MovieChat Forums > Michael Jackson Discussion > Why Can't People Just Leave Him Alone?

Why Can't People Just Leave Him Alone?


The man's dead. If he ever was a threat to anyone, and I'm doubtful he did anymore than simply sleep besides children at his Neverland Ranch (which was admittedly a really dumb thing to do, but is not the same as committing an act of sexual molestation), he certainly isn't now.

Screw HBO and Channel Four for trying to demonise another black icon, especially one who is no longer alive to defend himself, with allegations that have previously been discredited.

Michael Jackson is one of the most influential artists of the last one hundred years, and the assorted artists and celebs and cultural commentators who gave the hit-piece documentary a standing ovation at Sundance last month are a bunch of hypocrites.

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Are you serious? No doubt the man was a once a generation talent, but he was a pedophile.

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Where's the evidence?

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https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/06/21/items-discovered-police-michael-jackson/

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All of those are too vaguely defined and won't hold up in a court of law.

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Don't pretend something is a fact if you don't have evidence.

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He was a criminal. I don't care about his ''death'' - why did him dying in some peoples mind suddenly absolve him of his crimes? I can't get over how people behaved in 2009. Suddenly has was St. Michael. For a long while any talk about the molestation's have been pushed down and even put out of mind. Some people like me have an interest in knowing what really happened. I don't believe him to be exclusively an extortion victim. I believe he was implicated in acts of sexual abuse and I don't freaking care about ''let's respect the dead''. Let's talk about the dead.

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How far back do you want to go?

Should we talk about Beethoven's personal life? Mozart's? Shakespeare's? Would it make a big difference to how you regard their art, assuming you do at all, if you discovered something controversial about them?

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Separating the art from the artist is definitely important to remember. Lewis Carol is believed to have been a pedophile based on his photographic work. It doesn't make Alice in Wonderland less of a masterpiece though.

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To be fair to the Reverend Charles Dodgson, I don't believed he ever abused any children, and that he was a paedophile who, thankfully, controlled his instincts.

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One can hope.

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Hmm...I don't know about that. I strongly suspect that Lewis Carroll was, but I fully concede that's just my personal hunch based on some unexplained events after his death rather than anything I'd claim was an ironclad fact.

He had a lock box on his most private works he told brother to destroy upon his death. His younger brother Wilfred not only burned the box but also a destroyed a large amount of his personal papers, diary, and other works in a frenzied bonfire burning like he'd gone mad. What was he so intent on covering up?

At least that's how the legend goes. It's all speculative of course.

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Except such kindness isn't shown by SJW revisionists toward, say, John Wayne. If they want to play by those dirty rules then Michael Jackson's deserves to go down in history as pedophile, even if the facts surrounding his true nature are in question. You want the light touch of forgiveness or the benefit of doubt? Then be sure to give it to crusty old white guys too.

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I just think it's a shame if we can't enjoy his music anymore because of things he did. I don't think its the same as forgiving. I don't know how many works of art that has to be banned if you start thinking like that.

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The accusers in this "documentary" are in the midst of an appeal for their 1.5 billion dollar lawsuit which was dismissed last year by a judge. So, this "documentary" is being used to gain public support and leverage for their appeal. Wade Robson is in financial trouble;hence, his change of tune and this lawsuit.

This "documentary" doesn't provide any evidence. They have to make the allegations as graphic and shocking as possible because that's their only "weapon" and they know the public is gullible and lazy to do research on their backgrounds. They rely on the public to accept only their words because they have no actual evidence.

They also have serious credibility issues. They were adamant for YEARS (even into their adult years) that MJ didn't touch them and Wade testified in Jackson's defense during his 2005 trial. After not getting the job in the Cirque du Soleil Michael Jackson show back in 2011 and suffering a nervous breakdown, that's when Wade had "realized" he had been molested by Michael Jackson and then filed a $1.6 billion lawsuit against his estate. So, no, this documentary did not change my mind.

As well, the FBI did a through investigation of MJ for about 10 years, ripped through his home, searched his computers and found nothing. I provided the links below. As well, he was found not guilty in the 2005 trial for a reason. Are the FBI liars? #extortion

1. https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/266333/michael-jacksons-fbi-files-released

2. https://vault.fbi.gov/Michael%20Jackson

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Did you see the end of part two how Wade explained his reasons for testifying for Jackson? It's that cycle of procurment and making the victim the one responsible for the downfall of the perpetrator. Happens in the many cases of priests all the time. Why is it easy to believe a priest can molest but not Jackson? Just because Jackson made questionable music doesn't immediately give him the benefit of the doubt. He was a pedophile. Pure and simple. He openly admitted to adoring having young boys sleep in his bed with him. This was out of his own mouth, yet people like you keep giving him a hard pass. He admitted to sleeping with boys himself. It's always said, "Well Michael didn't have a great childhood and this was his way of reclaiming that." Sorry, no go for me. He I had a hard childhood and if I or you did what he did we'd be hauled into a court of law and summarily charged.

As for the FBI files people keep yammering about, there were only about a quarter of the pages released. The entire file unredacted has not been released. We don't know if there is an ongoing investigation pertaining to those unreleased documents.

Here's a good site to actually grasp what Jackson was. https://www.mjfacts.com/

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1. He admitted to having a love and admiration for children. The fact that you construed to being sexual isn't his fault.
2. Sigh. This again. He didn't sleep int he same bed as boys. Boys related to friends and family slept in the same room as him sometimes, and that "room" was bigger than most houses.
3.

Anyone who writes imaginary facts in stone without real evidence is a simpleton. Pure and simple.

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He procured children. What part of that don't you get? He brought children into his bed who weren't his by blood. He is the one who has normalized that in you, his devoted flock. I was a huge fan of his back in the 80s. I had The Wall, Thriller, all the Jacksons albums. I even dressed as Michael for Halloween one year, even making my own sequined glove for it. I danced to Thriller at many a Halloween party. That's how big a fan of his I was. That was until 1993 and the first allegations. Then when I started to read more of his proclivities I started to fall out with him. His admission to Martin Bashir in sleeping with children in his bed as well as advocating for others to sleep with children just turned my stomach. This is again by his own admission.

https://www.mjfacts.com/

The first paragraphs of that page reads:

It’s undeniable that Michael Jackson was a great entertainer. It’s also undeniable that he had a dark side, and if you delve deeper than fan sites or sycophantic media examples aren’t hard to find. Delve too shallowly though, and you will find that some paint Jackson as a kind of evil madman who committed unspeakable acts. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, Jackson was neither saint nor devil, but human. On this site we try and reveal facts about Jackson that fan websites don’t want you to know. Fans will try to present Jackson as some kind of martyr, but if he is a martyr for anything it is as someone who was totally inappropriate towards children and used them for his own selfish desires. That’s not to say he molested children, nobody apart from the boys he spent time with alone can know that (although many have spoken up and said that he is a molester, and I believe them), but he had bizarre psychological needs and had a compulsion to sleep with children without any regard for the consequences those children may have suffered.

As for Jackson’s predilection for sleepovers, it bears repeating here that he spent hundreds of nights sharing the same bed one-on-one with boys. This is not normal. He enjoyed sleeping with boys. He said there was nothing wrong with it, and even said all adults should sleep with children. That’s the argument he plainly made. You can believe your eyes, ears, and brain on this matter, or you can lie. Those are your only two choices.

And therein lies the problem. Predictably, shamefully, most MJ fans, and even some non-fans, have chosen the latter. On the web, or Facebook, or Twitter, it doesn’t take long to find people who believe that criticizing Jackson for sleeping with children is somehow wrong. I have had many Internet arguments because I don’t think it’s OK to describe adults, or Michael Jackson in particular, sleeping with unrelated children as something positive.

These people, the apologists, fall mainly into two different groups: Either they have decided that the accusation that Jackson slept with kids must be false, even if there is plenty of evidence proving otherwise; or they have decided that, hey, maybe it isn’t so bad for an adult man to sleep with young boys after all.

I want to focus on that second group, because I have encountered many of them over the last few years, and I find them particularly nauseating. These people never had this revelation when Catholic priests took young boys into their bed, or when any other celebrity participated in similar forms of deviancy. They lived their whole lives feeling quite certain that adult men shouldn’t be taking young boys into their bed, until their favorite pop star informed them otherwise. They were willing to abandon or at least re-calibrate, at the drop of a hat, the most self-evident of all moral principles for the sake of defending Michael Jackson.

This shouldn’t be surprising. We know that a certain sort of person is almost always willing to put personality over principle. They latch onto a person — media member, politician, celebrity, etc. — and, having determined that this individual is a paragon of truth and virtue, they outsource all of their discernment, thinking, and moral contemplation to him. It takes too much energy for them to ponder the questions and morals of life themselves so they put their minds and their consciences on the shelf and wear a large badge that says, “Whatever that guy says.”

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Welp. If a sight says it's objective, no further evidence needed right?

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And when Jackson advocating people taking children into their beds and he himself spending 31 days sleeping in the same bed as a child not his own, I suppose that's not the truth? Ya. Okey dokey. Just so long as you can worship a pedophile right? Ignore all else just to support someone who clearly raped kids.

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I think there are good reasons to believe their stories now, in spite of their ongoing lawsuits

But it's telling that the FBI found nothing after searching his home and computer - a majority of pedophiles have a long "paper trail" of pornography and website data implicating them. Why wouldn't they? It's a compulsion, and there's no reason to believe it started and ended with these two, isolated victims.

And I say "two" because (again this is my personal belief) I don't believe Gavin Arvizo's account. The defense in that trial pitched a very believable narrative that Arvizo's family was all about the money. They never sued Chris Tucker, but they sure did bleed his goodwill dry. Now, because they're gold-diggers doesn't mean Arivizo WASN'T molested; it just makes that acquittal more credible.

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Yes, Jackson is dead, and can't be called to account for his crimes. But if he did commit the crimes he was accused of then there are many young men out there who will have an easier time dealing with past trauma if the truth comes out and some sort of justice is done, if only in the court of public opinion, and who won't have to shudder every time "I Want to Love You, Pretty Young Thing" is played over the grocery store loudspeaker.

The other reason is to let any other pedophiles in the entertainment industry know that they can't get away with it forever.

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So, the rest of us who still want to hear Michael Jackson's music in public, won't be able to?

As for the court of public opinion, without a trial, far less a defendant, none of these allegations can be properly tested, and so the people who were already inclined to believe Jackson was a child molester will continue to believe so, and the people who were inclined to believe he was innocent will also continue to believe so.

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Yes, I expect that Jackson's music will be much less frequently played in grocery stores and on Oldies radio. I expect people will be able to deal with that, I mean I love Wagner operas, and nobody EVER plays them in public for free, but I've been able to go on with my life!

As for the court of public opinion, I don't think there will ever be a unanimous verdict on this one. Too may people don't want to accept what's been right in front of their eyes for decades.

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Great! So we will be bombarded with a barrage of crappy new music most of which would not exist were it not for Michael Jackson's influence.

If Jackson's music is to be banned, it's only fair that we ban Justin Timberlake and Justin Bieber's too, seeing as they owe their entire careers to Jackson's.

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I'm all for banning anything to do with Justin Bieber, the horrible little no-talent twit!

And if the worst thing that happens to you this year is that you have to get your own collection of Jackson songs instead of being able to hear them for free at the grocery store, count yourself fortunate.

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You know what? It's not the big things that get me down.

I've been sexually assaulted, nearly *****, beaten up, forced to enter and leave certain institutions, and so on. But that's just life. We all go through those big, earth-shattering moments.

But what sustains us are the little things. The great films, the funny jokes, the satisfying novel, and, yes, an excellent pop song. These are the things that make life worth living.

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Sometimes, we just have to live with the fact that things we like have gone out of fashion, and if we want to enjoy them we have to do so on our own dime.

Hopefully with dignity.

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You don't think I'm dignified?

Sorry, but I just don't see how these 'new' allegations change anything especially since Jackson is not alive to defend his name.

And fuck that 'going out of fashion' bullshit. I don't piss on what previous generations hold dear, so why do newer generations think that they're entitled to piss on mine? Millennials seem to think they are entitled to tear up everything the previous generations liked, as if it's a badge of honour for them.

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"I don't piss on what previous generations hold dear, so why do newer generations think that they're entitled to piss on mine? "

Honey, take some advice from someone older and it's this: NEVER waste time thinking about what other people think about things you love!

If you love something go ahead and love it, and don't spend a moment worrying about whether other people love it too. Everyone's taste is different, if you dislike anything that others love, then you have to accept that others will dislike what you love, and will say so. Allow yourself your likes and dislikes, allow everyone else theirs.

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I can't say I've always followed this advice, but in view of how much hurt it feels to have something I hold dearly torn to shreds, I've learned to mostly keep schtum with respect to things others like that I don't.

That's why I abhor attacks on religion, for instance, unless they're defending the aspects of religion that uphold misogyny, homophobia and anti-Semitism (but since those things are attacks on people's identities, it stands to reason that I would take issue with them), and it's why I try to focus on giving people positive reasons to support progressive political parties, rather than focus on attacking them for having supported reactionary ones.

We all need to focus on the positive, instead of tearing people, and the things they like, to shreds.

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"Too may people don't want to accept what's been right in front of their eyes for decades."

You're right. Too many people can't spot circumstantial evidence when it's in front of them. Irrationality is a difficult thing to accept.

There's a word for these people. They're called sheep.

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"So, the rest of us who still want to hear Michael Jackson's music in public, won't be able to?"

Oh please. You're such a blubbering vagina. You can play his music all you want. Why are you pretending it's of importance to you to happen to catch one of his songs on the radio? You know it's not important. I guess you just enjoy trolling.

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I'm not trolling.

I can't listen to something that brings me joy knowing the toxic associations.

Maybe it's easy for others, but I simply can't do it.

Now I wish someone could compile a definitive list and tell me straight away whose art I can and cannot like, and then leave it at that. I can't take the constant heartbreak and perpetual cognitive dissonance. It's very damaging for people who suffer my particular mental health conditions.

Also, I have been polite to you, and yet you feel the need to call someone a 'blubbering vagina'. Do you now think that you may be the one in the wrong here?

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"Also, I have been polite to you, and yet you feel the need to call someone a 'blubbering vagina'. Do you now think that you may be the one in the wrong here?"

It's just a colorful variant of "whiny". You know full well you can listen to Michael Jackson's catalog 24 hours a day if you so choose. There's no law against it. If you're truly concerned about what other people will think of you if, say, you crank up MJ's autologically titled Off the Wall, then that's your problem. You have the option of mustering the courage to state your case to any critics who might condemn you. There's no issue here. It's even worse than the phony drama you'll see on your average sitcom.

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I am not an island. I care what others think because I possess empathy and sensitivity towards the feelings and thoughts of others. I do not like to be judged. I am not an arrogant, self-absorbed Randian who has no concern for the impact of his actions or what others may think of them.

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If

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Pretty Young Thing is a classic track. I don't give a shit what boy he touched or when, or what crazy shit was going on in his head, it can never change the fact that PYT is an all time great song.

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He's dead people! No charges can be filed against him! Get a grip!

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I agree

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As I said to you in your other thread, what about Jimmy Savile? He was dead when the shite hit the fan about his many acts of child molestations, and therefore no trial was possible.

Michael Jackson's being an enormously famous and influential pop star has nothing to do with anything, IF he is in fact also a pedophile. Why does that make "the assorted artists and celebs and cultural commentators who gave the hit-piece documentary a standing ovation" hypocrites?

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What other black icon have they tried to demonise?

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I mean that the media is perpetually preoccupied with destroying famous black men.

Admittedly, some of these men deserve to be destroyed, but others are being attacked with little concrete evidence.

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"I mean that the media is perpetually preoccupied with destroying famous black men."

Ahh...bullshit. The media, at least these days, goes after white guys far more often and far more viciously. Black guys get protected if anything. The Louis Farrakhan lovin' Obama is exhibit A.

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Ah, I see, you're that type of troll.

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Nah. It's the truth, or at least a different viewpoint. Obama was photographed looking very chummy with Louis Farrakhan in a festive atmosphere. It's the equivalent of a photo of Trump partying with David Duke, something the media would descend on like flies to Rosie O'Donnell. The hypocrisy is obvious. You can choose to pretend the obvious doesn't exist if it makes you feel better. Whether that works out for you or not, well, I guess I could care less.

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