In 2006, Mike Lawler darkened his face with bronzer he borrowed from female classmates, put on a red jacket, struck a dance pose, and went to a campus social gathering at Manhattan College dressed as Michael Jackson.

He was 20 years old. The school was 3% Black.

When the New York Times published the photographs in 2024, Lawler did not deny them. Instead, he called the costume “the sincerest form of flattery, a genuine homage to my musical hero.” He added: “The ugly practice of blackface was the furthest thing from my mind. Let me be clear, this is not that.”

Then he tried to make jokes about it.

But the blackface wasn’t even the strangest chapter in Lawler’s Michael Jackson obsession. In 2005, as a high school senior, Lawler flew from New York to California to attend part of Jackson’s criminal trial — in which the pop star was charged with molesting a 13-year-old boy at his Neverland Ranch.

A Jackson biographer who helped get Lawler into the courtroom wrote that the young fan was “so disgusted” by testimony against Jackson that he “couldn’t help but mutter something derogatory under his breath.” Lawler was removed from the courtroom.

The Daily Beast’s headline said the rest: “The GOP Rep. Who Can’t Let Go Of His Michael Jackson Fandom.”

Politico noted that around the same time the blackface photos surfaced, Lawler had recently declined to condemn racist rhetoric. Twice.

“All you can do is live and learn,” Lawler said. Eighteen years later, the learning is still in progress.