Michael Jackson..RIP

[Guest Jules]

I hope you never serve on a jury.

I don't think a court is needed to determine a grown man sleeping in the same bed as young boys is not ok.

[solace]

It's a fairly questionable parenting decision to allow your child to spend large blocks of time with a non related adult outside of some sanctioned function. Even those need to be monitored.

 

However, given what allegedly took place I can imagine that it's a fairly easy rationalization that your child and family would be better off taking the huge financial pay out and not further

dragging your child and family into what would be an enormous media circus/trial. I'd like to think most people would seek justice, but money makes people do weird things, and 22

million is a lot of money.

 

right... but at that point i'd argue that makes the parents on the level of the abuser for forgoing the welfare of their own child for monetary purposes.

[bobbob1313]

I don't think a court is needed to determine a grown man sleeping in the same bed as young boys is not ok.

 

so that means he fucked little boys?

 

I think maybe you haven't read any of mynposts in this thread, as I said the same thing earlier.

[Guest Jules]

so that means he fucked little boys?

I believe what I said was; just admitting to being in the same bed as "little boys" is bad enough.

[John Smith]

My only reaction to Jackson dying is shock. I always pitied him for his lifestyle and his “unusual character” and was never 100% positive how much of his unusual character was actually him and how much was a creation, though over the last 20 years I think regardless of how his weirdness came about, The Michael we saw was who he was 24-7. I was never a fan of his music, nor did I rush to the dial to turn it off. He was just always there throughout my conscious life, much like the Beatles. Though I was and still ma a huge fan of the Beatles.

 

As to the child molestation, I do agree that the people who were involved at both ends, the parents and Michael, were all creepy. Sure like OJ he was acquitted (we all know not guilty does not equate innocence) but the acquittal had all the appearances of his wealth taking control of the courtroom. Ultimately it’s not up to me to judge though (but please allow me to judge…). The parents involved always seemed to be shameless hustlers. It reminds me of a cousin of mine who, knowing that her father was a child molester let her daughter spend the night with him. We all thought she used the child as bait because shortly afterwards she sued him and took everything he had. She did it to punish him for her youth and seemingly for the $$. Since the $$ are much larger with Jackson I could very easily see some less scrupulous people using their kids as bait for cash. We have no idea if there were every any payments made quietly or if it was just the time that hit the news. BTW when I learned of this I was horrified by my cousins actions…not financially ruining her father but using the kid as bait.

 

I may be mistaken here as I didn’t follow this very much but wasn’t the original family paid off to stay out of court and presumably the pay off was cheaper than going to trial? Also didn’t the second episode that resulted in the trial come about because of the family in the original case coming back for more $$ and being refused so they brought this back to the authorities? Regardless though after the first incident Jackson should have done everything in his power to avoid any situation that could have been suspect, he didn’t and forever will have that stain on his record/soul. In the long run though his reputation may bounce back, after all look at how well loved and respected Fatty Arbuckle is 80+ years after his scandal.

 

Lastly it’s sad that someone who was such a huge part of the entertainment landscape for so long is being discussed in terms not related to his art. But that is more his fault than ours.

[Sir Stewart]

[Guest Jules]

I think maybe you haven't read any of mynposts in this thread,

 

this is true

[Spawn's dad]

right... but at that point i'd argue that makes the parents almost worse than the abuser for forgoing the welfare of their own child for monetary purposes.

 

Again, I think one would really need to weigh harming the child further by dragging him into a trial and all that.

Still, like I said, I think they were screwed up for letting him have sleep overs there, so they were whacked from the get go.

Taking money to move past something as worse than molesting a kid? I don't know, man, that's a pretty heavy statement. With a young

child I'm not sure how his welfare is being looked after if his abuser is put in jail. I'm not a child psychologist but I'm not sure the child's

mind works that way. I would see it more as punitive and preventive to society.

[bobbob1313]

I believe what I said was; just admitting to being in the same bed as "little boys" is bad enough.

well there's no response to that. He always said he didn't share a bed with them, but nobody is going to believe that, so he's guilty no matter what (though strangely enough in a court he was found innocent. Huh.) whatever.

 

this is true

 

awesome.

[Sir Stewart]

He always said he didn't share a bed with them

 

He actually did admit to sharing a bed with children, in that Martin Bashir interview.

Definitely odd and wrong, but it's still possible he didn't 'diddle' any of them. He may have really been the 'innocent' soul he projected.

[isadorah]

He always said he didn't share a bed with them.

 

 

 

ummmmm, i'm pretty sure he said he would sleep in the same bed as the kids. it was in that 3 part tv interview with that guy, it was a few years back, i think for BBC news. MJ had two kids of his own at that point. i don't have the energy to google it. the interview might have even taken place right after he dangled the baby over the balcony.

 

although, i'm going to be completely go wishy washy on where i stand and say things aren't always what they seem.

[Dude]

I'm somewhat worried about Jackon's own kids.

 

1. They have lived in the fishbowl and have lived strange lives up to this point

2. They will always have to hear about how strange their father was from others throughout their lives

3. They will have an endless supply of money to spend on drugs and other dead-end pursuits, something a lot of children with a great amount of fortune and fame seem to fall prey to

4. No matter what they do in life, they will always be "the son of Michael Jackson"

[bobbob1313]

ummmmm, i'm pretty sure he said he would sleep in the same bed as the kids. it was in that 3 part tv interview with that guy, it was a few years back, i think for BBC news. MJ had two kids of his own at that point. i don't have the energy to google it. the interview might have even taken place right after he dangled the baby over the balcony.

 

although, i'm going to be completely go wishy washy on where i stand and say things aren't always what they seem.

 

I was listenin to the radio today and they played the clip. He said 'i never slept in the same bed, but I don't see why it would be a problem if I had' (paraphrasing).

[Sir Stewart]

I was listenin to the radio today and they played the clip. He said 'i never slept in the same bed, but I don't see why it would be a problem if I had' (paraphrasing).

 

It's in here: http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2007/martin-bashir-michael-jackson-p1.php

[solace]

Again, I think one would really need to weigh harming the child further by dragging him into a trial and all that.

Still, like I said, I think they were screwed up for letting him have sleep overs there, so they were whacked from the get go.

Taking money to move past something as worse than molesting a kid? I don't know, man, that's a pretty heavy statement. With a young

child I'm not sure how his welfare is being looked after if his abuser is put in jail. I'm not a child psychologist but I'm not sure the child's

mind works that way. I would see it more as punitive and preventive to society.

 

if you don't report an abuser/molester, you risk the very likelihood of them doing it again to someone else, which at that point you're partially responsible for allowing that to continue.

[isadorah]

I was listenin to the radio today and they played the clip. He said 'i never slept in the same bed, but I don't see why it would be a problem if I had' (paraphrasing).

 

 

ahh. i will admit i was mistaken. Sir Stewart, that is the interview i was referring to. at least my memory is still semi-intact.

[Spawn's dad]

if you don't report an abuser/molester, you risk the very likelihood of them doing it again to someone else, which at that point you're partially responsible for allowing that to continue.

 

Yes, it would forego the welfare of other children, but not necessarily their own; which is what your earlier post said.

 

In any case, large sums of money and good decisions don't frequently go hand in hand.

[Good Old Neon]

we will never know if he was guilty or not guilty. yes, he likely had a messed up childhood and clearly had image-issues as an adult. based on interviews he did with the media (that one sit down he did where he discussed the neverland slumber parties stands out for me), he also had a very different point of view from what one would call cultural norms. a lot of things aren't as they seem or could be skewed or mistook when taken out of context. with that said though, i always get frustrated, even angry, when a person's childhood or past is used as a way to excuse their behavior. he had a messed up life, he hated himself, but he also had self-will. he had a choice to solve his problems with plastic surgeries and disfigurement, to escape to a fantasy world where boys never grow up OR he could face his demons and own them, resolve them, and broken any cycle that needed to be broken. an abuse victim does not get excused from abusing. even if he had severe mental problems, physical mental problems, he was built that way types of problems, he still had free-will and choice to address those problems and overcome them.

 

i have seen and experienced all degrees of messed up lives. i find it interesting that there are quite a few people in this world that have had shitty childhoods or have debilitating mental illnesses, faced those things, and become the better for it, yet those that don't better themselves are excused. i have also had plenty of experience with the opposite, people that never address their problems and ruin their lives and the lives of many people around them. saying someone has problems and its ok to be messed up is just another way of making excuses for bad behavior.

 

That’s one way to look at it – and to some extent, I agree. But there is another way, and for that I give you George Saunders awesome fucking essay entitled, quite simply:

 

Thought Experiment

 

Imagine the following scenario:

 

Two babies are born at precisely the same moment. Baby One is healthy, with a great IQ and all its limbs and two kind, intelligent, non-dysfunctional parents. Baby Two is sickly, not very bright, is missing a limb or two, and is the child of two self-absorbed and stupid losers, one of whom has not been seen around lately and the other of whom is a heroin addict. Now imagine this scenario enacted a million times. Now imagine those two million babies leaving the hospital and beginning to live their lives.

 

Statistically, the Baby Ones are going to have a better time of it than the Baby Twos. Whatever random bad luck befalls the babies, the Baby Ones will have more resources with which to engineer a rebound. If a particular Baby One turns out to be, say, schizophrenic, he or she will get better treatment than the corresponding Baby Two, will be generally safer and better-cared for, will more likely have a stable home to return to. Having all his limbs, he can go where he needs to go faster and easier. Ditto if Baby One is depressed, or slow-witted, or wants to be an artist, or dreams of having a family and supporting that family with dignity. A fortunate birth, in other words, is a shock absorber.

 

Now we might ask ourselves: What did Baby One do to deserve this fortunate birth? Or, conversely, what did Baby Two do to deserve the unfortunate birth? Imagine the instant before birth. Even then, the die is cast. Baby Two has doing nothing, exerted no will, and yet the missing limb is already missing, the slow brain already slow, the undesirable parents already undesirable. Now think back four months before birth. Is the baby any more culpable? Six months before birth? At the moment of conception? Is it possible to locate the moment when Baby Two’s “culpability” begins?

 

Now consider a baby born with the particular neurological condition that will eventually cause him to manifest that suite of behaviors we call “paranoia.” His life will be hell. Suspicious of everyone and everything, deeply anxious, he will have little pleasure, be able to forge no deep relationships. Now here is that baby fifteen seconds after conception. All the seeds of his future condition are present (otherwise, from what would it develop?). Is he “to blame”? What did he do, what choices did he make, that caused this condition in himself? Clearly, he “did” nothing to “deserve” his paranoia. If thirty years later, suspecting that his neighbor is spying on him, he trashes the neighbor’s apartment and kills the neighbor’s cat with a phone book, is he “to blame”? If so, at what point in his long life was he supposed to magically overcome/transcend his condition, and how?

 

Here, on the other hand, is a baby born with a particular neurological condition that will eventually cause him to manifest that suite of behaviors we call “being incredibly happy.” His life will be heaven. Everything he touches will turn to gold. What doesn’t turn to gold, he will use as fodder for contemplation, and will be the better for it. He will be able to love and trust people and get true pleasure from them. He is capable and self-assured, and acquires a huge fortune and performs a long list of truly good deeds. Now here is that baby fifteen seconds after conception. All the seeds of his condition are present (otherwise, from what would it develop?). Can he, justifiably (at fifteen seconds old), “take credit” for himself? What did he do, what choices did he make, that caused this condition of future happiness to manifest? Where was the moment of the exertion of will? Where was the decision? There was no exertion of will and no decision. There was only fulfillment of a pattern that began long before his conception. So if, thirty years later, in the company of his beautiful wife, whom he loves deeply, Baby One accepts the Nobel prize, then drives away in his Porsche, listening to Mozart, toward his gorgeous home, where his beloved children wait, thinking loving thoughts of him, can he justifiably “take credit” for any of this? I think not. You would not blame a banana for being the banana that it is. You would not expect it to have autocorrected its bend stem or willed itself into a brighter shade of yellow. Why is it, then, so natural for us to blame a person for being the person she is, to expect her to autocorrect her shrillness, say, or to will herself into being a perkier, more efficient person? I now hear a voice from the gallery crying, “But I am not a banana! I have made myself what I am! What about tenacity and self-improvement and persisting in our efforts until our noble cause is won?” I contend that not only is our innate level of pluck, say, hardwired at birth, but also our ability to improve our level of pluck. All of these are ceded to us at the moment that sperm meets egg. Our life, colored by the particulars of our experience, scrolls out from there. Otherwise, what is it, exactly, that causes Person A, at age forty, to be plucky and Person B, also forty, to be decidedly non-plucky? Is it some failure of intention? And at what point, precisely, did that failure occur?

 

The upshot of all of this is not a passive moral relativism that finds itself incapable of action in the world. If you repeatedly come to my house and drive your truck over my chickens, I had better get you arrested or have your truck taken away for somehow ironclad or elevate my chickens. But I would contend that my ability to protect my chickens actually improves as I realize that your desire to flatten my chickens is organic and comes out of somewhere and is not unmotivated or even objectively evil. It is as undeniable to who you are, at that instant, as is your hair color. Which is not to say that it cannot be changed. It can be changed. It must be changed. But dropping the idea that your actions are Evil, and that you are Monstrous, I enter a new moral space in which the emphasis is on seeing with clarity, rather than judging; on acting in the most effective way (that is, the way that most radically and permanently protects my chickens), rather than on constructing and punishing a Monster.

 

So this is my advice: Think about the above. See if it makes any sense to you. Then, at the moment when someone cuts you off in traffic or breaks your heart or begins bombing your ancestral village, take action from this position, and I think you will find that, in the end, you will less often sully yourself with judgmentalism and anger and hatred, and be more able to live your life fully and compassionately – which, after all, is really the point.

[isadorah]

That’s one way to look at it – and to some extent, I agree. But there is another way, and for that I give you George Saunders awesome fucking essay entitled, quite simply:

 

Thought Experiment

 

 

 

[solace]

Yes, it would forego the welfare of other children, but not necessarily their own; which is what your earlier post said.

 

In any case, large sums of money and good decisions don't frequently go hand in hand.

 

you misunderstood my initial point then i guess

[Mr. Heartbreak]

I am strangely neither surprised nor moved by this news.

 

My exact reaction.

 

Although I never liked anything he did after the Jackson 5 years, I also never wished him dead. I wished him in prison on child molestation convictions for many, many years.

[solace]

http://blogs.citypag...l_jackson_4.php

 

The King is dead

By David Hansen in Obituary Friday, Jun. 26 2009 @ 6:27AM

 

The story ends here. What began in poverty ends in unknowable wealth. What began in a crowded, working class home in a crowded, working class city ends in a vacuum of isolation. What began in tragedy ends in tragedy.

 

In the pantheon of popular culture, Michael Jackson's spot is singular. There can be no comparison made to anyone that came before him, nor to anyone that came after. No performer so totally dominated the consciousness of his time. No performer rose as high, nor fell so far.

 

Jackson's life was a thing of grotesque beauty. He was a figure who seemed crafted by the Greek tragedians, a man who's every talent was instrumental in his own undoing.

 

As a diminutive, cherubic boy, at a time when most children were preoccupied by childish things, Jackson was a media star-- a boy with an unerring vocal range that could stop you in your tracks. He could dance. He was affable. He was handsome. By the time he was 23 years old, he was responsible for two of the greatest records in the history of pop music, "Off The Wall" and "Thriller," and had achieved a level of global celebrity previously unknown. Fans were so moved by his presence that ambulances and stretchers had to be readied by the dozens at his concerts to cart away those who passed out at the mere sight of him.

 

But the ecstasy soon turned to bewilderment-- as scrutiny on him increased, so too did the depth of his eccentricities. What at first seemed to be the jubilence of a child began to be something more unnerving-- the stasis of arrested development. Through the 80s, as Jackson's skin paled to the point of pallor, as rumors and whispers piled upon him, as his face began to show the ravages of disastrous plastic surgery, and as devastating sex scandals forced him into exile, bewilderment became horror-- Jackson, who had once been the beaming face of a powerful mainstream, was now a creature warped by a lifetime of examination, a man twisted by the very public of which he was at once master and slave.

 

We all have it-- the favorite Jackson moment. Perhaps you practiced the moonwalk on a hardwood floor. Or you have a cassette copy of "Bad" that hasn't left your car in over a decade. Or "Thriller" was the first vinyl record you ever bought with your own money. Or you watched him perform "Billie Jean" live on television and burst into tears, for you had never seen or heard anything so beautiful.

 

To summarize him is preposterous. To praise him is needless. To pardon him is impossible. The only way to memorialize Jackson is to stand in private awe of him. That one life could have been so beautiful, so troubled, so productive, and so horrific is nearly beyond the grasp of rational thought, and is certainly beyond words in these immediate hours. In a sense, Jackson was the great example of humanity-- in one man, as in few before him, the very best and the very worst of the species existed for us to observe, to see, to love, to hear, and to fear. A man ruined by his own greatness, and by our insatiable need for it. A man who, despite innumerable frailties both physical and mental, seemed, somehow, invincible.

 

There will be more said about Jackson in the next days and weeks-- a deluge of commentary, of lionization, of condemnation, of fond remembrance and of analysis. But when the din ebbs, what remains will be Jackson's life, and the works he left behind, and to look on it is to look on the face of a mountain. It is elemental, and impossible to ever fully understand, fearsome, and heartbreakingly beautiful.

[viatroy]

I didn't pay much attention to the molestation hullabaloo at the time(s) it was going on, but I was aware that it was a longstanding issue, and one in which the families stood to gain a big payout. Just another Hollywood story of misbehavior protected by great wealth, and scavengers seeking to capitalize on it.

 

I always felt that Jackson was forced into adulthood as a child, and reverted to childhood as an adult to cope with his own demons.

 

A damning article from Vanity Fair in 2005.

[uncool2pillow]

http://blogs.citypag...l_jackson_4.php[/url]

 

The King is dead

By David Hansen in Obituary Friday, Jun. 26 2009 @ 6:27AM

 

To summarize him is preposterous. To praise him is needless. To pardon him is impossible. The only way to memorialize Jackson is to stand in private awe of him. That one life could have been so beautiful, so troubled, so productive, and so horrific is nearly beyond the grasp of rational thought, and is certainly beyond words in these immediate hours. In a sense, Jackson was the great example of humanity-- in one man, as in few before him, the very best and the very worst of the species existed for us to observe, to see, to love, to hear, and to fear. A man ruined by his own greatness, and by our insatiable need for it. A man who, despite innumerable frailties both physical and mental, seemed, somehow, invincible.

That about sums it up.

[yankee]

i have mixed feelings about MJ. for me, he died after the Bad album and some other guy assumed his identity. thriller was the first vinyl i ever owned

 

Yeah, Thriller was also the first album I ever bought, back in maybe 5th grad. I memorized all the songs and sang them with my cousins and friends. We were totally fascinated by the music, the dancing, the videos, and that charismatic young man.

 

I guess the thing that strikes me with this news is that in my mind, that person I admired died a long time ago.

 

I look at the sweet little boy in those early videos, and I feel sad for him.

I see the beautiful young man from the Thriller era, and I wonder what ever happened to him.

 

But when I see the pale, mutilated, mask-like face -- the one we saw leaving the courthouse -- the face they keep showing on TV along with the news of his death, I don't recognize him. I can only wonder what went wrong, and ask, "Oh Micheal, what happened to you? What have you done?"