Look, he passed peak at Beat it.

Did any of the child stars that he was peer to have a normal life and not become creepy old dudes?

Also, I kinda liked Bad.

Did any of the child stars that he was peer to have a normal life and not become creepy old dudes?

This is, I think, not beside the point.  There is something very, very destructive about being a child star, especially if you’re a superstar by the age of 10.  He was, for a while, a very unusual child star because he did have a successful adult career (both financially and artistically), but then he self-destructed.

And, frankly, I can’t help suspecting that he was one of those pedophiles who’d been abused themselves as a child.  It doesn’t excuse it, but it at least makes him a little more human and comprehensible for me.

Random factoid:  a friend of mine at work who’s an amateur ballroom dancer says that “Billie Jean” is a perfect cha-cha.  That was one of her prize-winning routines.

<blockquote>Did any of the child stars that he was peer to have a normal life and not become creepy old dudes?

This is, I think, not beside the point.  There is something very, very destructive about being a child star, especially if you’re a superstar by the age of 10. </blockquote>
Yes, Wil Frackin’ Wheaton

Sorry, big fan.  Wil’s written coherently on the issue several times.  Even if he chooses not to in this case, because he tries to be classy, his previous blog and paper published stuff can give you just the merest taste of what goes on for child stars.

There’s also Danica McKellar too . .

Interesting - I thought I could get away with nested blockquote tags.

I think closer to Jackson (timewise) in the realm of being both a child star and having a successful adult career but not becoming majorly fucked up, I would submit Jodie Foster.  Close enough to contemporary, she is about four years younger.

It’s also worth remembering that he did do a lot- quite a lot- of humanitarian work after his artistic peak (Heal the World Foundation, helping Ryan White, etc.)

As for the pedephilia thing- I wonder what Macaulay Culkin and Emmanuel Lewis experienced re: that, and how they feel about his passing.

Last songs I remember liking by Jackson: Man in the Mirror- cheesy, yes, but a genuinely good reminder to look after your own shortcomings before judging anyone else’s (Sanford? Ensign?), and for some reason, Dirty Diana.

I never really believed that Jackson actually experienced what Dirty Diana was about- that is, the experience of being a singer unable to resist the temptations of the beautiful women that want to sleep with a superstar- because Jackson was tragically tempted by other kinds of things. In a weird way, I thought that song was a desperate attempt to express- or even an attempt to really feel- the way big rock stars are supposed to feel, but Jackson never could. That passionate and desperate attempt to appear to be something he wasn’t- especially and ironically when that faked appearance wasn’t really even a very admirable thing- was always powerfully tragic to me. So I liked the song for odd reasons, I guess.

All the Goonies turned out okay. Drew Barrymore seems no more fucked up than most people. But you can’t compare. There is no such thing as being as famous as Michael Jackson.

I know there’s a scene in one of those Corey Haim/Corey Feldman reality shows where one of them seems to suggest they were (one, both?) molested by an older, “close friend”.

Also, remember that Jackson came from a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses.  The stories of abuse that come from those communities and how the church provides a framework to cover them up is especially disturbing.

There is a kind of macabre irony to the fact that his fans in LA are starting to lay flowers at the Hollywork Walk of Fame Star for the radio personality Michael Jackson, Jackson’s own star under a red carpet for the Hollywood premier for Bruno.

There is no such thing as being as famous as Michael Jackson.

That’s definitely a large part of it, but one has to wonder what percentage of the problem was growing up in a clearly abusive family and environment (the Jackson family definitely was not the Brady Bunch), and what part is attributable, more or less, to his unique psychology.  I suspect no answer to these questions is possible.  While I agree his level of fame was unprecedented, I refuse to accept that *anyone* who had achieved that level of fame would have turned out so screwed up.

Corey Feldman is a train wreck.

But whatever. I always liked Martha Plimpton anyway.

[composes self]

I mean, uh, I’m way above paying attention to celebrity gossip. Who is Corey Feldman, anyway?

[folds arms defiantly]

Who is Corey Feldman, anyway?

Surely you refer to the guy who played Igor in Young Frankenstein?

My thoughts about Michael Jackson are complicated.  He is a cautionary tale about how incredible stardom from an early age can seriously, seriously fuck you up.  It is such a pity.  But I don’t feel particularly sad about his death, aside from empathy for those who loved him, if there were any such people.  How terrible it must be to be Michael Jackson.

“There is no such thing as being as famous as Michael Jackson. “

Yeah.  If you weren’t around when Thriller was released, you might not really get that.  But that’s the thing right there.  Whatever he did afterwards and certainly he turned into a big freaky show, I will always remember him as the soundtrack of my youth and just how incredibly talented he was then.  You could not keep your eyes off of Jackson back then, and not for the same reasons you couldn’t look away in later years.  He was just fucking amazing.  I guess Amanda covered it with “supernatural talent”.  It was something.

He is a cautionary tale about how incredible stardom from an early age can seriously, seriously fuck you up.

Or what happens when your father physically and emotionally abuses you for years.

Michael Jackson wanted to be Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up.  Part of that had to stem from his not having had a real childhood.  Still, he was planning to revive his career right up to the end, planning appearances and tours.  He was obviously as addicted to fame as he was to plastic surgery.  It must have been terribly painful for him to be toppled from his pinnacle, to be despised by so many people after having been loved by so many.  I’m surprised that he lived this long and that his death didn’t involve suicide.  His life story is classical tragedy, a great talent destroyed by a tragic flaw.

You know what really pisses me off?  It’s so stupid but I’m pissed off that Farrah Fawcett also died today and while I was never a fan, she fought her cancer so hard and with such class.  Now she’s being totally upstaged by the freak show that was Michael Jackson.  Plus the media circus is winding up and we’ll be dealing with Michael Jackson 24/7 for the next month.  Ugh.

So, here’s to Farrah and her fight against cancer.

A good note, but some perspective:

If you remember the 80’s at alll - and I do briefly - what made it so remarkable was the birth of the global brand. Larger than life:

Madonna. Mike Tyson. Michael Jordan. Wayne Gretzky. Michael Jackson. McDonalds. Pepsi. I am sure I am missing some, and I would appreciate it if people could name what I forgot…

These brands shook the world in terms of culture and became industries unto themselves. Michael Jackson was part of that - he was larger than any “superstar” of today, all of the people mentioned above were. It was different. It was global. It was larger than life. The first brands of global capitalism.

They were all giants. And today, one more giant passed away.

And while we’re cataloguing things which may very well have had profound effects on MJ’s mental state, it is my understanding from having discussed the issue with some doctors a while back that MJ certainly abused massive amounts of hormones (likely beginning at puberty and intiially onorders from his father) for untold years.  And given all the surgery and what not….who knows what other substance abuse problems he had.  You certainly don’t have to be the most famous person in the world to develop crushing long term chemical dependencies and related problems.  They also tend to skew one’s view of reality, oddly enough.

“And, frankly, I can’t help suspecting that he was one of those pedophiles who’d been abused themselves as a child.”

This!

All of his behavior looked to me to be an almost textbook example of someone that was physically/sexually/emotionally abused as a child and was never able to heal or process it. But because of his money and fame the odd behavior was even more apparent and bizarre.

I loved the Jackson 5, but I HATED Off The Wall…I was off the Michael Jackson train before Thriller, his music just wasn’t for me after that.

But, oh, his voice was magical when he was a kid. I agree with Amanda - goosebumps.

Sorry Fashionablyevil,
I didn’t mean to parrot you.

Madonna. Mike Tyson. Michael Jordan. Wayne Gretzky. Michael Jackson. McDonalds. Pepsi.

One of these is not like the others. 

Unless you’re Canadian, eh?

Who is Corey Feldman, anyway?

Surely you refer to the guy who played Igor in Young Frankenstein?

DoH!

BadKitty, I’m right there with you. I always felt Farrah was an interesting person who could easily have coasted on being a sunny blonde sexpot but opted for a more challenging path. And her battle with cancer defines bravery. Our society seems to prefer sudden, scandalous celebrity deaths - not long-term deterioriations that remind us that we’re all vulnerable, the famous and obscure alike. Farrah’s deterioriation was incredibly grim and I hope people don’t sweep it under the carpet. I want her to get the respect and attention she deserves.

Child stars include: Anna Paquin.  Alicia Witt.  Alicia Silverstone.

Just got off the phone with my mom. I had to ask, “So was this anything like when Elvis died for your generation?” (the whole tragic freak-show collapse included)

I’m not so much mourning Jackson as my own youth, which feels like it officially died today.  I grew up on Off the Wall and Thriller (and then the unevenness of Bad an descent into self-parody with the Bad video…).

I feel old today.

I wasn’t around for Thriller, so I don’t get it, but this is right:

“Plus the media circus is winding up and we’ll be dealing with Michael Jackson 24/7 for the next month.  Ugh.”

All other news is dead. Iran, North Korea, climate change bill, healthcare, right wing sexual hypocrisy. It’s all gone.

Cheesy, bizarre, whatever. Michael knew music. I agree that he probably didn’t know much else. However, his music was real, at least to me. Between him and Farrah, I’m in deep morning: A large part of my youth has died. They’re like the eccentric relatives everyone has. Yeah, you complain and mock them while they’re alive, but you still miss them when they go. Michael, Farrah, rest in peace.

the birth of the global brand. Larger than life

I graduated from high school in 1980 so I was a little old to get the Michael Jackson fever but I remember the brand that was Michael Jackson (TM) and how it saturated everything.  It was insane.  The only other person who came close to that level of world wide celebrity may have been Madonna.

Holy shit did Farrah Fawcett pick the wrong week to die.

A very classy move, IMO.

Perhaps, though I am not sure it is outweighed by the very un-classy move of having outbid McCartney himself on re-obtaining the rights to them back in the eighties—when McCartney and Jackson were supposedly BFFs.  Which is why McCartney severed ties to him and refused to associate with him thereafter.

Drew Barrymore seems no more fucked up than most people.

Not anymore, but the transition from child star to adult comedic actress was a rough one.  I seem to remember a few years of booze and pills followed by a comeback that involved Poison Ivy and posing for Playboy.

I was very much a part of the generation that received the full impact of Jackson’s stardom. I don’t see the story as compelling as most. Bad stuff happened to him, he did bad stuff to others, he got rich. Lots of bad things happen to people who don’t get rich. A symptom of having absolutely no interest, and a healthy repgnance, of celebrity. His songs were good, though. Until they weren’t.

But even if you plug your ears and try to pretend that there was only one Michael Jackson—-the Michael of the Jackson 5, of Off The Wall, of Thriller—-it’s hard.  His earlier music that displayed his practically supernatural talent is impossible to listen to without occasionally hearing portends of the child molesting freak show shell of a human he was to become.

Not much difference from Elvis, is it? There is a world of difference between 1950s, young, healthy Elvis and 1970s fat man in a jumpsuit strung out on prescription drugs Elvis.

This is, I think, not beside the point.  There is something very, very destructive about being a child star, especially if you’re a superstar by the age of 10.

This is mostly true, but there are exceptions. Ron Howard (Opie) turned out just fine.

Not much difference from Elvis, is it?

And they both had a preference for underaged sexual partners, though Elvis did at least like them pubescent…

Thank you for actually discussing his pedophilia. Too many are glossing over it or not mentioning it at all.

Most child stars just seem to end up washed up, aimless, and bored, not insane. They never had to figure out how to live in the real world with normal people when they were young, and many of them never do even as adults, but they spend most of their time just being sad cautionary tales, not endless media circuses.

Drew Barrymore seems no more fucked up than most people.

Drew Barrymore was in rehab at 12.  I think that counts as “more fucked up than most people,” even if she’s now doing well after what was probably a shit-ton of therapy.

There’s huge differences between Elvis and Michael Jackson.  Sorry, but Elvis was not an innovative star like Jackson—-he was all charisma, whereas Jackson was a hard-working machine of a man.  Plus, Michael Jackson could write songs, which wasn’t really Elvis’s thing.  Jackson was heads and shoulders above Elvis in talent. 

Sadly, he was way more fucked up, too.  Elvis’s main problem was being white trash nouveau riche.  Drug-addled with bad taste and a bad temper isn’t really out of the ordinary.  Jackson was a child molester who had no relationship to reality, it seems.  Elvis was still of this world.

You know, RMJ, a lot of people’s reaction to his near-certain pedophilia even in life was either to turn a blind eye or insist it just couldn’t be so.  I can’t find video of it (it’s probably on the NBC website somewhere and I really just don’t want to look for it right now…), but I will never forget this little item from Weekend Update some years back when Norm McDonald was anchoring:

This week, in a secret ceremony in Australia, Michael Jackson was married for the second time. Asked what makes his new bride special, the King of Pop said, quote: “She has taught me about the power of imagination. Like imagining that a grown woman is a ten year old boy.” [Mixed reactions from the crowd] ... You know he’s a homosexual pedophile, right? You understand? [cheers and applause]

And, yes, it is true, Michael Jackson is going to be a father. Already, he has hired an entire staff of nannies, nurses and extra bodyguards, which hopefully will protect the child from Michael Jackson.

This is mostly true, but there are exceptions. Ron Howard (Opie) turned out just fine.

It really does seem to be 99 percent about the parents.  Michael Jackson’s parents were fucked up, and they managed to fuck up all of their kids.  Ron Howard’s parents were working actors who knew what parts of the entertainment industry were important and which ones weren’t and were able to shield him (and his brother Clint) from a lot of the more destructive aspects.  Though they weren’t child stars, Beau and Jeff Bridges came from a very similar kind of family and managed to avoid the kind of stuff that Jackson dealt with.

I would be fascinated to see what Macaulay Culkin has to say about all of this given how exploitative his father was towards his children and how close he and Michael Jackson were at one point.  I forgot that he’s the godfather of Jackson’s first child.

Sorry, but Elvis was not an innovative star like Jackson—-he was all charisma, whereas Jackson was a hard-working machine of a man.

Highly debatable.

The bizarre thing is that McCartney outlived Jackson.

I was comparing more their rise-and-falls and the fact they were both superstars for an entire generation than their levels of talent (which can be debated to the end of time). And that they were also both empty shells of their former selves by the end of their respective lives (though yes, Jackson’s was way more freakish).

The bizarre thing is that McCartney outlived Jackson.

You know what is REALLY bizarre? All of the Rolling Stones outlived Jackson.

Yes, though I suppose Jackson’s decision to leave the songs to McCartney suggests an ability to learn from, and correct, a mistake, which is otherwise not something very evident in the second half of Jackson’s life story.

Seems fair enough, Ben, though maybe just offering to sell them back to Paul at a fair price rather than willing it to him would have been more corrective.  I suppose we should reserve judgment until we find out whether Jackson actually did leave them to McCartney.

I also have to wonder, even assuming they were left to Sir Paul, if he will actually get them.  That would be a very very VERY substantial asset for the estate, and further, one capable of being easily liquidated for la massive amount of money.  My understanding is that Jackson’s finances were in something of a shambles.  They may end up having to go to his debts no matter what Michael may have wanted done with them.

You know what is REALLY bizarre? All of the Rolling Stones outlived Jackson.

Brian Jones excepted, of course…

Do we count Keith Richards as actually alive?  I thought he had achieved a special classification….

Thanks, RMJ.  I think it was easy for me because I’ve got a long-standing fascination with fucked-up-ness.  It’s kind of weird to think that in the end, Michael Jackson may force people to deal with an uncomfortable level of nuance—-believing that a person who is deeply evil in many ways is still a human being.  Hard, but necessary.

You know what is REALLY bizarre? All of the Rolling Stones outlived Jackson.

The Rolling Stones are the Fidel Castro of pop music.

I confess, I don’t get the massive response. I was a teen in the ‘80s, and I remember the Michael Jackson superstar stuff, but he’s been such a disturbed and disturbing freakish person for so long, I just can’t really feel much about his death.

I am, however, massively annoyed at the non-stop coverage on the news that overrode my Rachel Maddow show. I can’t believe they just ignored every other piece of news today, including the death of Farrah Fawcett, a far classier celebrity.

“The bizarre thing is that McCartney outlived Jackson. “

Man that is nowhere near as bizzare as the fact that Keith Richards outlived him.

“Do we count Keith Richards as actually alive?  I thought he had achieved a special classification…. “

LOL really.

A lot of child stars end up neither with successful adult acting careers (like Jodie Foster) or on drugs or in jail or dying young. Some just leave the entertainment industry and become regular people. Out of curiosity, I once looked up all the child actors from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Only one of them is still acting- the rest have gone on to have successful careers in other things. The kid who played Charlie is a veterinarian now. More recently, Andrea Barber, who was on Full House, started posting on Twitter. She seeems to have turned out all right, but she hasn’t acted in almost fifteen years.

If any of the Rolling Stones live into their 90s (especially Keith Richards) it either proves that there is no God, or if there is one, he has a really perverse sense of humor.

I’ve been really struggling to describe what, exactly, it was I was feeling since I heard the news this afternoon. It has affected me quite a bit, but I was having a hard time pinning down the emotion(s).

This post gets at a lot of it - the incredible, peerless talent with the incredible, peerless fucked-up-ed-ness of the man. I know he hurt a lot of people - badly - but I also feel like he was really tormented himself. I don’t mean to downplay or excuse, but it was painful to even consider what might be inside him. I remember seeing side-by-side pictures several years ago of what he looked like before all the surgeries and skin treatments and what he looked like now, and it felt like the man had reduced to some frightened animal, inside this cage of a face, peering out through the eyes. When I thought RIP, I wasn’t just following social convention. Whatever the content of his torment, it’s over now. The words rest in peace actually mean something here.

Also, Thriller was the first pop album that I was aware of that I didn’t hear from my parents’ collection. Even though I didn’t really come around to his music until I was older, he marks the beginning of my own cultural awareness. Like MAJeff said, his passing marks the passing of my own youth, too.

You know what is REALLY bizarre? All of the Rolling Stones outlived Jackson.

Except Brian Jones.

With any luck at all though, this means that the Gosselin saga is at least at the bottom of the front page

the incredible, peerless talent with the incredible, peerless fucked-up-ed-ness of the man

OK while I grant his talent, and in fact, very profound talent, I have to take issue with “peerless.”  The success of a lot of his musical output, in particular, can be attributed to world class producing…Quincy Jones, anyone?  And while his output and image, for a time, was wildly successful and lucrative, I think some people did (and do) confuse hype and publicity with actual merit.  McDonald’s has made quite a bit of money and a reputation selling hamburgers….and I also know the one down at Callaghan’s Irish Social Club, while much less well known, is infinitely better.

I hate that after previewing once the thread goes away.

The success of a lot of his musical output, in particular, can be attributed to world class producing…Quincy Jones, anyone?

That can be said of many great artists. The Beatles minus Brian Epstein & George Martin are simply not the same animal.

Quincy Jones is no slouch, but even he was schooled by Jackson at times:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billie_Jean

That can be said of many great artists.

I agree.  One might even say some of those great artists were Michael Jackson’s peers.

I take it back. I was looking for a superlative word. Peerless probably wasn’t it.

Did any of the child stars that he was peer to have a normal life and not become creepy old dudes?

There’s his direct childhood competitor Donny Osmond, who married young and had 5 boys, could only have a hit on the charts under a pseudonym, and starred in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

I hate it when one word out of a comment is what gets the reaction - especially when that word was a word I almost didn’t write.

You know what is REALLY bizarre? All of the Rolling Stones outlived Jackson.

The Rolling Stones. Now that’s a band that would have been improved by the untimely death of a main player in the early 80s.

Try as I might, I can’t separate Michael Jackson the pedophile from Michael Jackson the artist. I know some people can, and obviously are, but I can’t. So I can’t say I’m mourning him tonight, and it’s driving me up the damn wall that my ever-present earworms seem to be on a loop of “The Way You Make Me Feel,” the guitar solo from “Beat It” and “Man in the Mirror” (which I always hated, even before the rumors). Maybe it’s too simple, but my reaction to the news was very much one of “a middle-aged pedophile died, and I’m supposed to care why?” Okay, there’s no maybe about it—that is too simple of a way to look at it, but the rumors about Jackson started when I really started dealing with my own abuse and the stories about him buying off the families of accusers came out right about the time I was trying to drum up the courage to confront my own abuser, so Jackson probably represents, to me, the worst case scenario—the guy who fucks up lives and has enough money that he can’t be touched. I’ve deliberately kept the tv off tonight because I don’t think I could handle the lionization of a guy who probably should have spent some time in jail and never had to.

Jodie Foster seemed to come out ok.  It can be done.

Actually, that sounded like damning with faint praise—from what I can tell through the filter of her carefully guarded privacy, Jodie Foster appears to be a pretty much awesome person whom I would love to have as a neighbor or colleague.

I like her movies, too. 

Anyways.

I’ve deliberately kept the tv off tonight because I don’t think I could handle the lionization of a guy who probably should have spent some time in jail and never had to.

James Brown spent some time in jail, but his artistic contributions are still worth remembering. It’s difficult to separate the person from the art, but one can have value despite the other.

Chingona: We probably all agree though that his “fucked-up-ed-ness” was without peer.  Tha man, whatever else may be said, certainly dwelled on the Mount Olympus of being fucked up.

James Brown spent some time in jail, but his artistic contributions are still worth remembering. It’s difficult to separate the person from the art, but one can have value despite the other.

It’s not criminal behavior in general—it’s this particular crime that’s the problem. There’s something particularly offensive about child molestation—that’s why we continue to punish child molesters even after they’ve served their sentences by limiting where they can live and where they can go (a decision I heartily disagree with, oddly enough). I feel the same way about Roman Polanski—I can’t and won’t watch his films for the very same reason.

I feel the same way about Roman Polanski—I can’t and won’t watch his films for the very same reason.

I wish I could be as hardline as you about that, but I really really love Chinatown…

I feel the same way about Roman Polanski—I can’t and won’t watch his films for the very same reason.

I was tempted to give up my Phil Spector, but I can’t do it.

And, frankly, I can’t help suspecting that he was one of those pedophiles who’d been abused themselves as a child.  It doesn’t excuse it, but it at least makes him a little more human and comprehensible for me.

It’s fairly widely believed that Michael’s father, Joe Jackson, was an extremely abusive father.  Whether the abuse was strictly physical or was sexual in nature, we may never know.

And no, it doesn’t excuse it, but it does help to explain it… the majority of predators were themselves prey in their young years.

Felix,
I want to make clear that I don’t begrudge anyone their ability to separate the two. I wish I could sometimes. I console myself by recognizing that there’s no shortage of great art out there to experience, and that cutting that small group out isn’t going to cost me much in the long run.

As clearly eccentric - maybe even insane - as Michael Jackson was, let us not forget that he was never convicted of anything. Had any private citizen been trotted out in front of the media and had such allegations thrown at them - even though they had never been convicted of any of it - every sensible person would decry what a travesty it is.

That aside, I’m ashamed to know as much as I do about the artist’s personal life. Do we follow our pharmacist home and take pictures of them with their children? We do not, so why should we follow around our entertainers in such a manner? They render us a service, so why can’t we just let them go home and be normal like everybody else? Ah, I wanted to get tickets for his tour should he have extended it to the US. :(

All the Goonies turned out okay. Drew Barrymore seems no more fucked up than most people. But you can’t compare. There is no such thing as being as famous as Michael Jackson.

Agreed… the man literally was Elvis for the generation after Elvis.  When his career peaked with Thriller, the most succesful album in recording history, he was arguably the most famous and most popular person on the planet - there was no bigger name out there in 1984.  Not the Pope, not the Queen, not the President.

I have a bizarre feeling that years from now, Neverland will become the new Graceland.

Incertus: Oh hell, despite my somewhat obvious disdain for Michael Jackson, I still have to admit I loved a good bit of his music even if I burned out on most of it years ago.  The song Human Nature never grows old for me though…and I don’t begrudge you your inability to separate the artist and the art, I really detest Polanski as a person, and wish I could do without my DVD copy of Chinatown on that basis.  Mitigating this somewhat is the fact, at least, that a film actually has a whole lot more people working on it (and in the case of Chinatown, making it a great film) than just the director, even if the director is “in charge.”

Sara,
If Michael Jackson hadn’t had millions upon millions of dollars to come to financial agreements with the families of the kids he was accused of molesting, he’d have been in jail. To paraphrase Chris Rock, if Michael Jackson drove a bus, he wouldn’t be Michael Jackson, King of Pop. He’d have been Michael Jackson, kiddy-diddler, and no one would have given a shit who he was until he self-identified as a sex-offender when he moved into their neighborhood after he got out. Lots of guilty people never get convicted.

Do we count Keith Richards as actually alive?  I thought he had achieved a special classification….

Keith Richards died ten years ago.  His body remains animated by the sheer will to live of his liver; that fucker will survive anything, and come back for more. After the bomb drops, it will be hauling itself around a radioactive wasteland hunting cockroaches.

Piator: You’re suggesting his liver is as aptly named as Michael Jackson’s “Bad”?

I’m a little disturbed that everywhere you look people are calling him a pedophile.
Innocent until proven guilty. Period. NOBODY deserves to be tried in the press.

While it wouldn’t be surprising to find that he was guilty, wouldn’t it also not be very surprising to find that he was innocent, but simply the biggest easiest target on the planet? I mean come on… a guy who is eccentric, black, rich?

All it would take (and possibly took) is one person smelling money or a warped fame to make a false claim and that’s it - the whole world will NEVER believe his innocence.

I am disabled with PTSD in part because of exposure to pedophiles when I was 11-13, I understand the damage it does. I can’t have a relationship, I’m fucked up for life. But I am NOT so filled with anger so as to forget our basic human rights.

He was NOT convicted of anything, calling him a pedophile is offensive unless you yourself have personal knowledge of his guilt - NOT just “facts” you got from the same people who gave us Saddams mythical WMD.

“If Michael Jackson hadn’t had millions upon millions of dollars to come to financial agreements with the families of the kids he was accused of molesting, he’d have been in jail. To paraphrase Chris Rock, if Michael Jackson drove a bus, he wouldn’t be Michael Jackson, King of Pop. He’d have been Michael Jackson, kiddy-diddler, and no one would have given a shit who he was until he self-identified as a sex-offender when he moved into their neighborhood after he got out. Lots of guilty people never get convicted. “

Or maybe the the millionaire was not an idiot and knew that money-seeking accusers would better be paid off than to try to fight charges when he knew that the whole world had judged him guilty already based on National Enquirer reports?
Lots of guilty people never get convicted, but lots of innocent people DO get convicted, especially black ones.

Look, YOU do not know if he was guilty or innocent, period.

Progressives believe in constitutional and human rights, which means progressives do NOT judge a person guilty when they haven’t sat on the jury and heard the facts.

Scumbag assholes like Bill O’Reilly pull that kind of shit.

I have a bizarre feeling that years from now, Neverland will become the new Graceland.

I don’t know.  As much as Elvis fell apart toward the end, he never did anything to poison his memory like Jackson did.  Like Amanda said, he was drug-addled with bad taste and a bad temper, but it seems to me like most of the harm he ever did was to himself.  That doesn’t measure up to pedophilia.  Besides, I wouldn’t be surprised if Neverland had to be sold off.  Those debts Felix mentioned.

Incertus: That may be true, but we cannot be certain. Family members of mine have gone through our legal system and I have seen how very little any poor person can do once the State is out for blood, whether or not they are innocent. You need money - lots of it - to fight anything you are charged with. If you are acquitted, the state does not pay your attorney fees. It might have been that Michael Jackson simply decided that the cost would be nearly equivalent for the first set of charges to go to trial and be acquitted of them (between further damaged publicity and legal fees) as it would have been to simply pay the accusers and save himself the headaches. The thing is is that we simply do not know for sure and probably never will. He is dead now, so (I genuinely mean this) do correct me if I am wrong, but why beat a dead man? He made beautiful things that we will cherish for the rest of our lives and there is little if anything left to take from him or prove about him.

I’m 38, so I was 11 when Thriller came out, and was just coming aware of current pop music in 1983 (I remember listening to Beat It and Human Nature incessantly). I hadn’t thought much of Michael Jackson until I heard Billie Jean on the radio about a month ago, and I thought, “Wow, that was a really good tune.”

I just watched the Motown 25th anniversary special in 1983, which debuted MJ’s Moonwalk, and was struck by something: Jackson danced with absolute confidence and feline grace. You can’t do that unless you’re on some level comfortable in your skin. But his entire behavior, post-1983, with all the plastic surgery and retreat into imaginary land (and I’m not even talking about the pedophilia, which is pretty well confirmed in my mind) is someone who is trying to negate himself, erase his identity and construct a new one. It’s hard to square that with the commanding figure on stage 26 years ago.

MJ’s work ethic isn’t actually debatable. He was a monster perfectionist, even moreso than James Brown. So much that Quincy Jones famously came up with his own term for it—“ass power”).

MJ was obscenely talented, but also driven from without (by his abusive father) and from within to surpass Stevie Wonder—to be a bigger star at a younger age, to have more hits, to reach a wider audience… and you know, he did it. He’s probably the only person ever to record a Stevie Wonder cover that threatens to surpass the original. As for fame, he left Stevie (and Marvin and Diana and Aretha and JB and everyone else) in the dust. No black artist—no artist, period—had ever previously attained anything remotely near the bugfuck insane level of pop culture superstardom MJ had in the 1980’s. He was, hands-down, the biggest celebrity on the planet. And he did it while being musically innovative and maintaining an impeccable level of artistry—at least through Thriller, though I would also rate Bad rather more highly than Amanda. It goes without saying that his success blew the doors wide open—no Thriller, no Purple Rain, obviously, and that’s just the beginning.

MJ’s genius in his creatively fertile years is undeniable—if you don’t get that or can’t hear that, then I flat-out do not trust your ability to listen to music.

Obviously, everything he did when outside the recording studio or off the stage was a complete trainwreck (at best). He was completely unequipped to handle the fame he’d worked so hard to achieve. And, like a lot of people, he went from being abused to being an abuser. I’m not making excuses for any of it. His crimes are horrible, unforgivable. But that’s the man, not the artist—and today we lost one of the most brilliant, innovative, hardworking, soulful, transformative musicians who ever lived.

I’m more than a little disturbed by people who either have such an unnuanced view of the world that they can’t admit that a musical hero was flawed or are in such denial about sexual abuse that they can’t see that Jackson was the classic pedophile.  That sort of denial is not helpful.  It’s the sort of naive denial that allowed this to happen in the first place.

Besides, I wouldn’t be surprised if Neverland had to be sold off.  Those debts Felix mentioned.

I fully expect it to be sold off… and then I expect the buyer to turn it into a tourist mecca.  And they will come.

Most of MJ’s stuff came out when I was a young elementary school kid so other than hearing him on random car radios and stereos at classmates’ homes, it didn’t leave much of an impression for me. 
His popularity in my area was already starting to fade by the mid-late 1980s as other artists like Beastie Boys, Whitney Houston, and Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam supplanted him.

MJ’s work ethic isn’t actually debatable.

Didn’t mean to suggest MJ’s work ethic was impeachable.  But actually, Elvis was a workhorse as well, particularly in the earlier years.  I just think valid arguments can be made both ways on the Elvis-v-Michael-Jackson thing…so much so that I suspect it is pointless to have the debate.

A lot of child stars end up neither with successful adult acting careers (like Jodie Foster) or on drugs or in jail or dying young. Some just leave the entertainment industry and become regular people.

That, again, I would attribute to the parents.  There’s going to be a big difference between a child actor who’s told, “Okay, we had a good run, but if you want to quit, that’s fine with me” and one who’s told, “What!?!?  You can’t quit!  I just bought a house!”

I have an interesting (not great, but interesting) book called Hollywood Lolitas that’s all about how American movies have been obsessed with young girls acting like adults and adults acting like young girls pretty much since day 1.  One of the big threads that the author finds in a lot of these womens’ lives is that they had very controlling stage mothers who ran their careers:  Mary Pickford, Shirley Temple, Brooke Shields, Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor.  Having a parent who won’t let you quit is great (for audiences) when you’re Judy Garland, but it’s not so great when you’re Corey Haim.

Also, on that Motown clip? MJ’s actually singing (not lip-synching) while pulling those moves. Nobody even pretends to try to do that anymore.

I fully expect it to be sold off… and then I expect the buyer to turn it into a tourist mecca.  And they will come.

That does seem likely.  It will be difficult and expensive to maintain it in anything approaching the condition it was in in Jackson’s heyday though.  As I understand, it is shut down and rotting right now because MJ couldn’t afford to run it anymore.

It may also end up being the only celebrity home cum tourist trap that is actually in poorer taste than Graceland…;-)

MJ’s genius in his creatively fertile years is undeniable—if you don’t get that or can’t hear that, then I flat-out do not trust your ability to listen to music.

For some reason, you reminded me of this (as usual) great piece by Fred Clark at Slacktivist from a few months ago.  The part I was thinking of:

Last year I was at a local place with live music featuring some smirking frat-punk cover band. The kids in the band probably weren’t born yet when Journey’s Frontiers first came out, but they decided to do “Faithfully.” It was meant to be ironic. Just like our picking on Jason years ago, the band’s rendition of this sappy power ballad was meant to be a dismissive, hipper-than-thou mockery of Steve Perry and the boys and of anyone who actually liked this stuff.

That’s how it started, anyway, and the young audience was playing along with the joke.

But try as they might, they couldn’t sustain it. By the time they reached the “whoa-oh-oh-oh” part, every trace of irony was gone. They weren’t mocking this cheesy song, they were embracing it, reveling in its earnest cheesiness.

Power ballads, it turns out, are called that for a reason.

Music can sneak right in past all of your defenses and sucker punch you.  I should be able to resist the cheesiness of “The Man in the Mirror,” but I just can’t.

Amanda, I am not naive.
I know and understand pedophiles, I am on disability because of two of them.

It must just be dumb luck that the two pedophiles who molested me were apparently not “the classic pedophile,” because neither of them were androgynous eccentric people. One in fact was a school guidance counselor.

Come to think of it, I guess I am suspect since I am an unmarried male who is good with kids.

You want unnuanced view of the world? Easy! Just buy into tabloid TV gossip crap that plays to your prejudices and a easy, cookie-cutter view of the world. Oh wait, you’ve already done that.

Seriously - you argue that not buying the cheap easy media line is an unnuanced view? Are you kidding?

And if there IS a classic pattern that he seems to fit, does that mean it’s fair to decide he’s guilty based on what your trusted teevee tells you?

It’s NOT denial, it’s not hero worship to say he was innocent until proven guilty - it’s the WAY OUR COUNTRY IS SUPPOSED TO WORK, for fucks sake.

I just think valid arguments can be made both ways on the Elvis-v-Michael-Jackson thing

Valid arguments, sure, but ultimately Elvis was just never as involved in the nuts-and-bolts of record-making as MJ. The level of detail on any given song on Off The Wall is orders of magnitude greater than than the level of detail on any of Elvis’s records. MJ was involved to a much higher degree—songwriting, obviously, but also: singing harmony vocals, arranging, mixing, effectively co-producing (MJ was right there in the studio alongside Q).

Elvis had immense raw talent, but MJ was a highly trained pro, something he was groomed for practically since birth. It’s unquestionable he was more hands-on in the studio than Elvis.

Amanda, would you please, please, please post that Michael Jackson video (with the Jackson 5) that you had on the site within the last year.  I’ve searched in vain for it and it was hands-down the best Jackson 5 video ever—almost certain it was “I want you Back” ..Michael was wearing a striped cap, probably from 1970 or 71.  I’ve got to see that video again!!

Nearly everybody in my family - male and female - have been subjected to sexual abuse (most often by other family members), so I have no blinders on with respect to this topic. The situation I have proffered is not only entirely plausible but common. Poor people haven’t the money to fight the State and rich people often opt out of doing so entirely.

We cannot know the details of the goings on in his legal cases, and simply stating that it must be true because he was eccentric or insane, after only observing him in the media, is something akin to Bill Frist’s diagnosis of Terri Schiavo. The public is much too removed from the situation at hand to make any valid judgment.

-Cheers to everyone who won’t let Jackson’s death absolve him of what are almost certainly some of the most reviled crimes we count.  A dead pedophile is still a pedophile.

-As has been alluded to in this thread, Jackson’s life was the perfect storm of nastiness, unbridled fame and wealth, abuse, dysfunction and amazing timing.  Someone above mentioned that he was one of the first global brands and that’s true if we leave out the corporate brands talk about personal brands (and I’m intentionally ignoring fashion here).  In a time in the music business when excess and huge numbers were the norm, Jackson was off the fucking the charts enormous.  Of course, his record company quite literally controlled the media, so once again, it’s a confluence of factors, not just the raw talent of an individual that’s at play here.

-At some point though the man with all the resources in the world has to take blame for being so out of control.

-As bad as his family was to him, make no mistake that most of the people Jackson surrounded himself with business wise were just as evil.  Like moths to flame, some of the buggest scumbags and ratfuckers in the music business attached themselves, lamprey-like, to Jackson and his fortune.

-Most of the doctors that did surgery on Jackson should be thrown in jail.  Seriously, at what point do you just say, “no”?  And it doesn’t matter there is always someone that will say, “yes”.  The thing is not to be the yes person.

-Jackson was a unique talent of immense proportion but I think people often mistake the idea that because he was a “solo” act he did everything.  Far, far from it.  Jackson had some incredibly talented people to work with and not unlike Elvis, gets credit for a lot that he didn’t really create himself.

-“king of pop” is a disgusting monniker.

Michael Jackson’s lifestyle was pretty much a textbook example of pedophilia, but not because he was an androgynous eccentric.  Plenty of pedophiles aren’t androgynous eccentrics, most of them are pillar of the community types in fact.  Jackson was acquitted of charges in 2005, but he settled lawsuits before that, paying off the families of young boys who accused him of pedophilia.  I try not to be judgmental, but if even one of the charges against him was true, then no, his accomplishments do not outweigh his crimes.  Being a great artist doesn’t make up for abusing a child.

Michael Jackson outlived Elvis by eight years—that’s pretty amazing.

They both left an indelible impression, they were both individual superstars. They both had a huge fan base long after they stopped cranking out hits. Their fans forgave a lot in both instances.

As for Jackson’s relations with boys: Remember the saying, It’s never too late to have a happy childhood? Deprived of any normal upbringing, it’s just possible he was trying to, at last, make himself the childhood he never had, only enhanced with the assload of money he made, however inappropriate that seemed. Forced to grow up too soon, he decided to do it up right. Having other kids to play with is part of a happy childhood—it’s unlikely he could find other cases of arrested development to hang with, so he used real kids.

I agree he was weird as all get out, but that doesn’t necessarily make him a groper.

“We cannot know the details of the goings on in his legal cases, and simply stating that it must be true because he was eccentric or insane, after only observing him in the media, is something akin to Bill Frist’s diagnosis of Terri Schiavo. The public is much too removed from the situation at hand to make any valid judgment. “

Exactly. I mean, of course it would surprise nobody to find he was guilty. But it frankly scares me that supposedly progressive people will proclaim a person’s guilt based on the same media that sold us so many other lies.

Innocent until proven guilty is not naiveté, it’s a deliberately chosen moral principle. It’s not something that an innocent or simple mind defaults to but rather a measured and reasoned response that takes maturity to reach.

So many scary parallels - black men prejudged guilty of alleged sexual crimes… gays, effeminate, androgynous or otherwise “strange” men seen as fitting the “classic pedophile pattern.” (or “butch” women, for that matter…)

Prejudging him guilty because of how he looked and seemed (especially through the distortion of the media) is just that - prejudice.

Whether the facts, if known, would match your prejudice is immaterial. Proclaiming someone guilty based not on your personal knowledge of the facts but rather on your impression of their “kind” is not civilized behavior. It’s not nuance, it’s gut reaction.

I’m more than a little disturbed by people who either have such an unnuanced view of the world that they can’t admit that a musical hero was flawed or are in such denial about sexual abuse that they can’t see that Jackson was the classic pedophile.  That sort of denial is not helpful.  It’s the sort of naive denial that allowed this to happen in the first place.

I’ve seen an analysis which asserted that he wasn’t a classic pedophile; that his attraction to kids seemed seriously to be a fucked up response to looking for affection rather than sexual attraction. This sort of thing.  The accusations, on the other hand, beg to differ.

He was fucked up three ways to Sunday, but I’m not sure I’d consider him a normal pedophile - whether he was driven to it by not being able to sustain an adult loving relationship, or whether his wealth allowed him to validate the sort of justifications pedophiles cannot get away with for long before running into reality.

Either way, I wouldn’t let him near any of the kids in my family.

Well, this thread demonstrelates that power will mean you will attract rape apologists for you, even if you’re an effeminate black man.

I mean “demonstrates”. Stupid iPhone. Point is, like most sexual predators, Jackson targeted the most vulnerable, going after children whose mothers were in a sad place. And like many, his higher social status protected him. He obviously hated himself, and I can’t blamehim. So sad.

“Well, this thread demonstrelates that power will mean you will attract rape apologists for you, even if you’re an effeminate black man. “

Well I have to say, Amanda, that this is just damned disappointing.
I should be offended at being called a rape apologist, but I won’t be.

I was a victim of molestation (and other child abuse), and my life was ruined. But despite that, I don’t have the emotional need to see an accusation of rape as meaning an instant guilty verdict.

It is not “rape apology” to insist that a person, ANY person accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty. It doesn’t matter who the person is, what they look like, who they associate with, what they’re accused of. It doesn’t matter if what they are accused of strikes a personal chord or desire for revenge in you.

We don’t skip the trial and head right to sentencing because of what a person is accused of or because “she seems like the type.”

“Sorry, but Elvis was not an innovative star like Jackson…”

If you were around for Elvis like you were for MJ, don’t you think there’s a chance you’d think differently?

power will mean you will attract rape apologists for you, even if you’re an effeminate black man.

I can’t believe any mom would allow a pop star to molest her son in the next room in exchange for traveling to Las Vegas and Monaco.

effeminate, androgynous or otherwise “strange” men seen as fitting the “classic pedophile pattern.”

oh hi man how is it going

oh fine straw, nice to see you, how are the kids

I agree with Jafafa Hots here, and find people’s certitude that he was a pedophile when he was never convicted of the crime to be prejudice. I am not saying he was or was not a pedophile- I am certainly open to the possibility. But to simply assume he is because a lot of people claimed that he was (or worse, that he simply ‘fit the profile’) is what is disturbing in this thread, not being a ‘rape apologist’.

He was a deeply fucked up man who had a really distorted view of love and childhood, that much was clear. But whether he actually committed pedophilia has never been proven, so I will not assume his guilt or innocence either way, and nor should you.

“I can’t believe any mom would allow a pop star to molest her son in the next room in exchange for traveling to Las Vegas and Monaco. “

That I CAN believe… or at least could believe it happened 30 years ago. make no mistake, just because I am adamant that “innocent until proven guilty” is the only moral viewpoint, I am under no illusion that rape and sexual abuse is not VASTLY underreported, and that the capacity for denial in any given person is infinite.

What happened to me would not have been possible if it weren’t for the fact that my parents were both as deep in denial as it’s possible to get… as well as the friends and co-workers of the men who molested me. I also can see how our entire culture is in deep denial at how rampant the sexual abuse of young boys is.

Michael Jackson the ditch digger might never have been accused of anything in the first place.  Power cuts both ways.  Especially if you’re an effeminate Black man, power can also mean you attract people who want to take you down a peg.

“h hi man how is it going

oh fine straw, nice to see you, how are the kids “

So sorry to have compared someone being judged by their appearance and lifestyle that is seen by many as eccentric to someone being judged by their appearance and lifestyle that is seen by many as eccentric.

“Michael Jackson the ditch digger might never have been accused of anything in the first place.  Power cuts both ways.  Especially if you’re an effeminate Black man, power can also mean you attract people who want to take you down a peg. “

Exactly. It’s quite possible he was a pedophile, it’s quite possible he wasn’t. The point is none of us on this board know, and people being certain of something that they’re not personally in a position to know the truth of has already caused enough pain and misery that I would have hoped we’d be a little smarter than that now.

The problem with anyone saying he was attempting to recapture his childhood is that he was a man, an adult, and unless he had himself castrated or shot full of hormones, he had sexual urges. A few may want to be kids again, but that door gets closed and damn near all of us are happy with that change. Simplicity of life as a child may be a goal, but it’s GONE when you hit puberty. What happened made me suspicious of him, as he squired around other parents children - it was just not seemly. I can’t say that he was a pedo, but he did make all the classic moves. However…

I was an alternate on a jury in a pedophile trial, and interestingly, it was a gay black man and a group of kids. At first he looked fairly guilty after the prosecution was presented…until the kids hit the stand. Their stories were outlandish, physically impossible, and nonsensical. Witnesses recounted that the mother of one of the kids who initiated the complaint was drooling for a lawsuit to get the man’s house once he was convicted. And as a final irony, one of the kids (the closest to the man tried, and one he wished to adopt)  tried to see the defendant just before he got arrested and long after the kid was interviewed by the state about the molestations.  I mean, the case started falling apart as soon as the defense got halfway through. The guy spent a year in jail (very high bail), for nothing.

I was a teen in the ‘80s, and I remember the Michael Jackson superstar stuff, but he’s been such a disturbed and disturbing freakish person for so long, I just can’t really feel much about his death.

I think it was on cracked.com where I saw the observation that who, in 1983, would have predicted that in a quarter century Michael Jackson would be a punchline and Weird Al Yankovic still culturally relevant.

Well, this thread demonstrates that power will mean you will attract rape apologists for you, even if you’re an effeminate black man.

To simply write off any person whom disagrees with the pop diagnosis of an acquitted person as a “rape apologist” is not an adequate response. (Though I must say I would be hard-pressed to write anything half as worth reading on an iPhone.) One might as well start retorting with a spirited “You’re stupid!” for all the good it does.

The media sells us lies and bad news sells better than most. Not everybody who likes children better than adults is a child-rapist. We, the public, are not in a proper place from which to pass judgment on a celebrity’s guilt or innocence. People I love with all my heart have been both sex offenders and sexually abused - this position is likely common among most people - but that does not stop me from acknowledging what they have done and/or what has been done to them and by whom. I know no celebrity well enough to know the truth about them, so I do not presume to judge their guilt or innocence. That is all I am saying.

He may never have been convicted in court - but you could say the same of most accused rapists. If our opinions about the veracity of rape accusations hinged on conviction rates, we’d be dismissing many credible rape victims with plausible stories. Yet many of the same people who understand that take a different tack when it comes to child molestation charges. Why is that?

I too was molested as a child, so have been many relatives/friends/lovers, and only in one case was the pedophile actually prosecuted. It is so rare for a kid to speak up, be believed by people willing to involve the law… I don’t know the statistics but I’m guessing most child molestors have never seen a day in jail. “Innocent until proven guilty” is great in a courtroom but in daily life, we all have to assess the evidence we have about a person to say “could be, probably, nah, definitely.” Deciding who’s safe and who’s dangerous is a basic navigational skill in life. And the fact that MJ continued to sleep with boys in his bed and have completely freakish relationships with them even after past incidents taught him it would be a costly, bad idea, tells me he was driven by a powerful motivation and probably one that was sexual. He wasn’t stupid; he made some savvy business decisions. Only when it came to “befriending” little boys did he act so consistently against his own interests. So yes, I have a strong suspicion about him and it’s too heinous for me to just set that aside and give him the benefit of the doubt.

He was proven Innocent in a court of law.  Shame on you for being racist.

Deciding who’s safe and who’s dangerous is a basic navigational skill in life.

Yep.

And the fact that MJ continued to sleep with boys in his bed and have completely freakish relationships with them even after past incidents taught him it would be a costly, bad idea, tells me he was driven by a powerful motivation and probably one that was sexual.

It’s funny how parents who had the opportunity to decide in person if Jackson was safe or dangerous so often made the wrong decision. They were either just not as savvy as random strangers on the Internet, or they were actively pimping out their kids for financial or other gain.

I mean, the parents had to be complicit, right? When the scandal broke in 1993, did that not put everyone on notice? (Why did Michael Jackson run over to K-Mark? He heard boys’ pants were half off.  This was popular in 1993.) The parents would have had to have been at least reckless. Their kids should all be wards of the state.

K-Mart
dang.

<quote> As for Jackson’s relations with boys: Remember the saying, It’s never too late to have a happy childhood? Deprived of any normal upbringing, it’s just possible he was trying to, at last, make himself the childhood he never had, only enhanced with the assload of money he made, however inappropriate that seemed. Forced to grow up too soon, he decided to do it up right. Having other kids to play with is part of a happy childhood—it’s unlikely he could find other cases of arrested development to hang with, so he used real kids. </quote>

You know, I kind of buy Jackson’s explanation that that’s what was going on.  However, even if he is psychologically preadolesent—preadolescents have sexual urges and curiosity.  Pulled out of my ass, obviously, but I wonder if perhaps he engaged in the kind of sexual exploration with his playfellows that would be completely normal and acceptable between two actual ten-year-olds—“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” type of stuff.  The problem is, when one of the participants is actually a grown man, that kind of thing is neither normal nor acceptable. 

The politics of South Park are, of course, frequently problematic, but this is one of the occasional things that little Stan gets right.  Wanting to play and have toys (and even build a private zoo and amusement park, if you have the means) because you didn’t have a childhood is all well and good, but there’s a limit.  And “innocent” sex play is well beyond that limit.  (Unless, of course, your playfellow is actually grown-ass adult like yourself, in which case, have at it.) 

On a slightly different note, I just watched the long version of the Thriller video, and (I’m sure this isn’t an original observation), it’s hard not to read it as allegory.  Everything’s just fine, you’re walking with your pal, then all of the sudden the spectre of sex rears its ugly head and you’re a monster, surrounded by monsters.  I’m sure it can feel like this transformation is completely out of your control—only in actual reality, it’s not.

“Innocent until proven guilty” is great in a courtroom but in daily life, we all have to assess the evidence we have about a person to say “could be, probably, nah, definitely.” Deciding who’s safe and who’s dangerous is a basic navigational skill in life.

There’s a difference between having a feeling about a neighbor based on your personal observations of him and deciding not to leave your kids alone with him, and having a feeling about a person you’ve never met based on what you’ve seen through the inherently distorted media filter and deciding the person is a criminal who escaped justice.

It would be one thing to gossip that “the guy seemed like a perv, gosh I wouldna left my kids with him, he probably did it” in an informal manner, though it’s also the journalistic equivalent of People Magazine at best.

It’s entirely another thing to assert with certainty that he was a vile criminal, that justice was thwarted, that the truth is clear and to call anyone who says “hey wait a minute…” a “rape apologist.”

Amanda:

What is very, very clear about Michael Jackson is that he had horribly inappropriate relationships with children; he admitted as such, without really acknowledging that they were inappropriate. Were they sexual? It seems very possible, but the court didn’t find them so. (I believe that it’s likely that at least some sexual activity took place and the prosecution probably screwed up, although it wasn’t quite as big a slam dunk as, say, Robert Blake’s case should have been.) Also, keep in mind we are talking about a person whose mental state was so obviously broken a long, long time ago that at least some of the charges could have been made up as blackmail—given his whole obsession with childhood in general and his generally bizarre habits around children, he would have found it almost impossible to defend himself in a public hearing.

I don’t think that pointing any of this out qualifies as being rape apologetics. Whether he was guilty of actual child rape or not, his actions in general towards children earned him his slide into oblivion. But when you get right down to it, a back-of-the-envelope psychological diagnosis carries substantially less weight than a court verdict. (I certainly do think he should have been kept far, far away from children in general after the first lawsuit happened. His self-righteous thickheadedness in the Martin Bashir interview proves that much.)

He was proven Innocent in a court of law.

He was acquitted, that doesn’t mean he was “proven” to be innocent, that’s not how the law works. Ignoramus.

Plenty of rapists and molesters who were guilty as sin have been acquitted or found not guilty in courts of law. Plenty of people totally innocent of any crime have been found guilty. If you regard the findings of a court of law as shaping reality, then you’re going to be in sad shape.

I have to say Amanda, that I’m a little disappointed with you. I think most of us here agree that Jackson’s access to vast wealth meant he probably dodged a bullet on the molestation accusations. However, because he was never convicted he will only ever be an alleged molester and paedophile. I’m not trying to apologize for a rapist. I’m just trying to keep a clear bright line between a belief in the rule of law and O’Reillyesque populists who will judge and convict folks in the public square at the drop of a hat.

I appreciate that this particular case is a muddle. You’re not Billo and given the public revelations about MJ I’m unsurprised at the conclusions people have reached about him. But, MJ was not convicted. This does not mean he couldn’t have been a paedophile, just that we cannot say for absolute certainty that he was.

Of course, testimony of victims in the coming weeks and months might well change that view.

If you don’t think that some parents will trade their kid off for a trip to Europe, you don’t work with kids.  Some parents will burn their kids for a pack of cigarettes.  Most won’t.

No statement on the Jackson stuff—the obscuring storm which his wealth and terrible judgment in colleagues created over that whole business is brutal.  I’m glad I don’t have to make any decisions based on it.

You know, I kind of buy Jackson’s explanation that that’s what was going on.  However, even if he is psychologically preadolesent—preadolescents have sexual urges and curiosity.  Pulled out of my ass, obviously, but I wonder if perhaps he engaged in the kind of sexual exploration with his playfellows that would be completely normal and acceptable between two actual ten-year-olds—“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” type of stuff.  The problem is, when one of the participants is actually a grown man, that kind of thing is neither normal nor acceptable.

Seems plausible.  I note, pace Amanda, that I think he probably was a pedophile; I just don’t think he had the same sort of dynamic as the descriptions I’ve read.  This doesn’t preclude him *also* being targetted for extortion, of course.

Well, other media outlets are covering the accusations and the trial, so someone who said way upthread that the media are completely ignoring this aspect of his life are wrong.  Of course they are not coming out and calling him a child-rapist or a pedophile and that is as it should be since he was never convicted.

I think he probably was a pedophile, but I agree we can’t for certain.  There is some slight possibility he was that rarest of all people, the asexual who was also trying to live the childhood he felt he never had.  Doubtful, but I wouldn’t bet my life against it either.  I also think he may himself have been abused by more than one adult in his childhood.  Of course his father was physically abusive, but it does not follow that he was sexually abusive as well.  You have to think of how many older men had complete access to this child with no supervision.  There is every chance he came into the orbit of a predator when he was a child star.  I do suspect sexual abuse and don’t know that it was the father.  We’ll likely never know.  I woudln’t use the word evil.  He probably, almost definitely could have been saved if he had professional intervention when he was still a teen. 

I have no problem separating all of this from his music.  I never have had that problem.  Let me tell you if I lived next door to an old guy who had fucked his teenaged stepdaughter, and left his wife for her, I woudln’t talk to the guy.

But I love Woody Allen and everything he has ever created.  It’s real easy for me to keep separate.

I am so glad to see on this thread that people are talking about the abuse Jackson suffered growing up.  That in no way excuses any child molestation he himself committed (and my personal opinion is that he was indeed a child molester). 

But I was moved in the Jackson documentary by his intense descriptions of the vicious physical and mental abuse he suffered at the hands of his father.  I think that abuse, combined with the lack of perspective you have when you are as famous and rich as Jackson was, explains a lot of his behavior.  He was a self-loathing guy who punished himself repeatedly (with plastic surgeries and alienation from others) and lived in constant emotional and physical pain. 

I haven’t seen much allusion to his history of having been abused in the mainstream media coverage since his death—maybe the MSM is worried about being sued by Jackson’s parents.  But I think that is a huge part of this guy’s story that often gets forgotten.

The straw that broke the camel’s back in convincing me that Jackson is a pedophile was a commissioned self-portrait featured in that Basham documentary.  If I recall correctly (it has been a while), it showed Jackson naked from the waist up surrounded by little cherubim fluttering around him—and it had an extremely erotic vibe to it.  That and Jackson’s excitement over it was the first indication I had seen in recent years that Jackson had any sexuality.

Reading through the thread, I haven’t seen a single instance of anyone who seemed to address the possibility that Jackson was attracted to children and did not act on it.

It is entirely possible to be a pedophile and never have sex with a child.

I don’t think that you can possibly look at the man, even through the lens of the media, and think he wasn’t obsessively interested in children, and in being a child himself. The Peter Pan label fits.

If the Joe the guy down the street is having young boys sleep over, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to refuse to believe his protestations of innocence. If a multi-gazillionaire who builds a freaking amusement park in his own back yard is having sleepovers, it is certainly weird, and no kid of mine in a million years, but it is really really obvious that this guy was living in a complete fantasy world.

I wouldn’t for a moment doubt credible evidence, but within the whole picture, I’m prepared to believe, that weird as it is, it actually does fit in with the rest of it all for him to really really think that these kids were all just friends.

Not to say that any pedophile has normal sexual urges, but I don’t think there is anything normal about Michael Jackson. I don’t think he ever got above about 12 inside his own head.

Was he attracted to children? Don’t know, but holy shit, I wouldn’t be surprised. At the same time, oddly enough, I am willing to believe he never touched one inappropriately.

Not because of some slick PR machine - if his machine was that slick, they would have protected him from a lot more than that. Not because of his talent, which was considerable. But there was something fundamentally innocent about him, something that appeared deeply damaged and deeply confused by adulthood and adults.

I don’t think he say children as possessions, or as sexual objects, or as prey. I think he saw them as peers.

Lymis,  It is possible that Jackson was a pedophile who never acted on it.  But there are children who testified that he did act on it. Of course, my personal opinion counts for exactly nothing and I didn’t hear the evidence in court. 

The big angle that I think can’t be stressed enough is his father’s abuse of him.  That is, I think, what destroyed him.

But despite that, I don’t have the emotional need to see an accusation of rape as meaning an instant guilty verdict.

No, neither do I.  And it’s sad that you think that’s what’s going on here.  The reality is that Jackson, being insanely wealthy and famous, was basically given a pass to rape children.  You think that his weirdness means the public “convicted” him.  Reality was that his wealth and celebrity protected him from being convicted, despite the obvious truth of the charges and the weirdness of his behavior that would usually make it easy to convict a sex offender.

Look, when the allegations started to come out, I was eager not to believe, as well.  My first record was Thriller.  I had a poster of Jackson on my wall as a kid.  But I can’t deny the ugly reality, which is that Jackson behaved in the most openly predatory ways, knowing that his wealth and fame protected him.  He was a vampire.

I don’t understand why people, even ones who claim to know what sexual abuse is like, are so damn eager to deny its reality, particularly when the predator is rich or famous.  I don’t know why the worship.  But some things are just obviously true—-OJ Simpson did kill his wife and Michael Jackson was a child molester.  These things are true, even if you couldn’t get a conviction in a world where people are enraptured of the fantasy of the lying rape victim.

So sorry to have compared someone being judged by their appearance and lifestyle that is seen by many as eccentric to someone being judged by their appearance and lifestyle that is seen by many as eccentric.

I’m not judging him by his eccentricity.  Lots of eccentric stars are not, in my opinion, pedophiles.  Howard Hughes, Prince, Elvis, you name it—-eccentric, sometimes downright crazy.  But didn’t feed children alcohol before bringing them to bed to molest them.  I’m judging him by what he did, not what he wore while he did it.

It’s funny how parents who had the opportunity to decide in person if Jackson was safe or dangerous so often made the wrong decision.

Not especially.  Jackson had a real talent for finding mothers who were in vulnerable situations and, like some people here, were bowled over by his celebrity.  Plus, as this thread amply demonstrates, a lot of people are in deep denial about child molestation.  A lot of kids are molested by non-celebrities because their parents ignored the red flags, because they just can’t believe it’s real.

There’s a dangerous line-treading going on here with the parent situation.  Because the parents made poor choices doesn’t mean that the crime is any less real, or the parents aren’t victims.

Oh yeah.  I knew there was a third thing that convinced me: (1) erotic picture of Jackson with children/cherubim in Basham documentary; (2) testimony of actual children who said he molested them; (3) getting vulnerable families to allow their children to come live with him by paying them off, doing them favors, etc.

I’m just trying to keep a clear bright line between a belief in the rule of law and O’Reillyesque populists who will judge and convict folks in the public square at the drop of a hat.

Yeah, not drop of a hat.  Years and years of flagrant behavior.  I’m not “convicting” the man.  I couldn’t if he was alive, and honestly, his celebrity meant no one could.  If I was a defense attorney, I would damn well make sure that Sara Pulis and Jafafa Hots were on my jury, and not a bunch of clear-eyed folks who realize that just because you love Thriller doesn’t mean he doesn’t diddle kids. 

Court decisions are not sacrosanct.  OJ did it and the convicted in the McMartin case did not.  These are realities.  By the way, no court ever convicted Ike Turner, but no one peeped when I pointed out that his legacy was tarnished by his spousal abuse.  This has not a little to do with the fact that Tina Turner out-famoused him.

Most of the coverage of Jackson is politely avoiding this ugly reality, which is tantamount to erasing the pain of the people he hurt.  Someone has to bear witness to the reality of the situation.  And people aren’t being polite to Jackson or his family.  They’re doing it because they don’t want to hurt the feelings of fans.  Well, too bad.  The specter of hurt feelings is already the most effective silencer of victims of sexual abuse.  We all know that people will flock to defend a rapist in most cases because they don’t want to believe bad things about their friend or, in this case, musical icon.

It is entirely possible to be a pedophile and never have sex with a child.

In some cases, but not in this one.  Pedophiles who refrain from giving in do so by not being around children, and certainly not being alone with them. 

Jackson had the markers.  He fed them alcohol, he had a “type”, he made a lot of vague statements about mutuality as pedophiles do, he was constantly making excuses for himself.  He practically rubbed the public’s nose in it, though I doubt that was his intention.  He just was particularly good at hiding his predilections, nor did he have to be, since his fame proved to be adequate protection.

I used to work for a non-profit organization that implemented Megan’s law.  Don’t even get me started on how dangerously fanatical they were, and even though I support Megan’s law I could tell you some stories about these people that would make you thank God there are checks and balances in our legislative system.  I was listening to The Who on my computer one day and one of the other people there said, you know Pete Townshead is a pedophile.  They were really down on my listening to them. And I did vaguely remember some trouble over child porn possession.  I didn’t go home and investigate it, I just shrugged it off.  I don’t know if he is or if he isn’t, I think there is much less doubt in Jackson’s case, but I wasn’t in the courtroom and so make no claims to knowing for sure.  I guess I don’t really give a shit.  I think that the fact that any parent was willing to allow their child to sleep in the same bed with any grown man really evidences this society’s fucked up view of parents, especially of mothers, as being haloed.  We don’t for a second doubt that some parent of one of the kids for Slumdog Millionaire is trying to sell their child in India, but if it’s Western parents, we recall from the fact that some parents don’t give a fuck about their kids.  The idea that he picked vulnerable mothers, well how vulnerable?  because I’ve read in vanity fair that some of them were getting diamonds and rubies. So were they vulnerable or just sleazy greedy fucks?  I mean, they weren’t doing it for food.

In real life children are often molested by coaches who ingratiate themselves to busy single mothers by offering to chauffer the child back and forth to practice.  Is she vulnerable?  I wouldn’t use that word.  Willfully stupid is how I describe it. 

In many, but by no means all, cases, people don’t know what they don’t want to know and what they don’t want to know they dont’ want to know for selfish reasons.  I think they hold more responsibility for whatever happened than what has been assigned to them, and some fucking guy who was obviously abused by who knows how many people in his own childhood.  I don’t let him off the hook because you do not have to grow up to revictimize, but it is common without intervention.  I don’t like willful stupidity excused as victimization.  Those parents weren’t any innocent victims.  That’s how I feel about it whenever I think about it, which isn’t often because I liked his music just like I like The Who and I never spent the amount of time speculating that others seemed to.  I’m not bragging about it, it’s probably a shitty thing about myself.  But that’s how I’ve always felt.

Pete Townsend absolutely downloaded child porn.  I don’t think this in itself is a signal that he’s a pedophile.  He claimed he was curious, and that seems possible.  It’s one reason that child porn laws, while necessary, give me indigestion.  When something is put completely off-limits, it’s going to create curiosity in some people.  The laws banning owning child porn on based on the sound, in my opinion, theory that buying it or downloading it creates a demand for it, so you’re complicit in its creation, which is automatically child abuse.  (If real kids are used.)  But if you’re downloading it out of intellectual curiosity, I don’t necessarily see that as creating demand.  It’s more trying to observe a supply and demand loop.  But how can you tell the difference?

I do think the mothers are victims here.  Just because they were stupid doesn’t make them not-victims, any more than the girl who gets drunk with a bunch of frat boys and is gang raped isn’t made a non-victim for being stupid.  The way he wooed the mothers reminds me of the plot of “Lolita”, honestly—-the way Humbert Humbert flattered the mother’s vanity and filled her need for companionship and sophistication, all so he could get to her daughter.

I agree about child porn laws, and it’s the same with Megan’s Law.  Necessary (in my opinion anyway) but can be abused and some of the people implementing it are truly fanatical and a little scary.  They can ruin lives too.  But the alternative; not knowing if a level 3 sex offender moves in next to you and your yound children?  That’s what puts me on board.

Maybe they (the mothers) are Amanda, I don’t know them so maybe if I heard them tell their stories I would emphathize.  It’s a little hard to do from the bare facts though, for me.

I just imagine it can be very overwhelming to have a celebrity “adopt” you and lavish money and attention on you, particularly if you’re an otherwise unremarkable person who has probably never even met a celebrity before.  In one case, the child involved was a cancer victim, so again, it’s hard to imagine that the mother wasn’t easily able to convince herself that she deserved this sort of affection and attention after all she’d been through.

“Innocent until proven guilty” is a LEGAL concept, folks. You can still personally think someone is guilty as hell of a crime even if they were acquitted (ex., OJ Simpson) or never tried (Dick Cheney). All it means is you can’t be a vigilante and take the law into your own hands.

I go back and forth on whether Jackson did the crimes or not. He’s not OJ level obviously guilty in my mind, but there is a lot of suspicion. And if I had kids, they would have NOT be allowed to go near him.

I just imagine it can be very overwhelming to have a celebrity “adopt” you and lavish money and attention on you

Not to mention that this is pretty much a common trope of children’s fairy tales. Of course, that makes it even more disturbing, doesn’t it? He was actually getting children by playing out a typical childhood fantasy.

And yes, I think it is within the realm of possibility that he was a pedophile but didn’t act on it. We will never know—but there was something wrong in his head and his behavior was inappropriate even if there wasn’t sex involved.

I think it is within the realm of possibility that he was a pedophile but didn’t act on it.

Well, it certainly isn’t contrary to the laws of physics or probability.  At the end of the day though, Amanda and everyone else is correct: he was a pedophile, or so probably a pedophile that reservation of judgment (let alone shrill and incorrect protestations of “A jury found him innocent!”) on the issue is not evenmindedness, it’s simply a refusal to accept reality.

I completely agree with that, Felix. The only question is to what extent he acted on that urge. But at the same time, there were probably people looking to extort money from him after 1993. Both/and blog,etc!

Pete Townsend absolutely downloaded child porn.

Actually, there is a great deal of doubt as to what Pete Townshend actually did—certainly doubt as to whether he intentionally did anything.

“I confess, I don’t get the massive response. I was a teen in the ‘80s, and I remember the Michael Jackson superstar stuff, but he’s been such a disturbed and disturbing freakish person for so long, I just can’t really feel much about his death.”

I’m not real big on having emotional responses to celebrities (or, honestly, people I don’t know) dying. The last one I recall was Johnny Cash, but I just don’t have a relationship to Jackson’s music. I was born in 1978, so he was already becoming a joke by the time I was really getting into music as a preteen. Plus, I pretty quickly gravitated to thrash metal, where hating stuff like Michael Jackson was pretty much part of the deal. I listen to him now (not that I don’t still love my copies of “Reign in Blood” and “Master of Puppets”) and, yeah, genius. But I don’t have that relationship with his music that I guess others do. Maybe I just don’t, in general, do that. Cobain’s death didn’t really mean much to me, though I liked Nirvana. (My folks apparently worried I’d have some sort of upset over it, since my dad came home from work early to talk to me about it) Ask me when Hetfield and Ulrich die. 

Re: Whether it’s okay to call Jackson a pedophile:
I really disagree that “innocent until proven guilty” is a moral standard. It’s a legal standard and I think it’s the absolute best one to have. But that doesn’t mean I can’t look at the evidence presented in media reports of Phil Spector’s guilt and form my own opinion, regardless of what the legal system does to him. To go back to O.J., I think that jury absolutely reached the right verdict, because that’s what a jury in the United States SHOULD do when there’s credible evidence of police manufactoring evidence. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think he killed his wife and her boyfriend.

“I go back and forth on whether Jackson did the crimes or not. He’s not OJ level obviously guilty in my mind, but there is a lot of suspicion. And if I had kids, they would have NOT be allowed to go near him.”

This is where I am. My glib response has always been that I doubt Michael Jackson was pedophile because that’s too normal. The guy was obviously destroyed by his parents and by the machinery of fame they tossed him into and that he pursued with abandon once he was running his own affairs. It certainly is damn shame. The whole celebrity culture we’ve got going is really is sad and fucked beyond belief, for the watchers and the watched. Fiona Apple, let’s hear that coked-out and hypocritical, yet true, rant again.

You know Amanda, you can really be an unthinking ass with the empathy of a neocon shit sack.

Jackson had the markers.  He fed them alcohol, he had a “type”, he made a lot of vague statements about mutuality as pedophiles do, he was constantly making excuses for himself.  He practically rubbed the public’s nose in it, though I doubt that was his intention.  He just was particularly good at hiding his predilections, nor did he have to be, since his fame proved to be adequate protection.

Amanda Marcotte on 06/26 at 08:19 AM

Oh fuck you.  He had the markers of arrested development and being emotionally twelve doing emotionally twelve-year-old shit, too.  Which, considering his history, is a better explantion.

But you don’t care.  Because you’ve gone of the deep end.

But remember this—the porn they found was ADULT porn.  A man of Jackson’s wealth could have easily had child-porn.  Yet he didn’t.  He had normal adult male porn.  Hustler.  Playboy.  Seriously prosaic stuff your classic pedophiles don’t typically engage in…

No, you WANT him to be a pedophile.  You NEED him to be a pedophile. 

Because it makes him an OBJECT that you can HATE.  Instead of giving him the pity he has earned.

What are you talking about Moses?  What has she said here that indicates anything like that? 

this is why I hate any talk of marriage conventions or sex abuse (i am totally not equating them).  People get all freaked out and it brings up shit that no one else knows is there and you never know what the fuck you are really dealing with. 

This is why I come down to; yeah i really loved his music.  I used to get stoned and listen to/dance to it.  His music videos were groundbreaking.

That’s all.

You are getting way too invested in a celebrity personality Moses.  You need to chill.

WRT the Neverland Ranch:  He no longer owned it outright.  Several foreclosure actions were undertaken in 2005, 2007 and 2008. All were canceled before the auction date, he kept getting refinancing through private sources it seems. He apparently was able to obtain a private loan ($24.5 million) to cover past due amounts in 2007 and signed over the title to an investment company which bought the loan in 2008.  Neighbors reported that the amusement rides were dismantled sometime in 2008. (Based on Wikipedia, which has the most information on the foreclosure actions.) There was also supposed to be an auction of its contents this past spring, but MJ’s company went to court to block it. Basically it looks like the guy owed money all over the place. He lived larger than he could sustain.  In pursuit of a childhood he spend himself out. He never learned an internal mechanism that could say “No” to a desire and think about consequences. 

The land will probably be sold later for development and not as a tourist attraction. The attraction to the Ranch was the connection to him and the amusement park; without the park and rides it’s just a large house and land.

No, you WANT him to be a pedophile.  You NEED him to be a pedophile.

http://intheouter.net/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/img_fewgoodmen.jpg

I don’t hate him, Moses. I fail to see how sympathy for sex abuse victims makes me unempathetic. It would be easier for me if it wasn’t true. Why? Because despite what you need to believe, I’m obviously a fan.

Unfortunately, pedophiles do keep adult porn in many cases. They get off on showing it to children.

Gretzky?????

Yeah, that’s a real messed up dude.  Despite hyper-attention as a child and youth he went on to become the best ever in his field as an adult, and has smoothly transitioned to post-athletic responsibilities in management.  Married to one woman twenty years, no documented affairs, has adjusted his life and career to fit her needs, and has 5 nice kids who have grown up sane and out of the limelight.  What.  A.  Fuck.  Up.

Gretzky true story:

Back when he was with the Oilers and before his marriage he was wooing a girl in Toronto: dating, respectful pace, the whole thing.  After a longish approach and much, much expenditure of money in the traditional boy-girl style she gave him a peck on the cheek and said, “thanks, Wayne!”.

Shortly after this, Gretzky meets his teammates in a then-hip Toronto restaurant, and is mercilessly mocked in locker room fashion for his failure to Get Some, after all that cash laid out, (etc. etc.)  Gretzky takes it all without a word against the girl, smiling, nodding.  When his lead tormentor, Messier, finishes, Gretzky just nods, reaches into his pocket and lays out the contents: a large amount of money.  He looks amicably at Messier, and asks, “Mark, do you really think it matters?”

I think Amanda’s analysis in this comments thread as to Jackson’s likely guilt is spot-on.  She is right.  The predatory behavior was obvious.

I ALSO think he was a case of arrested development caused by severe abuse. I think he was a tormented soul.  I think his father basically destroyed him when he was still a child.  In recent years, I have felt enormous empathy and sadness for Jackson, even while I condemn his crimes and feel sadness for his victims as well.

Both-and, remember?

Just a point here: I am so sick of the legal construction of the notion of presumption of innocence until found to be guilty being warped into some sort of magic by the verb “to be.”

There’s a misguided notion that a person IS innocent, magically, until he is not by way of a magical pronouncement of 12 people, magically empowered to change A to not-A.

That’s not how it works. A person IS innocent or a person IS guilty, from the moment a crime occurs.

The idea of presumption of innocence at the onset of a trial is to the purpose of placing the burden of proof on the prosecution. Everyone is or isn’t guilty long before a trial begins. They are to be PRESUMED innocent before the evidence is shown, but once evidence is shown, that presumption can go away quickly.

Juries do not make or unmake innocence or guilt. A person enters into a courtroom already guilty or already innocent, and a jury attempts to figure out which of the two states the person most probably is in.

Byron De La Beckwith was not found guilty a host of times, by way of hung juries. He was guilty.

Robert Blake was found not guilty. OJ Simpson was found not guilty. Guilty people are routinely found not guilty and innocent people are routinely found guilty. The idea that no one but the jury members has enough evidence in public trials to form informed opinions is ridiculous. The public often has MORE evidence at their disposal, especially in the case of sequestered juries.

All this said, from the evidence all around him, from his own statements and from so much else, I firmly believe he was one of the most contemptible rapists and predators ever in the public eye.

Also, Moses:

Pedophiles routinely ply their victims with conventional pornography, which is what was always alleged that Jackson did.

You can compare Judy Garland with Michael Jackson. If the press were the wolf pack that they are now when she was growing up, her life would have been just as big of a train wreck as his. And as far as talent goes, we could argue all day about which of the two was more talented but there are precious few others (maybe no one) in their league.

I don’t think Jackson ever laid a figure on a child actor. Those kids were the draw. Really, if you were a kid, would you want to hang out with a grown man? No. But you would want to meet a child that you saw in the movies and having them there gets children to your house. He wasn’t convicted and I don’t like to speak ill of the dead. But he certainly gave the appearance of serious impropriety.

If the press were the wolf pack that they are now when she was growing up, her life would have been just as big of a train wreck as his.

Even with the protections of the studio system, Garland’s life was pretty much a train wreck.

While the McMartin trial technically lead to no convictions, in actuality most of the defendants experienced a multi-year sentence without conviction because the trial was so long, and resulted in the ruination of several innocent people.

So, it seems to me that there were de-facto convictions from the beginning, even if in the end no one involved was actually legally convicted.

I can’t help but think if the trial had been in Texas instead of Cali, they’d all have been found guilty, given the death penalty, and Bush Jr. would have personally pulled the switch on them…even the old lady in the wheelchair…and Tucker Carlson would have had another Bush Jr. anecdote to share with us…

a bunch of clear-eyed folks who realize that just because you love Thriller doesn’t mean he doesn’t diddle kids. 

I’m just saying, not every weirdo is a pervert. And Jackson lost me when he sang the ode to a rat.

If you believe wikipedia’s source, the mother in the 1993 scandal did not believe anything untoward happened. The father, a dentist who owed $68,000 in child support, extracted the story from his son while he extracted the son’s tooth. Then he asked Jackson for $20 million. Did Jackson molest Jordan Chandler? Under the influence of sodium amytal, people have been known to make stuff up. Thirty of Jackson’s other little friends said he was not a child molester. Jackson paid, but lawyers know settlement offers aren’t evidence.

I think what’s frustrating about this thread is that whether you believe he was a pedophile or not, it’s been indicated multiple times that if you don’t you are wrong and you hate rape victims.

Michael Jackson might have been a pedophile.  He might not have been.  He could have been a disturbed guy who did things that were inappropriate only because he wasn’t also a 12-year-old boy.  He could have been a plotting, calculating scary pedophile hiding in the bushes.  Those kids who testified or were paid off could have really been molested.  Or they could have been pushed by their parents into claiming shit that never happened because MJ was a wealthy, wealthy man and no doubt would pay to shut them up. 

As someone else said, it’s likely that if MJ wasn’t as rich and famous as he was, we would know the truth.  But as it is, we don’t know.  Was he taking advantage of kids or were kids (and their parents) taking advantage of him? 

Of course, having this view that a guy might possibly be innocent when there’s no concrete evidence that he’s guilty apparently makes me a rape apologist.  Because we’re not allowed to have other opinions on this thread ... no siree.

So many celebrities speak to us because there’s something there that makes us feel like we are them—like they’re visible stand-ins for ourselves. Michael Jackson was both so utterly like us—insecure—and utterly NOT, that he becomes a tragic study of contrasts.

Michael Jackson might have been a pedophile.  He might not have been.  He could have been a disturbed guy who did things that were inappropriate only because he wasn’t also a 12-year-old boy.  He could have been a plotting, calculating scary pedophile hiding in the bushes.  Those kids who testified or were paid off could have really been molested.  Or they could have been pushed by their parents into claiming shit that never happened because MJ was a wealthy, wealthy man and no doubt would pay to shut them up.

I don’t think Michael molested anybody. I think he was obsessed with being Peter Pan and using his money to create a “do-over” childhood, and it is likely that the presence of ‘other’ kids made this fantasy more real. When I was a kid I slept in the same bed with my friends all the time, and obviously there was nothing sexual about it at all. I think in Michael’s mind, he was just another kid having a good time with some friends. I mean, the guy did take his stuffed animals with him wherever he went.

That said, it’s not an excuse for the horrible judgment he showed in putting himself and those kids in that situation. Just because an adult has a Peter Pan complex doesn’t mean they don’t have to, ya know, be an adult.

But to call him a pedophile outright, and with no hint of ambiguity at the possibility that he might NOT be one, is, frankly, beneath you, Amanda.

All in my humble opinion, of course.

Re media coverage, national CBC radio 10pm news last night (the only news spot I’ve tuned in to hear since this began) gave equal coverage to MJ and FF—MJ first, then a just-as-long tribute to FF, including a substantial soundbite from her recent doc. 

Re media coverage Part II: I must echo someone upstream—frustrated as hell this shunts Iran coverage to sidebar status.

I remember when people were getting MTV just to watch the “Thriller” video.
I think that I liked Weird Al’s versions of the songs on “Bad” more than I actually liked the album.
That was my breakaway point.

The “we will never know” narrative being employed could actually be applied to pretty much anything.  We never know anything for 100% certain.  That’s an interesting philosophical fact, but not something people actually live their lives by.  You have to decide what you believe, and I believe that Jackson was a pedophile.  And a genius and a genuinely sympathetic person.  And I loved him as a child and it breaks my heart to believe this.  But I’m as certain as you can get.  Of course the case is weird.  Everything that Jackson touched was weird.  But I’m also certain that if he weren’t a rich superstar who inspires such genuine affection, no one would even dispute the piles of now-historical evidence. 

The “we can’t know for certain” thing crops up in sex crimes in a way that it never will in other crimes.  When someone says, “I was mugged,” people don’t immediately revert to, “Well no one witnessed it so we can’t know for certain.”  But that’s the first, immediate go-to when the crime is sexual.

Lennox, I think it would be valuable for people to really, truly accept that these kinds of crimes happen, and the person who commits it could be someone you want badly to trust.  One reason it’s so common is people just really don’t want to believe.  Which is, not incidentally, why kids don’t report, because they pick up on that.

Yeah, I think the truth is more complicated than Michael Jackson just “buying” a verdict. I think that he had an enormous advantage over his victims in just being so much more familiar to us.  I believe he was guilty but I have a more visceral sense of empathy for him than for his victims because I have been seeing his face, listening to him talk, and hearing his music for the last few decades. I know his history and the struggles he dealt with growing up.  In a sense I feel as though I know him—whereas his victims are sort of unknown and therefore abstract. 

That was a major advantage Jackson had at his trial.  On TV last night, someone was talking about how the prosecution played the documentary for the jury the first day of the trial. Problem was that the documentary had all sorts of concert footage of Jackson—so the jurors and Jackson and everyone in the courtroom were bopping to the music, reminding the supposedly impartial jurors of all the reasons to love this guy.

these kinds of crimes happen,

Yes. Children are molested all the time.

and the person who commits it could be someone you want badly to trust. 

Hello, the man was a freak show! He tried to look and sound like Diana Ross. I can’t get Jeff Koons’ image of Jackson and Bubbles out of my head. http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1330000/images/_1333396_jackson300.jpg
Every instinct you had would make you run the other way.

Jackson had big barriers to being trusted.

I can’t call my parents willfully stupid here . . . my father was later a coach for a traveling pony league team who did the same. MOST coaches do these things to be helpful, to help a talented youngster continue to develop.  But its the few who cast doubt on all.

I’m sorry I don’t mean to call your parents stupid.  But one pedophile who targets boys will typically molest over one hundred boys before caught.  Many of the men who engage in this are attracted to activities like coaching.  this in no way means all or even most coaches are molesters.  You will not find out till it’s too late however.  So there is only one way to protect your child.  Do not allow any adult to act outside of their ascertained roles.  A coach coaches.  Period.  I know it sounds harsh, but it’s the only way.  Anything else is appointing your child as the decider in whether what this now trusted adult (read; boss) is doing is right or wrong. 

You just cannot have a coach picking up your child and driving them to and fro.  And don’t allow sleepovers, you can never speak for who else is in the home.  You only know who is in your home.  I don’t only know these danger signals and uncertain situations from working for a fairly brief time in that field, but also…my perfectly normal seeming cousin is married to someone who might not be technically a pedophile but who preys on young teen girls.  And she knows it and stays with him.  I see her talking to other mothers she is friends with in the gym, and talking about sleepovers.  And I just think to myself you know, one thing that i learned in my training that I can see so clearly was right is that you simply do not allow sleepovers.  Do you think that any of these other mothers suspect for one second that my cousin is married to man who made sexual advances towards her own 15 year old niece?  No.  and now her daughter is 12 and so are her friends, so you do the math.

Harsh, and I don’t mean to be, but just think about it.

Oh, please -rape apologists? For pointing out that “alleged pedophile” is the appropriate term?  Based on what I’ve heard, it sounds likely that the was a miscarriage of justice, but everything I or any of us know about the case has come through our sensationalist media.

And I’ve actually never really listened to Jackson. He was before my time and I detest 80s music, so this is by no means “hero worship.”

Yeah, I know that sex crimes deserve that special “alleged”.  Ike Turner is not an alleged wife beater and Robert Blake is not an alleged murderer.  But if that word is what you need to actually read the post, then imagine it’s there.

I hate that Jeff Koons piece.  It feels like he’s pissing on someone who is an actual artist out of professional jealousy.

My only thoughts on the matter of Jackson’s alleged pedophilia… I just don’t know.  I am inclined to believe that the allegations are very likely true, and there’s no doubt that they are highly plausible, but ultimately, the only people who know for sure whether or not Jackson molested any children are Jackson, the kids themselves, and anyone who might have been a witness.

I think there have been solid arguments on both sides of this debate here… Amanda’s point that we tend to want to believe sex crime allegations, particularly when they involve people we idolize, are not true carries tremendous weight.  Many don’t want to believe the ugly things alleged about Jackson to be true.  And while it is true that some people have been hurt by having their reputations destroyed by false accusations, I think far more genuine victims have ben hurt throughout history when the accused is given an unwarranted pass.  That is to say, for every one person who has to suffer the pain of being wrongfully tarnished by a false rape/molestation accusation, there are hundreds of rape/molestation victims who have to go through life being treated as liars because people won’t believe their accusations, and their assailant gets to go through life unpunished.

However, I also think that there’s a legitimate argument that the average citizen who has no personal connection whatsoever to Jackson or any of his alleged victims can do little more than speculate on his guilt or innocence based on the evidence given to us by the media.  And that evidence, while extremely damning, isn’t absolutely confirmational, in the way a DNA test or a videotape of the transgressions would be.

So I just don’t know.  If I were to meet one of the kids who he allegedly molested, could I really look that person in the face and cast doubt on their accusation to them?  I could not.  At the same time, if I were to meet one of the Jackson siblings, could I really look them in the face and say, “I know with certainty that your brother was a child molester.”  Again, no.

There will always be a degree of doubt on both sides of the argument.  I would never presume to tell one who believes he was guilty or innocent that I know unequivoally that they are wrong.  At the end of the day, I’m just another random person with my own opinion of the issue, and I’m not personally in any position to tell someone whose opinion differs that I am absolutely right and they are absolutely wrong about this.

And, the Onion is in on it now:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/king_of_pop_dead_at_12

I do find it interesting how no one gets upset when the “alleged” is dropped from allegations about Joe Jackson’s abuse of his children.

For a horrified minute there, Amanda, I thought you were talking about the English musician, not Michael Jackson’s father.

Seeker, I had the same thought.  Made worse by the fact that I was listening to Joe Jackson at the moment I read the comment.

“Sunday Papers”, I hope, Fatman.

So there is only one way to protect your child.  Do not allow any adult to act outside of their ascertained roles.  A coach coaches.  Period.  I know it sounds harsh, but it’s the only way.  Anything else is appointing your child as the decider in whether what this now trusted adult (read; boss) is doing is right or wrong.

Really?  It seems to me that this is kind of a crazy living in fear kind of world, where you can pretty much never let children out of your sight and you can never trust anybody.  Chances are, nobody’s going to molest your kid - most kids aren’t molested.  But it’s very hard to protect your child from all possibility of being molested, and doing so seems like it’s going to definitely circumscribe your kid’s life in order to possibly prevent something bad from happening.

I don’t have kids, but it seems to me that the best way to deal with this kind of thing is to deal very directly with your child and explain to them what’s appropriate and what’s inappropriate, and make it clear that they should come to you if anything of that sort happens, and that you’ll believe them, and so forth.  Kids are smart, and if they know what to look out for, they can look out for it.  And my basic sense is that with any pedophile there would be plenty of warning signs before they went to the actual physical sexual abuse, warning signs which a child could be taught to recognize.  It just requires treating them like human beings who think and make their own decisions.

Of course, parents should also use their own judgment, and try to keep their kids away from people who they think might be dubious.  But basically assuming that everybody is out to molest your kid seems like an awful way to raise a child.  The upshot would seem to be to keep every adult male away from your children - after all, you never know, and any of them (even the kid’s father or other relatives!) could be a pedophile.

I love “Ben” and one of most prized vinyl finds is my copy of the album that still has the rat on it. The love song to a trained killer revenge rat (who eventually turns the tables on his “master”) sung by the still fresh faced Michael Jackson appeals to me on many different levels.

  Just to bring a little music geekery to the table.

  Other than the music fanatic aspect of it, I do feel a bit out of touch with the response. I know I’ll get slammed for snobbery but as far his music goes I listen to the 70’s era stuff, most of Off the Wall and a few bits of later songs. I can recognize his musical genius and feel some pity for the train wreck his life was but it’s hard for me to personalize it. Unlike other 80’s music megastars I just don’t have a Michael Jackson defining moment to connect to. I am not going to claim myself immune from the massive fame, wealth and pop culture part of his life but I feel pretty detached from it out side of morbid fascination.

  I do however have to agree with people who feel it is important to discuss the pedophilia. As someone who experienced it at the hands of a close family friend and was shamed and silenced as a result of speaking up (several years later) I strongly believe that the victims need help, support and the feeling that they will be believed. Actually, I feel this just as a person, sexual violence survivor nowithstanding.

  Great post, Amanda, for touching on complex issues! Thanks for not taking the easy road with this.

Right album Seeker, but I was on “Happy Loving Couples”

What jlk7e said above.
Also, “children” is an all encompassing term covering ages where contact with adults is sporadic and unscripted.

Education about recognizing (and avoiding) in-appropriate adult behavior is possible, even at a young age.

FYI
The resource my kids enjoyed the most can be found here:
http://www.thesafeside.com/

Disclaimer: I have no idea if the material at the link is more or less effective than anything else, only that my kids enjoyed the content and were able to emulate the recommended procedures in short order.

Amanda, shut the fuck up.  You selfish, hateful, ignorant, inhuman piece of garbage.  You deserve the garbage that gets thrown at you.

Please close my account - I will no longer be patronizing your little hate-fest here anymore.  I hope you and your ass-kisser hatemonger firends are happy together.

Yeah, not drop of a hat.  Years and years of flagrant behavior.  I’m not “convicting” the man.  I couldn’t if he was alive, and honestly, his celebrity meant no one could.

Honestly, Amanda, I’m not invested in Jackson as a fan. I hope I’m not defending kiddy fiddling either. I’m just saying that nothing is proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

It’s interesting that you’ve applied that test and found him guilty. Fair enough. Will you allow the rest of us the option of entertaining doubts? And not because of his fame, or because of his public persona, or because we once bopped along to Billie Jean in a 1980s disco, but because this case is so weird and murky that it throws up genuine doubt and confusion.

My views may well change. Now that MJ is gone there may be more folks willing to come out and give testimony about his pecadilloes. I doubt the truth will stay buried forever.

Court decisions are not sacrosanct.  OJ did it and the convicted in the McMartin case did not.  These are realities.

For sure, the court system gets stuff wrong all the time. Money has a distorting effect on justice. I accept these points. You could well be right. But I just don’t have the information that gives me the certainty you possess.

Lennox, I think it would be valuable for people to really, truly accept that these kinds of crimes happen, and the person who commits it could be someone you want badly to trust.  One reason it’s so common is people just really don’t want to believe.  Which is, not incidentally, why kids don’t report, because they pick up on that.

No doubt, I agree with all that. But I feel you are overcompensating in the other direction. As much as I hate to go there, I see it as similar to how people acted regarding the Duke Rape case. It is true that rich white males, and especially athletes, have gotten away with rape and sexual assault at an unconscionable rate over the years, and especially when the victim is black. This led much of the country (including myself, I’m ashamed to say) to rush to assume guilt. After all, those preppy rich lacrosse pukes are born rapists, amiritefellas?

But then, of course, it turned out to be a bunch of bullshit, which goes to show the danger of assuming guilt just because the ‘markers’ are there.

It seems to me that this is kind of a crazy living in fear kind of world, where you can pretty much never let children out of your sight and you can never trust anybody.

I agree. That’s just not rational.

First, the highest likelihood of children being molested is by members of their own family, so, what, are you never going to let the kid out of your sight at Grandma and Grandpa’s, either? I mean, you never know who might come over.

Second, I can’t even imagine how much that would cripple a child’s social development. If they’re never in a position as children where they have to determine whether they, personally, feel comfortable and safe, then how are they going to do that as adults? Sounds like an excellent way to raise a defenseless victim, to me.

Third, I think the absolute best defense a child can have against being molested is to be raised with a strong sense of personal boundaries and without a sense of automatic obedience to adults. I agree 100% with the rest of the stuff you said. Kids know when something feels bad or wrong, they just need to be empowered to know that it’s not OK when a grownup does something that feels bad or wrong, and that it’s completely correct for them to call bullshit on those shenanigans. You totally do have to be extremely open with them, let them know that some adults do bad things, and what to do about it if they feel scared or uncomfortable with someone.

Pedophiles don’t (usually) operate by suddenly attacking a kid, pinning them down and assaulting them. They woo, and they move from lesser acts to more sexual and intimate acts. A kid who realizes they feel uncomfortable with Coach (or Uncle Joe or Grandma’s friend Louise) and has a plan for handling it/bringing it to their parents right away, is a pretty safe kid.

Watching the motown video I was reminded of one of my favorite sports jokes:

Q.  Why are the infielders on the [insert favorite inept baseball team] like Michael Jackson?

A.  Because they all wear gloves on their left hands for no apparent reason.

Count me as one of those who is taken aback by people’s certainty on the did he / didn’t he issue.

As sick as it sounds, I think it would all make more sense to us if he did. If he was a full on pedderass, then at least his fucked-up behavior would fit into some sort of context. “Of course that’s why he’s pals with Webster. It’s because he’s a goddamn child molester. It all makes sense now…”

But for all the talk about markers and behavior, the only time he was dragged into court, the evidence was not all that convincing. Or at least not as convincing as it should have been, to hear some of you people talk. Comparing the evidence presented at MJ’s trial to the evidence presented at OJ’s trial is pretty goddamn ridiculous, especially for around here.

I have a great amount of sympathy for paedophiles when I think about what it would be like to have a sexual attraction that must be denied and stomped out for an entire lifetime; a person can know intellectually that the behavior is wrong, but the attraction and feelings remain.  It’s akin to the despair felt by religious people who try to pray away the gay and, obviously, fail.  I’d probably kill myself if I was in that situation.

Amanda, just because you’re certain that Michael Jackson was a pedophile doesn’t mean that people who aren’t certain that he was a pedophile are rape apologists, and it’s pretty fucking ridiculous to believe otherwise.

I had no problem with what you wrote in your original post, but some of your comments here are over-the-top.  He may well have been a pedophile, but I can’t say for sure that he was.  Maybe you know a lot more details about the accusations than I do, I don’t know.  But my ambivalence about his guilt doesn’t mean I’m ambivalent about the seriousness of sexually abusing children.

That’s not to say I don’t think people who abuse children deserve to be punished, obviously - paedophiles are by definition adults and therefore are expected to have impulse control and must face the consequences of their actions.  I just see them more as tragic than evil figures.

I’m pretty uncomfortable with this thread and with Amanda M’s stance.

I’m a poorly socialized wierdo who has given other people the creeps without meaning to in the past.  Moreover, I’ve certainly been in that situation that MJ was in (if he wasn’t a pedo).  Only it was the white wimmen instead of kids (and you know?  I’ve passed over attentions from white female classmates *because* of this dynamic—and there weren’t very many black girls at my HS).

I make no claims about MJ’s guilt or innocence, but I do want to make one point.  If he *was* a pedo and acting on it, the chances really were good that you could find adequate evidence to convict him.  There dcesn’t seem to be that much going on in MJ’s head that he would be a good planner of his illegal actions.  The poor quality of the evidence in his one trial should put real pause into thinking whether he was or wasn’t a kiddie diddler.

There have been quite a few people over the years that the media has all but convicted, Gary Condit being the classic case. 

Not only does MJ seem like a pedophile, he’s also very much the kind of person to be falsely accused of pedophilia, based on the insistance that strange people are more likely to be monsters than more normal peeps like Foley.

I’m just saying that nothing is proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

I wasn’t aware I was on a jury to convict Jackson.  Again, I do believe he’s dead, and now this is a matter of history, not legal judgment.

Amanda, just because you’re certain that Michael Jackson was a pedophile doesn’t mean that people who aren’t certain that he was a pedophile are rape apologists, and it’s pretty fucking ridiculous to believe otherwise.

I’m just amazed at how the tropes are so exactly the same.  It’s fascinating.  But okay, you’re not.  Allegedly.  Whatever.  It’s a shame that it’s distracting people from the point of the post, which is how people deal when someone’s art is great but they are personally not.  Which of course is my understanding.

It’s funny how, no matter how much I insist that “weirdoness” has nothing to do with this, I’m being unfairly accused.  I said it before, but it bears repeating—-I do not think that Jackson was a child molester because he was a weirdo.  There are a lot of rich weirdos that I do not think are child molesters, from John Waters to Howard Hughes.  I think he’s a child molester because he makes the same excuses about mutuality and his own past abuse that child molesters make, and because even though it was clear that sleeping with boys who fit his type was going to get him marked as a child molester, he didn’t stop, which indicates a clear compulsion.

You know, while I don’t necessarily fully agree with Amanda’s position on MJ’s guilt or innocence, some of the posters here are getting way over the top in their reactions to her position.

I mean seriously… “fuck you, you evil horrible human and I’m never posting here again!!!”

WTF?  Is the disagreement over whether or not a celebrity did or did not commit a vile crime really worth getting so worked up over that you refuse to ever have anything to do with this blog again?

Gah.  At the end of the day, it’s a fascinating issue to talk about and he is a fascinating person to discuss, but I’m not hanging my peace of mind on whether or not the world shares my personal opinion on the matter, because they won’t.  There will probably always be differing opinions on who exactly Michael Jackson was, and none of it will impact my life in the slightest.

But some things are just obviously true—-OJ Simpson did kill his wife and Michael Jackson was a child molester.  These things are true, even if you couldn’t get a conviction in a world where people are enraptured of the fantasy of the lying rape victim.

I guess I have a different definition of obvious, coinciding with “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Mark Fuhrman gave me reasonable doubt. I would have had to find Simpson not guilty, though I might hold him liable in a civil suit. I think there’s more than a 50% chance that he killed his wife. But it isn’t obvious.

As for Michael Jackson, I didn’t follow the trial(s?) or the media speculation and I don’t have a strong opinion. Like Jafafa Hots says, I would’ve advised acquaintances not to leave their kids alone with him.

I’m just amazed at how the tropes are so exactly the same.  It’s fascinating.  But okay, you’re not.  Allegedly.  Whatever.  It’s a shame that it’s distracting people from the point of the post, which is how people deal when someone’s art is great but they are personally not.  Which of course is my understanding.

If you’re wondering where that distraction started, I’d advise you start here:

Well, this thread demonstrates that power will mean you will attract rape apologists for you, even if you’re an effeminate black man.

It’s a shame that it’s distracting people from the point of the post, which is how people deal when someone’s art is great but they are personally not.

I think you are right that fans will often give the subject of their affection a pass. That said, there may be an opposite reaction. There may be the fan who feels betrayed and becomes obsessive in the hatred of their former idol. Though I suspect such folks are fewer on the ground than the diehards.

I do think that people rationalize away some extraordinarily bad behaviour. I’m not immune. I wrestle with my attitudes towards Roman Polanski. To what extent is the art tainted by the crime? Or do we separate the artist and the art because to deny ourselves the art for reasons tangential to it seems foolish? Am I compromised by giving into the art? Probably.

even though it was clear that sleeping with boys who fit his type was going to get him marked as a child molester, he didn’t stop, which indicates a clear compulsion.

That’s what makes me think he did molest kids.  Either he was a molester or an irredeemably stupid person.

I guess I have a different definition of obvious, coinciding with “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Mark Fuhrman gave me reasonable doubt. I would have had to find Simpson not guilty, though I might hold him liable in a civil suit. I think there’s more than a 50% chance that he killed his wife. But it isn’t obvious.

Reasonable doubt isn’t remotely the same thing as innocence.  I think it’s certain that the LAPD, and especially that racist Fuhrman, decided that OJ was guilty and proceeded to plant evidence.  I also think it’s certain that OJ did commit the crime; he just managed to be one of the “smart” criminals who don’t leave much evidence behind.

Reasonable doubt isn’t remotely the same thing as innocence.

And so I didn’t say it was. But to say it’s obvious that Simpson was guilty, or to have the certainty you have, means to me being able to say there’s no good reason to think maybe he didn’t do it. And Fuhrman was to me such a reason.

“Really?  It seems to me that this is kind of a crazy living in fear kind of world, where you can pretty much never let children out of your sight and you can never trust anybody.  “

Absolutely not.  Once you educate your children about the roles adults play in their lives - coaches coach, teachers teach, etc - then you can trust everyone…within their roles.

I don’t have kids.  Raise yours however you like.  If anyone asked me, that’d be my advice to them that’s all.  I did go through an extensive training program that included taped interviews with predators some of whom had molested a hundred or more kids before caught, and told how they did it.  That doesn’t mean the program I went through was 100% correct, but it made sense to me, and my experience with my cousin enforced that…for me.  No need to get so defensive. Frankly, I don’t give a shit what you do with your kids. 

<quote>That’s what makes me think he did molest kids.  Either he was a molester or an irredeemably stupid person.</quote>

And his complete lack of ability to understand why his behavior might be viewed as bizarre or unhealthy is probably an indication he had no clear sense of what was appropriate or good for children.  At a certain point he could/should have stopped not only because of what it was doing to his own reputation but because it was hurting kids because—whether they were molested or not—the experience of going through the investigation certainly was not good for those kids. I get very uncomfortable watching interviews where he insists that he loves kids and other people just don’t understand or have those experiences.  That dug-in belief that others just don’t have the same insight into children that you do is really ominous to me.

I think the interesting thing about this post is that all of the ambivalence around the figure of the pedophile, or even the individual who sexually abuses children (who may or may not be a pedophile in the sense of a primary sexual attraction for children).  I think we have this view of sexually abusing children as being one of if not the worst possible thing you can do which makes it hard to jive with someone who may otherwise be decent or even remarkable in other area of their lives.  It’s one of those things that makes people suspicious of accusations since the person is not a monster in their experiences.  I think it is also one of those things that is very disorienting to victims since the person might otherwise be good to them.

It’s funny how, no matter how much I insist that “weirdoness” has nothing to do with this, I’m being unfairly accused.

If you’re being unfairly accused, it’s because you were unclear in your statements.

And you’re not being accused for claiming Jackson was a pedophile.  You’re being accused for painting anyone and everyone who disagrees with your analysis as a “rape apologist.”  If that also wasn’t your intent, then once again you were unclear.

I think the interesting thing about this post is that all of the ambivalence around the figure of the pedophile, or even the individual who sexually abuses children (who may or may not be a pedophile in the sense of a primary sexual attraction for children).  I think we have this view of sexually abusing children as being one of if not the worst possible thing you can do which makes it hard to jive with someone who may otherwise be decent or even remarkable in other area of their lives.

Mmm - one of the interesting things about “The Disappearance of Childhood” was that Postman noted sexual attitudes towards children have changed since the Industrial Revolution.

I can’t help wondering if the horror over pedophiles isn’t just at the damage done, but denial over *common* impulses to see children as sexual creatures.  And even saying that makes me feel creepy.

Regardless of whether or not Jackson was a pedophile, I don’t think anyone can deny he was a transformative figure in music history.  Black artists did not get on MTV, period, until he came along.  I seem to remember that music videos were largely concert footage or lip-synch and air guitar exercises with bands “playing” their instruments until Jackson started having professional direction and mini-screenplays in his videos.  Thriller remains the most epic long-form music video ever made, to the best of my knowledge.  He was probably the most famous person to walk the earth to date, with the possible exception of Muhammad Ali.  (More famous than Jesus, certainly.)  Whatever his personal shortcomings, you have to give him his due.  He was a giant figure.  As a kid (born in 1967) I’d only listened to heavy metal until I heard the single “Off the Wall” while channel-surfing on a family trip; after that, I started listening to other genres.  I’d argue that Jackson’s fame and success helped retrieve the reputation of disco and dance music, which was at its nadir in the early 1980’s.

I think it’s certain that the LAPD, and especially that racist Fuhrman, decided that OJ was guilty and proceeded to plant evidence.

Why on earth do you think that?  If you actually look at the story, Fuhrman had practically no chance to plant much of anything.  The whole thing was smoke and mirrors from the “dream team”, exacerbated by Clark and Darden’s incompetence.  Vincent Bugliosi’s book is pretty good on the subject - it’s hard to read it and still believe that the cops did anything nefarious.

he just managed to be one of the “smart” criminals who don’t leave much evidence behind.

Oh, and this is even more crazy.  OJ left a ton of evidence everywhere.  There was his blood everywhere; there were Nicole and Ron Goldman’s blood everywhere.  He couldn’t explain why he was bleeding when he was interviewed by the police.  He had no alibi.  Anybody who couldn’t afford an incredibly expensive legal team would have been convicted.

Uelman: “Did you plant or manufacture any evidence in this case?”

Fuhrman: “I assert my fifth amendment privilege.”

I’m not surprised by Amanda’s take on this since she has a demonstrated tendency to see things in black and white.  With regard to MJ’s relationship with children is there no space between appropriate and child molester?  Not seeing a gray area here is sad, as is calling anyone with doubts a rape apologist. Was MJ inappropriate?  Yes.  Adult men should know better than to sleep in the same bed with children.  Did his behavior rise to the level of child molestation? I don’t know.  I think he was a regressed adult man with effeminate tendencies and a weird need to be around children due to his regression, which caused homophobic prosecutors to go on a witch hunt, which was made easier by MJ’s idiotic tendency to hang around financially-challenged families.  The evidence in 2003 was flimsy so he was acquitted, and the only case that was settled out of court had a series of problems, not the least of which was the victim’s mother insisting he was not molested and the father admitting on tape that he was looking for a big pay-out.  Sorry, but having doubts on this is not insane, but it does put one in the uncomfortable position of defending a guy who obviously had issues, even if one does not believe those issues rose to the level of child molestation.

Comparing the evidence in the MJ trial to the evidence in the OJ trial is equally odd.  There was a ton of evidence linking OJ to the murders, whereas the MJ accusations were always just someone’s (usually tainted) word.

Black artists did not get on MTV, period, until he came along.

MTV was still trying to get off the ground when “Thriller” came out. Somewhere I still have my “I Want My MTV” button from that era. We were supposed to contact cable companies and demand they carry MTV.

asdf:
Sarcasm or direct quote?

Direct quote from the trial records.

What I’ve always found interesting is that his voice seemed to get higher in pitch after he reached puberty.  Listen to the song on the post - he has a more “masculine” voice on that song than 90% of his music. I don’t know if the voice he used was a put-on, or if it really was his true voice.

That being said, the whole situation surrounding his death seems to get stranger by the moment.

If I was a defense attorney, I would damn well make sure that Sara Pulis and Jafafa Hots were on my jury, and not a bunch of clear-eyed folks who realize that just because you love Thriller doesn’t mean he doesn’t diddle kids.

And if I were Sara Pulis or Jafafa Hots, I’d be pretty pissed at you for making an assertion about me that’s nowhere in what I wrote.

Go back and look.  Nowhere did either of them make any statement about any part of Jackson’s artistic work.

For myself, I remember when the allegations first came out and thinking “that’s just way too pat”.  Remember, the wierdness began well before 1993; I remember Bloom County cartoons about it from the mid-80’s*.  So far the evidence I’ve heard here is:

1) He gave alcohol to kids he allegedly victimized.
2) He made claims of mutuality with respect to his alleged victims - I’m not exactly clear what’s meant here (I haven’t heard the phrase before), but I’m assuming it means he implied the kids were “asking for it”?  I did a search under “Michael Jackson mutuality”, but didn’t find anything.
3) He continued to sleep with boys after court problems stemming from his sleeping with boys. (I’m assuming “sleep with” here doesn’t mean “sexually abused”, since that’s what’s being debated).

Thinking about it, I guess I’m convinced (though I read no articles about the cross examination of the witness in 1), so I reserve the right to change my mind), but can we agree that this isn’t anywhere close to the evidence against OJ?

There was his blood everywhere; there were Nicole and Ron Goldman’s blood everywhere.  He couldn’t explain why he was bleeding when he was interviewed by the police.  He had no alibi.

So perhaps you shouldn’t be surprised (or compare people to rape apologists) when people are a little more skeptical of the Jackson accusations.

And while you might not be basing your belief on Jackson’s alleged pedophilia on how wierd he was, do you honestly believe the general public is being so reserved?  Do you honestly believe someone like Norm McDonald sifted through the evidence to make his determination?

* Berke Breathed, BTW, is another Texan worth toasting, but I’m sure all of you knew that already.

It’s not just fame that will fuck your brain into nothingness. It’s racism. I’ve always been enormously saddened by Jackson’s passionate drive to become white (bleaching his skin and paring his nose down to nothingness). He was a talented musician, and a beneficiary of a rich african-american musical tradition (and, by the way, family), and yet, with all his wealth, he simply wanted to stop being black. That says things about our culture I really don’t like to admit.

The Erl:  “I’ve always been enormously saddened by Jackson’s passionate drive to become white (bleaching his skin and paring his nose down to nothingness).”

Given the way he felt about his father, part of the reason for his physical transformation may have been an attempt to look as little like him as possible.

For me, the one thing that stood out about OJ and proof was the limo driver.  His testimony couldn’t in any way be reconciled with Simpson’s recollection of events, period.  And he was pretty much the only key witness who consistently refused to join the freak show: he stayed in the background, gave his testimony, and that’s pretty much it.

If you’ll recall the jury during its very short deliberations asked to look at his testimony again.  Then ignored it.  My own guess is that they tried to find a way around it, realized that they didn’t have to, and brought in the verdict that they wanted.

(Shrugs.)  If Bugliosi had handled the case then OJ would be doing life without parole.

NY Expat - I don’t think I ever compared anyone to a rape apologist.  You may be confusing me with Amanda.  I was just noting the absurdity of all the OJ apologists on this thread, who seem to have gotten their arguments on this score directly from the ghost of Johnnie Cochran.

I think that what Amanda means by “mutuality” is that Jackson claimed that his relationships with the various boys was mutual - that they were both enjoying whatever they were doing, and what not.  Which is, as I understand it, what pedophiles do - try to claim it’s a consensual relationship.  There’s some good bits of Lolita where you can catch Humbert Humbert both doing this and also at some level realizing that it’s total bullshit.

At any rate, I don’t know about Jackson being a pedophile.  The combination of unimaginable quantities of money and very deep-seated unresolved psychological issues from childhood turned him into probably one of the most bizarre people to ever live.  There’s plenty of child actors who flame out and fuck up their lives.  There’s plenty of child actors who drop out of show business and end up completely normal people.  And there’s even some child actors who manage to transition from child star to adult star in a reasonably normal manner.  But there’s really only one Michael Jackson.  He was incredibly talented and went from being a child star to being the most successful and famous musician ever, pretty much.  And then he hacked off his face and spent his life pretending to be a twelve year old boy.  He’s a horrifying cautionary tale of how fucked up a person can become, and how dangerous having virtually infinite resources can be if you have no grounding in reality.

If he was a pedophile, that was perhaps one of the least strange things about him.  Pedophiles are a type.  A disturbing type that most of us don’t really understand, but at least one that has a certain reassuring repetitiveness to it - we may not really understand what makes people pedophiles, but we can at least identify their behavior, and can explain much of it from the mere fact of them being a pedophile.  To understand Jackson as a pedophile is almost to escape from having to deal with the much broader disturbingness of his life.  “Ah, he was a pedophile.  That explains it.  Now I can be less disturbed about all the other deeply weird shit about the guy - he was a pedophile.  What more is there to say?”

So I don’t know.  Obviously his relationship with those boys was bizarre and deeply inappropriate, but the accusations at his trial were kind of weak.  If I had to put down money on the question, I’d definitely put down money on the “He was a pedophile” front.  But really, the guy was so enormously strange that I wouldn’t be enormously surprised to discover that there was no actual sexual abuse going on.

/me snorts…

Dude, the case was fucked for the prosecution before it even got to trial.  Bugliosi wouldn’t have done much better than the attorneys who did do the prosecution.

This is why I don’t want to know OJ’s or MJ’s guilt or innocence by what people have sorta heard off-hand.  The idiot-box is a horrific way to get your information about legal procedings (unless you were using it to actually watch the trail) because the recaps routinely spun the events in the courtroom.  I mean, it’s fucking amazing just how many white people don’t get that OJ’s lawyers were freakin’ great (and what they did to be so great), and that the case against OJ wasn’t the strongest it could be.  A lot of that came from tv news that reported from a pretty authortarian mindset.  Not to mention watching the click and the whiring that goes on behind their faces when I tell’em, hey, two white people voted not guilty too, you know…

Again, it wasn’t even close, mostly for the intrinsic reason that the defense shot the case full of holes because idiotic, racist, and lazy cops were shown to have tampered with the evidence.  You can’t recover from that, no way, no how.

If Bugliosi had handled the case then OJ would be doing life without parole.

That is certainly Bugliosi’s position.

Alan Dershowitz does a series of audio lectures on ‘great trials of the 20th Century’ which, surprise, includes a number of trials he was involved in. Big-headedness aside, his take on the OJ trial was interesting. He was called in quite late to prepare for an appeal should it be needed, so he had access to much of the material. He personally believes that OJ did it. But he makes the point that, as shah8 points out, OJ’s lawyers had done an astonishing job. But most importantly that the police had completely screwed things by bungling the case and messing with evidence. That was enough reasonable doubt for some jurors to acquit, even if they themselves thought he’d done it.

Interesting post from Lisa Marie Presley here:

http://blogs.myspace.com/lisamariepresley

From someone who actually knew him well, this means a lot more than all our media-fuelled speculation.

On OJ:
There was a round-table at our law office and the general (but not unanimous) consensus was “they framed a guilty man”.  The amount of money poured into his defence was summarized as “probably the only defendant that year able to afford a fair trial”.

As for Bugliosi, one of his strengths as a prosecutor was that, unlike Clark et al., he never saw himself as a passive representative of the police.  In many ways he viewed them as just as—if not more—problematic than the defence.  The early, proactive and demanding intervention of a competent DA in investigation, evidence collection and data collation could have saved that prosecution.  The Manson trial was far more of a real world (as opposed to media) freakshow and incompetence circus (my god, a cop obliterating a bloody thumbprint at the scene!) than Simpson’s was and yet he brought order out of that chaos.  I’m reasonably familiar with B’s career and it is, for example, almost impossible to picture him finding out about Furman’s racism on the stand rather than months and months in advance and planning for it and using that weakness as a strength.  A consistent failure of Darden and Clark was their always playing defence and always getting holes kicked in their evidence.  A key characteristic of Bugliosi as a prosecutor was his eager seeking of those holes himself and incorporating them—and their explanations and resolutions—into his case as offensive tools. 

Also, I don’t recall badmouthing Simpson’s excellent defence team.  “X fucked up” is not synonymous with “X is the only factor”.

As for listening to Bugliosi’s opinion of himself I’m inclined to, yes.  I measure such people by their achievements and I’m inclined to listen to a man who never, ever lost a murder trial and won 99.1% of his felony trials.

As for listening to Bugliosi’s opinion of himself I’m inclined to, yes.  I measure such people by their achievements and I’m inclined to listen to a man who never, ever lost a murder trial and won 99.1% of his felony trials.

That sounds impressive until you remember that prosecutors have the power to plea down or drop charges entirely in situations where they think they can’t get a conviction—or for that matter, when they just don’t want to bother actually trying the case.  Furthermore, “beyond a reasonable doubt” aside, juries in reality love to punish guilty people, and let’s face it, they very often assume the (often black/poor/shabby-looking/what-have-you) person placed in front of them is guilty right up front.  Bugliosi also practiced entirely in the pre-24-hour-cable-news era, certainly before the media outlets realized how much free programming they were missing out on by covering the hell out of lurid, pretty-preganant-white-girl murders.  Not to mention before Law and Order, CSI, and all of their clones convinced every slob in this country they had a profound understanding of criminal investigation and legal practice and procedure.

You’re certainly allowed to listen to Bugliosi’s opinion of himself, and of course, he was a superb trial lawyer.  He is and always was a shameless self-promoter as well, and there have been many many lawyers out there just as adept at trial practice as he was…though not very many as adept at making the general public aware of it.

All points taken, Felix Culpa.  But bear in mind that every other prosecutor has that same dynamic at play and most don’t have that same record of success.

Shameless self-promoter?  Every public figure with a book to sell is.  It’s rather like calling a fish “wet”.  Famed civil libertarian defence lawyers Kunstler and Spence were (are, in Spence’s case) shameless self-promoters too ... and effing brilliant lawyers.  When they posit something, I listen to them too.  Grandstanders and successful litigators are very overlapped Venns.

What I suggest you do is set aside some quality time and read Bugliosi’s book on the Kennedy assassination.  He and Spence squared off in a mock trial and Bugliosi got a conviction in a case where pretty much everybody now believes—correctly or not—that Oswald didn’t do it.  It led to a lifelong fascination with the case on VB’s part and he wrote a book on it.  Over a twelve hundred pages long and with appendices and endnotes that require a CD included with the book itself.  It reflects VB’s approach to a case: absolutely meticulous, leave no stone unexamined, leave no loose ends, leave no unanswered questions, and bring that tight, tight, complete weave and lay it before the jury.  Bugliosi may be a grandstander, but I find it near-impossible to believe that the OJ prosecution disaster would have happened with him in charge. 

Put in a military metaphor: Clark and Darden fought on ground of each other’s choosing, didn’t listen to their Intelligence briefings and left vast amounts of their fronts uncovered.  Bugliosi is a general who knows where every blade of grass on the field is, how high it is and just how he can use it to his advantage.

Oh, and one other thing, Felix.  Even if we leave Bugliosi out of it we can compare the mess of the Simpson prosecution to the quiet, steady, meticulous effectiveness of the McVeigh prosecution.  If we had put the Oklahoma City prosecutors in charge of the Simpson case, probably a different result.

I found myself troubled by the Simpson jury, too.  They just didn’t strike me as very bright (or come off as bright on TV, which are clean and separate things, I concede.).  I think that the defence did an absolutely brilliant job of pitching their theory and evidence to the actual audience.  Clark and Darden were more like GM: pushing shit on people—and badly—and then getting pissed off when they won’t buy it.

typo correction:
“Clark and Darden fought on ground of their opponents’ choosing”

It reflects VB’s approach to a case: absolutely meticulous, leave no stone unexamined, leave no loose ends, leave no unanswered questions, and bring that tight, tight, complete weave and lay it before the jury.

It’s wonderful to have unlimited amounts of time, finance, and investigative resources at your fingertips to try a case, particularly a criminal case.  The real world does not work that way since most lawyers actually need to make a living doing it.  Throw unlimited resources at any lawyer and remove all time and billing constraints, and this is the method they will use to try it—it’s certainly what I would do.  The real practice of law works quite differently, and while Bugliosi tried his “big ticket” cases this way (any lawyer worth his salt tries a big ticket case this way) I assure you it is not statistically representative of how he earned his “99 percent conviction rate.”  The cult of celebrity lawyers (of which Bugliosi was one of the first and a template for the rest of them) is highly dubious.  I would further add that all of these reams of preparation are in fact almost always done by….less well known lawyers and/or staffers. 

(Aside: I myself did a substantial amount of research and preparation in a notable though not “media circus” civil case where the senior lawyer actually got on tv a number of times, even CNN once or twice.  God, that prick loved to strut around in front of the camera as if he were the second coming of Oliver Wendell Holmes….except of course I happened to know that he knew nothing about the actual law of the case except the name of the main Supreme Court case we were attempting to expand and a couple of sentences worth of canned talking points.)

Anyway, again, I am not doubting Bugliosi’s trial lawyer chops, his work ethic, or any such thing.  When you are fortunante (or perhaps unfortunate) enough to fall into a case that gets that much attention and money thrown at it, you are a fool not to look under every stone.  That case becomes, in effect, your life, and Bugliosi is hardly unique in approaching it this way…though he often pretends he is.  I might also add that I have much less faith that juries actually sit there (particularly in long trials) and carefully analyze “that tight, tight, complete weave”—in my experience, juries try to do what they believe is the right thing.  Ninety-nine percent of the time—media circus trials are a horse of a different color.

jlk7e, I was, in fact, addressing Amanda there.  Sorry for the mixup.

Felix Culpa—you would be amazed, truly, at how many people can’t scale up.

Punditus Maximus: No, actually I wouldn’t. 

I have to add my own voice to those surprised by the certainty people have regarding MJ’s guilt. If ever there was a case where the “classic” markers don’t hold, this is it. There was just nothing at all “classic” about this guy. His whole freaky childhood obsession really makes this the one case where I have to think, “huh, maybe he IS just a misunderstood weirdo.”

Up front: I remember him being a big deal when I was a tween and I enjoy dancing to some of his songs but I wouldn’t consider myself a fan. I assure you this is not hero worship. I also am one who tends to believe people who accuse others of assault/abuse - my default setting is to believe the accusation, especially accusations of sexual abuse, and that’s where I tend to lean in this case as well but I just really don’t know. Honestly, I can’t think of any other case at all where I am this unsure.

I went to wikipedia to look up info on the case and, as it turns out, the family that accused him in this particular case had its own sordid past - including previous accusations of the mother coaching the kids. After reading that and some of the info about the past cases, I have to say I’m less certain about his guilt now than I was when I first read this post. All the people involved (except for the kids) sound like not-so-great individuals.

Perhaps the page was written by MJ-friendly people, who knows. Like I sais, this is the one of the few cases I can think of where I can genuinely say, “I just really don’t know.”

He and Spence squared off in a mock trial and Bugliosi got a conviction in a case where pretty much everybody now believes—correctly or not—that Oswald didn’t do it.

I’m pretty sure that this isn’t true at all.  Most people know that there’s a lot of people who think Oswald didn’t do it, but I’d say there aren’t too many people who would go so far as to say they actually believe Oswald didn’t do it.  Most people, I think, kind of reserve judgment.  “Well, I don’t think we know what happened there.”  I think that those who have looked into it in any detail and are not cranks tend to come out of that investigation believing that Oswald did it.  And since most people are not cranks, a jury presented with actual evidence would seem fairly likely to convict.

Felix Culpa:  “Not to mention before Law and Order, CSI, and all of their clones convinced every slob in this country they had a profound understanding of criminal investigation and legal practice and procedure. “

Someone very close to me was a juror on a fairly well-publicised local murder case.  There was no physical evidence, only eyewitness testimony from two sources.  One had a grudge and contradicted her earlier testimony, the other was a child, obviously heavily coached.  Some other factors might have swayed them, but those factors were evidence excluded by law from the courtroom.

The defense explained to the jurors the degrees of certainty and what they would need in order to convict.  She used a kind of Venn diagram with concentric circles.

The prosecution held up a card that said “[defendant’s name] is guilty.”

The jury basically decided he probably did it, but the prosecution didn’t prove the case.  Not Guilty.

The jury were tarred in the media with this “CSI syndrome” accusation. 

It has at least as much to do with juries dismayed by a lack solid evidence and being treated like gullible idiots as it does with juries expecting beeping flying 3-D blood splatter evidence.

oldfeminist: I am speaking broadly, not about any individual jury.  Individual juries (and indeed, the available jury pool in any given jurisdiction) can vary wildly.  I am sure your friend and your friend’s jury did a fine and fair job.

I am also certain that a disturbingly large number of juries, even in the most mundane or “open and shut” cases, now routinely expect DNA analysis and all manner of expert scientific witness testimony because of what they have seen on TV.  I personally know a number of district attorneys who find the phenomenon frustrating…and have known a few defense attorneys who have taken advantage of the situation.

Your point about juries being treated like gullible idiots holds a bit of truth, unfortunately.  Usually, attorneys on either one side or the other conduct jury selection in a manner designed to ensure that jurors with any high level education, expertise, or obvious claims to intelligence get booted off of a venire in short order.  (The only factor more likely to get you booted off of a jury in the state in which I practice is one of the selecting attorneys not liking your race, Batson v. Kentucky notwithstanding…but that is a separate problem.)  At any rate, lack of higher education or what have you does not necessarily mean any given person is actually stupid…but boy, you better believe a lot of attorneys assume it means just that.

Jeffrey Toobin wrote The Run of His Life after getting unprecedented access to the Simpson defense team and his absolute conclusion was that OJ was guilty, but that media circus surrounding the case and the preconceptions of the jury ensured he’d never be convicted.

Well, that and the fact that the LA district attorney’s office couldn’t get a conviction if the murderer handed them a videotape of himself killing the victims.  It took them two tries to get Phil Specter convicted, and that’s one of their triumphs.  If they come up against any smart defense lawyers, they fold.  Toobin’s book is interesting because it emphasizes that systemic problems with the way the LAPD and the LA district attorney’s office handle cases were what caused OJ’s acquittal.

Jumping back into the Michael Jackson discussion . . .

It’s said a little skepticism goes a long way:

<a href= “http://www.hersbandandwife.com/blog/2009/06/27/jordan-chandler-admits-he-lied-about-michael-jackson/”>Jordan Chandler admits he lied about Michael Jackson</a>

drat - 2 preview fails in a row - i’ll have to turn in my card . . .

teac, a little skepticism is right.  It may be true that Chandler lied, but this story doesn’t convince me of anything.

I see copies of it all over the web, but none on any news sites.  The writing is poor and even seems to mix up the names of father and son at one point.

I’ve been reading this thread ever since it posted in the hope that we would get some kind of… something (sort of like after she trashed the Chronicles of Narnia and later apologized for being flip about something that meant so much to so many people). But it would seem she is too invested in the idea that a person accused is a person guilty because they have the ‘markers’.

Let’s think of some things that had the ‘markers’, but turned out not to be at all true:

Duke Rape Case
Saddam’s WMD’s (I know alot of you were skeptical but alot of people bought it because the ‘markers’ were there)
Saddam’s ties to 9/11 (ditto)
Countless black men locked up on flimsy evidence

I’m sure I could go on, but why? Just like the most shallow of MSM reporters, Amanda clearly has her narrative and she’s sticking with it. What really disappoints me is how similar her thought process is to that of Malkin and her ilk (‘Well, I believe it in my gut, so it’s true, and anybody that disagrees has something wrong with them’). In Malkin’s case she thinks people that disagree with her are terrorist sympathizers (or worse), and Amanda seems to think that those who disagree with her are rape apologists (or worse).

The more I think about it, the more her attitude here bothers me here. I’ve been a daily reader of Pandagon ever since 2004, and I think Amanda is one of the most insightful writers out there on a whole host of topics. I’ve learned alot about our culture, ideas about gender and where we all fit into that, and more, from her, and I’m grateful for that.

I’ve taken issue with a number of things she’s written over the years, but this is somehow different. Maybe because MJ’s music meant so much to me personally, and maybe because I feel so strongly about how disgusting it is that we tore him down like we did and were so ready to believe the worst things (and what it says about who we are). But I don’t think I can, in good conscience, support this website anymore. Not that the few pennies that come from my clicks mean a whole lot (and not that the Pandagon staff will lose alot of sleep over losing me as a reader), but it is what it is.

RIP Michael Jackson, the freest of the free spirits. So sad that it ended up becoming your prison. May you find the peace on the other side that eluded you in this life.

One final thing, if anybody is still paying attention to this thread, I recommend this article for anyone is interested in some real reporting on MJ, and not bullshit media speculation and tabloid level gossip. Here’s the money passage:

I had started my investigation convinced that Jackson was guilty. By the end, I no longer believed that.

I could not find a single shred of evidence suggesting that Jackson had molested a child. But I found significant evidence demonstrating that most, if not all, of his accusers lacked credibility and were motivated primarily by money.

Jackson also deserved much of the blame, of course. Continuing to share a bed with children even after the suspicions surfaced bordered on criminal stupidity.

Lennox- I just came here to post the article you referenced. This was written by someone who spent a significant amount of time investigating the issue, and came away convinced that he wasn’t a pedophile. Amanda, on the other hand, took a cursory look at some allegations filtered through the media and then simply decided that he was guilty- and then declared that anyone who didn’t do the same was a rape apologist.

He admitted to sharing his bed with little boys but claimed it was nonsexual. Even if that’s true—and I’m skeptical—it means that he exploited them and objectified them by having some sort of sham “equal” relationship which in reality was far from equal.

Anyone that can name his second son the same name as his first son and then nickname him “Blanket” is an extremely narcissistic user of people. It shows no consideration for the boy as an individual whatsoever.

The mental aspect of sexual abuse is way worse than the physical touching. The child grows up feeling that he/she is of no worth, simply an object to be used. You have to put yourself back together when you become an adult in order to even feel that you have a right to be yourself and to exist as the unique person that you are.

Whatever the relationships amounted to with the children, they seem obviously exploitative and destructive. Even if he didn’t sexually touch the ones that he spent a lot of time with at these pajama parties, he used them.

Thanks to Amanda for saying what other feminists won’t say. 

In cases like this, I choose to believe the CHILDREN.  Ya know, the ones who claimed he molested them? Yeah, I believe them.  Kids don’t just accuse people out of nowhere.  Even if he didn’t rape them, or whatever, there are still a lot of ways to sexually abuse a child. Even ways where you don’t touch them. Like, as Amanda said, showing them pornography.  Yep, pedophiles use adult pornography to instruct and abuse their victims.  And like auntie claire just said- he doesn’t have to touch them to sexually abuse them. 

Also, I know this is totally off-topic, but people keep bringing up the McMartin day care case as an example of “innocent” people being wrongly convicted/accused.  Did you all know that a few years after the case was over they (I don’t know who, I learned this all several years ago so sorry I can’t be better with providing details) actually bulldozed the areas where the kids said these tunnels were, and they FOUND tunnels, and other items that the victims had described being in there.  Interestingly enough, very, very few people know about this, and that case is still used to show how kids like about sexual abuse.  Even though they didn’t lie.

Ack, I meant “lie about sexual abuse” not “like about sexual abuse.”

I’m going to say this:

The opening post was written from the perspective that Michael Jackson was a pedophile is an indesputible fact.

Well, I don’t think Michael Jackson molested any children and neither did the jury in this court case.

Not really:

An excavation was undertaken in May 1990 by Gary Stickel who claimed he found evidence of tunnels under the McMartin Preschool using ground-penetrating radar.[38] Others have disagreed with his conclusions; a 1995 article stated that the concrete slab floor was undisturbed except for a small patch where the sewer line was tapped into. Once the slab was removed, there was no sign of any materials to line or hold up any tunnels, and there would have been no way for the defendants to fill in the tunnels once the investigation began. The article concluded that disturbed soil under the slab was from the sewer line and construction fill buried under the slab before it was poured. Some dated fill material under the slab was from the year 1940.[39] Another report concluded that based on the materials found during the excavation, including bottles, tin cans, plywood as well as the former owner’s old mail box, a far likelier explanation than tunnels was a trash pit, dug by the former owner of the lot prior to the construction of the pre-school. Only three small items found near the edge of the concrete slab were dated after 1966, which was the year the pre-school was built. The report’s author speculated that Stickel’s conclusions were colored by his collaboration with the parents of the McMartin children.[40]

And in the McMartin case, it was sparked by accusations by a woman later found to be mentally unbalanced:

Johnson, who made the initial allegations, made bizarre and impossible statements about Raymond Buckey, including that he could fly.[5] Though the prosecution asserted Johnson’s mental illness was caused by the events of the trial, Johnson had admitted to them that she was mentally ill beforehand. Evidence of Johnson’s mental illness was withheld from the defense for three years, and when provided were in the form of sanitized reports that excluded Johnson’s statements, at the order of the prosecution.[23] One of the original prosecutors, Glenn Stevens, left the case and stated that other prosecutors had withheld evidence from the defense, including the information that Johnson’s son was unable to identify Ray Buckey in a series of photographs. Stevens also accused the deplduty district attorney on the case of lying and withholding evidence from the court and defense lawyers in order to keep the Buckeys in jail and prevent access to exonerating evidence.[24]

and what was as fault wasn’t that the children “lied”, they weren’t interviewed properly:

Interviewing and examining the children

Several hundred children were then interviewed by the Children’s Institute International (CII), a Los Angeles abuse therapy clinic. The interviewing techniques used during investigations of the allegations were highly suggestive and invited children to pretend or speculate about supposed events.[13][14] By spring of 1984, it was claimed that 360 children had been abused.[5][15][16] Astrid Heppenstall Heger performed medical examinations and took photos of what she believed to be minute scarring which she stated was caused by anal penetration. Critics have alleged that the questioners asked the children leading questions, repetitively, which, it is said,[17] always yields positive responses from young children, making it impossible to know what the child actually experienced. Others believe that the questioning itself may have led to false memory syndrome among the children who were questioned.[1][3] Ultimately only 41 of the original 360 children testified during the grand jury and pre-trial hearings, and less than a dozen testified during the actual trial.[18]

Videotapes of the interviews with children were reviewed by Dr. Michael Maloney, a British clinical psychologist and professor of psychiatry, as an expert witness regarding the interviewing of children. Maloney was highly critical of the interviewing techniques used, referring to them as improper, coercive, directive, problematic, adult-directed in a way that forced the children to follow a rigid script and that “many of the kids’ statements in the interviews were generated by the examiner.”[19] Transcripts and recordings of the interviews contained far more speech from adults than children, and demonstrated that despite the highly coercive interviewing techniques used, initially the children were resistant to interviewers’ attempts to elicit disclosures. Recordings of these interviews were instrumental in the jury’s refusal to convict by demonstrating how children could create their vivid and dramatic testimonies without having experienced the abuse.[20] The techniques used were contrary to the existing guidelines in California for the investigation of cases involving children and child witnesses.[21]

Right, they were not interviewed well. That doesn’t mean they weren’t molested.  It all depends on who you want to listen to. 

I learned this information in a child sexual abuse class, but it was years ago and I don’t have the syllabus to be able to give you a source, unfortunately. 

Also, saying that the woman who accused them was mentally ill and therefore not to be believed- um, no.  That’s so wrong.  Us mentally ill people, we just can’t be trusted, can we?? 

Also, false memory syndrome does not exist, it is not a real syndrome, it is a term coined by abusers who are trying to discredit their victims.  I wouldn’t trust any publication that used that term as a real term.

Sorry to be all deraily- this is my professor and a link to her book which discusses it:

http://books.google.com/books?id=kT-fD3wMXbgC&pg=PA278&lpg=PA278&dq=Rebecca+Bolen+McMartin&source=bl&ots=zSx-7LuFvG&sig=4TWnf3bjXoabjQNTPUh-PD7t2Js&hl=en&ei=LA5JSqyJLt-wtgesnZjbAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4

Well, unfortunately, such classes can be taught by people with their own agenda, and I should tell you that my own college professor father once advised me never to believe something because it’s in print or someone else puts their own authority behind it.

Us mentally ill people, we just can’t be trusted, can we??

FWIW, my two autistic brothers were reliable witnesses, in fact, as is often the case with autistics, they were sometimes too truthful at times. Dismount from your high horse about the mentally ill, because this Homey isn’t gonna play that one. 

If someone tells me about someone else flying in the air in real life, then I would think of them as a witness who couldn’t be trusted, regardless of their mental status. 

Right, they were not interviewed well. That doesn’t mean they weren’t molested.  It all depends on who you want to listen to.

Here’s what I found about the tunnels, FWIW:

Prior to the parents’ excavation in 1985-MAR,  none of the children disclosed memories of a secret room under the school building itself.  All were in the vacant lot to the west of the preschool. Shortly after the parents’ backhoe excavations turned up nothing, some children started to remember rooms under the school building. We suspect that the parents were disappointed that no tunnels were found where the children said they were. They probably sought other answers from the children, and easily persuaded them to reveal alternative, fictional locations underneath the building.

The “tunnels” and “room” that Dr. Stickel found were probably remnants of old trash dumps that were dug and filled many years before the Preschool building was constructed.

11 children described the locations of 13 entry doors. Yet the police were unable to find any trap doors or any remains of filled-in trap doors when they thoroughly inspected the building and playhouse. The obvious conclusion is that these are non-existent, fantasy trap-doors. The children simply made up stories in response to the interviewers’ repeated direct questions. <u>Recent studies in the US and New Zealand have indicated how easy it is to pressure very young children to fantasize if questions are not properly asked</u>. Simply repeating a direct question is often enough to get an invalid answer. The child initially answers correctly, but soon recognizes that they are not giving the investigator the “right” answer. Thus, they make up another answer to satisfy the adult.

Other components of the children’s testimony were clearly fantasy. For example, child molesters would hardly transport children to an abuse location by a hot air balloon, which is at the mercy of air currents. Even if by some miracle the balloon landed at the right location, the probability is extremely low that the winds would conveniently reverse direction exactly 180 degrees, in order to push the balloon back to the starting point. No child abuser with even a small amount of common sense would use a balloon to transport victims. We would assume that the trap-doors are like the balloons; they also exist only in fantasy.

We predict that investigators could select a few preschool hundred children in any locality in North America; interview them about their preschool experiences, using the same manipulative, suggestive methods as were used by the CII; and find dozens of children who would describe trap-doors, tunnels and underground rooms. Such a study could be designed without references to sexual abuse and thus could be conducted without any possibility of emotional harm to the children. Unfortunately, to our knowledge, such a study has never been conducted. If it were, the results would be very revealing.

Transcripts and recordings of the interviews contained far more speech from adults than children, and <u>demonstrated that despite the highly coercive interviewing techniques used, initially the children were resistant to interviewers’ attempts to elicit disclosures</u>.

Also, false memory syndrome does not exist, it is not a real syndrome, it is a term coined by abusers who are trying to discredit their victims.  I wouldn’t trust any publication that used that term as a real term.

One doesn’t have to believe in false memory syndrome’s existence to believe that the children weren’t molested, BTW.

<quote>Kids don’t just accuse people out of nowhere.</quote>

Ha! As a teacher I can tell you that this is simply not true. Children are, like all people, complex beings. They are also experimenting with truth, lies, reality, delusion, culpability and responsibility. I have seen kids directly threaten teachers with accusations of sexual abuse, not because anything had happened (often these were relief teachers that the student had met that same day), but because they are experimenting with ways to get power over adults. This is not uncommon. I am not saying kids who make these accusations should be ignored, I am saying that you cannot believe an accusation simply because you can’t think of a reason why the accuser would be lying.

He admitted to sharing his bed with little boys but claimed it was nonsexual. Even if that’s true—and I’m skeptical—it means that he exploited them and objectified them by having some sort of sham “equal” relationship which in reality was far from equal.

I have to agree with this. And what happened to the children who eventually fell out of favor or just got too old for Jackson? How well did they continue their lives?

Once his life and bed became a media circus, bringing children into it, with the possibility that they would have to testify in court in the future, is compulsive, abusive behavior.

Buggle, paranoid schizophrenia is a disease where the sufferer often develops delusions of vast, persecutorial conspiracies, often involving details that could not be accomplished by ordinary humans using existing technology (the CIA monitoring one’s brain waves is the stereotypical example). 

Ms. Johnson, the first complainant in the McMartin case, was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. 

Her allegations in the McMartin case were of a vast persecutorial conspiracy, alleging acts that could not have been accomplished by ordinary humans using existing technology. 

I don’t think it’s slander against all mentally ill people to suggest that Ms. Johnson’s medical condition is a relevant fact of the case. 

Certainly, mentally ill people can give meaningful and reliable testimony.  But it should surprise no one that beginning a multi-million dollar investigation with no evidence beyond the word of a paranoid schizophrenic turned out to be a terrible mistake.

Jeez

Well, my point wasn’t to say “all those kids were definitely molested!!!”  We can’t know that.  I just don’t like seeing that case continuously trotted out to show that kids make things up, yadda yadda.  There is more than one side to each story.  None of us know what actually happened.  You can copy and paste whatever you want, no one but the kids know the truth.

A lot of people spend a lot of time, money and energy covering up sexual abuse.

There is more than one side to each story.  None of us know what actually happened.  You can copy and paste whatever you want, no one but the kids know the truth.

Using Occams’ razor, it’s highly unlikely that the children were molested under the circumstances described, with tunnels that turn out not to exist, hot air ballon rides that didn’t happen.

I just don’t like seeing that case continuously trotted out to show that kids make things up, yadda yadda.

If anyone does so, that would be a very stupid thing to do, as the allegations started with a mother who clearly had issues with the truth, children who were coerced into making statements that weren’t truthful,(it’s not that children lie, they’ll see nothing wrong with telling adults what the adults want to hear, especially when under pressure to do so.)

Stop beating a strawman, buggle, or I’ll have to quote some lines from my late brother’s magnum opus, ” The Grapes of Wrath of the Mentally Ill.” (And yes, that was his title )