgery and never aknowledged it to the audience, the views felt disconnected from Star. Star thought the public would believe that she lost all of that weight by doing pilates (as if the public is that stupid). Then Star began dating Al Reynolds and wanted a very expensive wedding, but didn’t want to pay for it. Star wanted corporate sponsors for her wedding in exchange for free stuff. The executives let Star get away with it for a while, but eventually told her to knock it off. Star then thought she would be clever and just go on other shows and promote the products that way. So in the end, Star lied to the viewers and rebelled against her bosses. That is why she was fired, according to Barbara.

 

Oprah is getting some much talked about interviews. Today and Monday, her Tom Cruise interviews will air. Then on Tuesday, her Barbara Walters interview will be on. Some juicy dish from the Walters interview has already surfaced.

Barbara Walters has confessed to having a relationship with then-married Senator Edward Brooke during the 1970s.

Walters shared details of her several-year romance with the Massachusetts Republican on the Oprah Winfrey Show in a taped interview to air Tuesday.

When asked if she was in love, The View host responded, “I was certainly – I don’t know – I was infatuated.”

The twice-divorced Walters went on to say, “I was certainly involved… He was exciting. He was brilliant. It was exciting times in Washington.”

Walters was on the show to discuss her new memoir, Audition.

Barbara Walters announced on The View earlier today that she received a call from Britney Spears’ “manager” Sam Lutfi.  Lutfi told Babbs that Britney is getting psychiatric treatment and her “mental issues are treatable”.

“She has been to a psychiatrist,” Walters, 78, said, recounting Lutfi’s explanation over the phone. “She, I assume, is starting some kind of treatment.”

Walters also reported that Spears was having trouble sleeping and was suffering from “mood swings,” but that she was back in touch with her mother, Lynne Spears.  (Lynne Spears was spotted at LAX this morning, arriving in Los Angeles.)

When those at the table challenged the veracity of Lutfi’s report, Walters’s response was, “I don’t know if anybody is telling the truth or not telling the truth.” But she noted, “He has been with her constantly. He seems to be enormously supportive.”

Chiming in with her analysis was Whoopi Goldberg, who said, “I think this girl has worked and worked and worked – and she is burnt out.”