After the kiddie hanging (Jesus, who hasn’t wanted to dangle their masked children out of a hotel room at one point or another?), the court cases and all the other not always apocryphal tales of a ghastly life with surely only darkness at its heart, Jackson’s reputation is beyond tattered.

apocryphal (adj) : not canonical. Hence: Of doubtful authority; equivocal; mythic; fictitious; spurious; false – source: Word 2/2003, p. 97