Michael Jackson
I live in L.A. on the edge of the music scene. I know maybe a dozen people who knew and worked with him; musicians, dancers, producers,and here’s what I’ve extrapolated over the years;
MJ never became an emotional adult, and was as asexual as it’s possible for a human male to be, bar castration.
Children were the only people that didn’t want things from him. He didn’t really understand that they came attached to parents who did want things– until he found himself in a position of complete vulnerability.
You have no idea of the kind of scum that move their pretty children to L.A. looking for the main chance…
Naked sleeping? yes, probably. Hardons? Yes, probably– he wasn’t castrated physically. Mutual wanking? That’s what young boys do. He never was anything more than a young boy.
He had a tragic life, and he made joyful music. He was helpless emotionally, and he voiced the anger of a boy, not of a man. I’m glad it’s over for him.
I’m reading all kinds of statements from people who believe the tabloids. That’s okay. We need to be protective of our children.
My words here have angered people. I apologise sincerely for my horrific thoughtlessness. After my nice words about not hurting people, I totally fucked up. No matter if Im writing fiction or opinion, I owe my readers the same consideration, and I am horrified and angry with myself for letting you down this way.
I know what you’re going for, but as a survivor I have to chime in
Naked sleeping? yes, probably. Hardons? Yes, probably– he wasn’t castrated physically. Mutual wanking? That’s what young boys do. He never was anything more than a young boy.
I’m sorry, he was not a young boy. He was a grown man. If any one of these things happened he was sexually moelesting those boys. Sleeping naked with young boys is sexualization, a form of sexual abuse.
“Mutual” is the same damn trick that every freaking lawyer tries to use to say that the victim wanted it. Just like every lawyer says a woman who was dressed provocatively “wanted it.”
Having followed the trials and the payoff of the prior alleged victim, he engaged very blatently in “grooming” potential victims at the very, very least.
As a survivor I resent anyone who even attempts to justify what he may have done or explain it away as “he never grew up.” The hell he didn’t.
It is possible for someone to be both guilty of a crime but innocent as to its implications. When I worked at a group home for the mentally challenged, we had a kid there who was 21 years old but with the mind of a seven year old and explaining to him why rape was wrong was one of the more challenging things we had to do. Was he a rapist? Absolutely. Did he understand what he was doing? Not in the slightest. So what should we have done with him? Turn him over to the police and send him to grown up jail for doing something that his broken mind didn’t even know was harmful? That would be compounding the tragedy. We did watch him like a hawk and we restricted his contact with the female members of the group home and eventually he did have to go live somewhere more structured because he just couldn’t manage himself and his hormones in an open environment. It still makes my heart hurt today because he just didn’t get it, but that didn’t make him any less of a monster.
I don’t justify what Michael Jackson might have done (and for what it’s worth, I’m a survivor too) but I can also acknowledge that they were likely the actions of a deeply damaged person who’d probably been through a hell of his own and had regressed to a place not of his own making in an attempt to keep his sanity duck taped together. I can have compassion for that at the same time as I have compassion for the boys who may have been victimized by it. The ones I kinda have trouble not wanting to smack until their heads clack together are the parents of the young boys who handed them over to someone that they could certainly see was a full grown man, without proper supervision.
I’m sorry I do disagree here.
The former example and the latter are apples and oranges.
Michael Jackson was a grown man without mental disability to our knowledge and whether or not he was Peter Pan does not minimize the damage to the abused.
There is a huge amount of cutting slack being given to Michael Jackson. Which is a good thing as nothing was proven. But as the conversation delves into the territory of if he was guilty, an awful lot of people are justifying.
Amen, and I am sickened by how people excuse Jackson when they would excoriate someone who did exactly the same thing but who *didn’t* write music.
Yes; there are hard lines we cannot afford to soften, lest our children get carried past them.
For the good of society, “he never grew up” cannot be an excuse, and it isn’t. But it’s still true of Jackson, and the legal fiction that was his birthday resulted in tragedy piled on tragedy.
I would love to stick it to his family for allowing the abuse he suffered as a child, and for not assigning someone to be in loco parentis for him after they’d broken him so desperately.
I would love to stick it to his family for allowing the abuse he suffered as a child, and for not assigning someone to be in loco parentis for him after they’d broken him so desperately.
Isn’t it weird how white people say this even about non-celebrity, non-affluent, Black families?
The Jackson family most definitely had its issues. They still do. However, I’m not sure that whites with no idea about the trip from Gary to the wealth and heights that family took (their peers at the time? They had none, because the Osmonds sure as shit don’t count) are the ones to make the judgement call about what clearly went wrong.
ETA: Since it’s relevant to recent LJ goings ons…remember that LaToya stated quite some time ago that there were abuse issues at home. I still find it ironic how ‘taking the word of victims’ is still so selectively applied.
Are you saying that the Jackson family did not use Michael, and that the abuse of a celebrity life from the age of four years old did not harm him?
Or that no one should express anger over this– when the harm lead to further harm, such as Gwailowrite has expressed?
MJ needed support that he did not get. One reason he did not get support that he needed was because his eccentricities did not seem to interfere with the money machine.
This makes me angry. The damage from emotional trauma has been in public knowledge for almost four decades now.
I’ve seen it in other families too, such as Brian Wilson’s of the Beach Boys– who has been incapacitated with untreated depression several times– once, his therapist simply climbed into bed with him and dropped acid along with him– and in the context of this discussion, has never yet really understood that No means No with regard to pretty young women– although he does understand that ignoring No means problems with the lawyers at least.
I think it’s pretty obvious what I said. It’s still sitting there – saying what I said.
Whatever it is you are on about in your response does not *change* what I said, which actually does not say anything to prompt the questions you ask here.
I don’t have to believe *nothing happened* to think white people aren’t necessarily the best judges for the dysfunction of a Black family. I strongly doubt that you failed to understand my point the first time around, but there we are.
If this is truly not clear to you, I’m not sure what to tell you.
White people should not criticise the Jackson family, check.
You’re doing that ‘defensive white person thing’. Thought you might want to know.
But actually, if you can’t take the idea that white people can’t objectively criticize this family because they (because how many times have we heard WHITE PEOPLE JUST DON’T UNDERSTAAAAAAND?)might not have the tools to break down a Black family outside of white defnitions – then yes.
You most definitely should not criticize the Jacksons or any other ethnic minority family if you can’t accept that you possibly don’t have the insight necessary to do it properly.
That’s actually not a bad idea, when you think about it.
It’s very strange to be on the defensive side, too!
Of all the ways I expected my opinons to to be challenged– I didn’t expect this one. I never have made a generalization regarding black families and what they do or don’t do culturally. This family dynamic unusual in general society, and all too usual in entertainment society, and as i said I live amongst the entertainment society of Los Angeles.
May I ask you how you feel about this family and what happened to Michael?
Eh, my opinion is kind of irrelevant for now. I’m sitting on a possible post about it later.
I will say that the Jacksons can’t be viewed without the context of where they came from/what that means culturally, just as one can’t ignore the celebrity side.
How society views young Black men, the idea of celebrity and sex/sexuality and what that means to Black men, the scenario of children being the financial support for an entire family – that’s all a part of what was right and what went wrong for Michael. He also have to be viewed in context of the cultural zeitgeist of the late 60′s – Thriller(as an example) and what that meant for Black people.
If I make a bigger post, I’ll elaborate. Key word being *if*.
Okay. *if* you do write it, I’ll gladly read it.
But it’s ironic– I have angered some people who tell me I am making excuses for MJ because I feel that his actions have a context.
And you are critical because I haven’t placed the context of his actions– the family industry– into context.
So let me see if I can, just a little. I don’t want to include his position as Role Model for the world, because in this context it was the least, IMO, of his problems. The public persona can be separated from the private; indeed, he spent enormous effort on doing that very thing.
I agree that there is a context of family need; But that need was well-satisfied by the 80′s, when his problems became apparent, and the eighties was three decades ago.
I am aware of the effects of celebrity on individuals and their families, although I’ve never spoken much on that subject. As I said, I live within that melieu.
When we speak of family in the Jackson’s case, we are talking about more than the immediate family by the way. I built custom and very much luxury dollhouses in the early 80′s, at a store in Beverly Hills, and two second-cousin-Jacksons brought their approximately four-year-old, and entirely uninterested, daughters in to purchase two-thousand-dollar mansions, one apiece. Plus the furnishings. They left in a Mercedes. I am not complaining or holding these young women up to scorn, I’m just saying that the scale had gone far and away past comfortable middle-class, and well into luxurious wealth. These were not parents or siblings, either, but children of someone’s cousin. There was a *lot* of wealth to be shared in the Jackson clan. And I contend that the money was so important to so *many* people that it was preferable to ignore Michael’s peccadilloes lest the attention kill that goose, and end those eggs.
Really, truly, tragic.
Since you know the melieu so well, then you really don’t need me to say anything about it, do you?
I notice that you are not commenting on most of the things I mentioned prior to this comment, nor anything in the only post I am going to make on him that’s already in my journal. Surely if you were interested enough to make this post, you’re intersted in doing your own investigation/showing your work about the matter.
MJJ the Cash Register is a miniscule part of the picture. You want to ‘stick it to the family’ about abuse he suffered, but don’t seem to want to state more than “they were filthy rich” about them.
I’m actually not all that interested in having this conversation with you or anyone else that finds it easier to do if you ‘de-racialize’ the family (immediate, for they are the ones at the heart of its dysfunction).
Is this your “challenge”?
Yes, I’ve never been challenged by a white person to prove I actually do know what I’m talking about in regards to race and the part it plays in certain situations. This is such a thrilling new thing, I have to away for a lie down over it.
I’m sure there was a reason we mutually friended each other.
Do you recall what it was?
Ummmm…
I thought you weren’t necessarily the kind of person that needed to retreat to the usual bingo squares when someone says “Hey. This thing here – you aren’t looking at it from a non-white centric place, etc” to you.
Hey, this is your journal and you can have whatever kind of discussions you want disagreement free with the kind of folks you like. I don’t need to be here upsetting your balance. No skin lost.
And you don’t trust me now because I didn’t agree with you instantly. I haven’t earned the right to base my thoughts on anything other than your opinion.
May I ask you, very carefully and politely, to take a look at your wording in your first post. Do you think I might possibly have read it as an insult to my intelligence and tact? Just possibly?
Because I do.
Our disagreement here is not about me needing ‘instant agreement’. I certainly haven’t said you don’t have the right to think any particular way about something. I’m neither that foolish, nor young as to believe or want that.
What I said had to do with looking at the full picture of a family and saying that you cannot dissect MJJ without looking at the facts wrt race and it’s effects on him as a man and a hugely successful performer.
Do I imply in my first comment that people who tend to miss the boat on racial issues over fanfic (as one example) probably aren’t the best ones to do that? (nevermind that the mainstream media aren’t better equipped) Yes. I said that.
I would love to stick it to his family for allowing the abuse he suffered as a child, and for not assigning someone to be in loco parentis for him after they’d broken him so desperately.
Do you think you’re making this comment in a vacuum? You’re asking me about what I think you had a problem with, but clearly can’t see what I found problematic with this statement.
I’ve already explained as much as I feel needs explaining and it’s now getting repetitive, which is usually the sign that I’m supposed to soothe hurt feelings when the main point I was making has hardly been addressed.
You do not have to sooth my hurt feelings. I can take that task upon
myself.
Like you, I resent, deeply, the invisibility of POC and also women, in popular culture and in fanfic. I intend to try to address that lack in my writing, and in my discussions, as well as I can, as I did before racefail and for the rest of my writing life– career, if I can make it into one. That’s what I can do. That’s my statement.
I fail to see what’s racist about wishing that a group of incredibly wealthy people had taken better care of the family cash cow. You take care of your own. You return value for value if it’s at all possible. Love for love, care for care. That seems like an axiom for any loving family.
I mean, I can understand why a father would brutalise his children to make them successful. I don’t like it, but I can understand it. I can even imagine finding it necessary. Life sucks that way.
It was never very well addressed within the family, that’s all. And nobody got Michael the help he needed.
This is very specific. The context is, of course, much larger. But this one issue is the one issue that I was reacting to when gwailowrite and logophile both told me how horrible I was for defending Jackson in any way shape or form.
I’m off to bed– sleep well, I prithee!
and– let me if I may, make that challenge. Since white people are not capable of explaining the dynamics of a black family. I’ve given you the part I think I can legitimately explain, the part that is peculiar to entertainment. Please fill in the rest.
Explain how their Blackness excuses the abuse. Or explains it for that matter.
Don’t even try turning this into I said it ‘excuses’ the abuse. That’s beneath dignifying with an answer.
If you didn’t want anyone banging into your post and disagreeing, then you should have been up front about that.
I said what I had to say on the matter, in case you missed that. I don’t shuck, or jive, or explain on demand.
There are a lot of resources and talk from other PoC on the webs going on right now about MJJ and class/race intersecting. I trust you’re capable of finding the opinions that suit you.
Also, I’m really not at all moved by white people being offended that they aren’t automatically given the keys to understanding PoC by PoC. That’s filed under ‘tough titty’.
If you don’t think that the race of the family has any bearing on the abuse, why did you bring it up in the first place?
Explain how their Blackness excuses the abuse. Or explains it for that matter.
Wow.
yeah, my argument looks like shit.
I read and I re-read the things AbdysosAngel posted in this thread, and I *think* I can see where the disconnect happened, but I am not very sure of myself yet. I don’t want to say anything else until I can be more confident in my words.
We all have the limitations of our demographics and our experiences in the world. To suggest that we form no opinions about people who have different demographics or experiences is to suggest that we form opinions only about the small number of people who are just like us.
But humans live in a complex social world, and everyone not only does form opinions all the time, but we must do so; we can’t navigate a complex social world without doing so. Should we listen to folks who have information we don’t have? Sure. But just think how many kinds of information it would take:
Michael Jackson is
Human
Male
Black
a Musician
Famous
a Survivor of physical abuse
a Dancer
and many other things. If I suggested that you form no opinions about Mr. Jackson unless you were a famous Black male musician and dancer who had experienced physical and emotional abuse as a child, I imagine you’d tell me to go soak my head.
You can’t understand Mr. Jackson’s life if you aren’t musically gifted and famous. I can’t understand his life if I’m not Black. All of us grope for understanding within the limitations we have; such it is to be human.
If this is intended to make me rethink my position on the facts of white society feeling they can make accurate judgments about demographics they know precious little about most of the time on less serious issues – then it doesn’t work.
That people are so defensive about being told “no, you might not have a bead on this family for X reason” is very interesting. Not unique – but interesting. Because of course, being Black = being a dancer. LOL.
Right, because what the above poster said was “all black people are dancers”.
Just out of curiosity, why do you consistently capitalize “black” and not “white”?
Hmmm…
I could tell you, but then I’d have to do it in a post about the context regarding the contex about context and you know…that can’t happen.
Unless I’m challenged.
Oh dear. I’m done here. Heh.
Actually what you said wasIsn’t it weird how white people say this even about non-celebrity, non-affluent, Black families?
In other words white people (all presumably) say this about all Black families. Way to sweep a generalisation! No more of that, please. I don’t do it to you. There must have been a reason we are mutual friends.
Please, read respectfully in my lj, and with some sort of assumption of the goodwill I have always assumed for you. You missed the ‘ands’ in Chienne Folle’s post; “famous Black male musician and dancer”
And Michael Jackson most assuredly = being a dancer. Unless that Moon walk was a figment of our imaginations.
Do you honestly think I mean “all” white people? I’m that dense? I mean “all” Black families?
You’re reaching, you know. You also know that what I said is *still.not.incorrect. Because it is something said about Black families -not knowing how to manage themselves regardless of economic class.
Also – being a dancer =/= being a Black Male and what that means as an entertainer of his stature, unless you believe his being a dancer has the same amount of weight that being Black does, which is certainly your choice.
This is the point where we play “Ring Around The PoC” and I’m not playing that game with you when I’ve been more than clear with you, whether you like it or not.
Your deletion that you thought nobody saw about “Miss Condescending”- don’t even talk to me about my tone.
Do you remember why we friended each other?
being Black = being a dancer
Nope. But I think perhaps being Black and being famous have about the same weight in how deeply they affect a person’s life. One of Jackson’s best friends was Liz Taylor for a reason — only those who’ve grown up with that kind of fame can really understand how it affects a person. But the 99% of us who are not famous don’t recuse ourselves from making judgments about famous people; humans are busy forming opinions about one another all the time — that’s just how people work.
And disagreeing with you isn’t necessarily being defensive … sometimes people merely disagree with you.
Word. You said it way better than I could.
*smile* Thank you!
YOu said in your previous post you didn’t want to hurt people, and yet this post is one of the most insensitive and hurtful things you could post.
MJ was a paedophile. No, he couldn’t help it, but he wasn’t ‘asexual’ either. He exploited and used children for his own gratification, and his behaviour follows a sickeningly familiar pattern that many victims of paedophiles easily recognise.
And I know, personally, you and other people making these excuses are hurting me, whose two brothers were abused (and one died as a result), and a close friend who was abused by someone who groomed him in exactly this way.
You don’t know what you’re talking about, and you are doing actual harm. I am utterly horrified you wrote this, and posted it. Stop excusing the abusers and believing their bullshit.
I am so very sorry. I did not intend harm, and I am angry with myself for causing it.
Should I remove this post from public view?
That’s entirely your decision. The harm has been done, unfortunately.
I sincerely apologise and I wish I’d had had more forethought.
My understanding is that Michael Jackson was acquitted of molesting the boy who took him to court, yet everyone seems to assume that of course he’s a pedophile. Is there some proof that I’ve missed, or is it “guilty until proven innocent” for famous folks?
Yep. Waaay too much smoke for there not to be fire, you know.
Waaay too much smoke for there not to be fire, you know.
I dunno. I think sometimes there’s a lot of smoke because somebody set off a smoke bomb….
A very lucrative smoke bomb.
Yeah. I read that he wanted to fight the first guy, not settle out of court, but Lisa Marie was worried that he’d have trouble handling the stress of a trial and convinced him to settle out of court so that he wouldn’t have to go through the circus of a trial. Of course, that only encourages more setters of smoke bombs….
I know what you’re going for, but as a survivor I have to chime in
Naked sleeping? yes, probably. Hardons? Yes, probably– he wasn’t castrated physically. Mutual wanking? That’s what young boys do. He never was anything more than a young boy.
I’m sorry, he was not a young boy. He was a grown man. If any one of these things happened he was sexually moelesting those boys. Sleeping naked with young boys is sexualization, a form of sexual abuse.
“Mutual” is the same damn trick that every freaking lawyer tries to use to say that the victim wanted it. Just like every lawyer says a woman who was dressed provocatively “wanted it.”
Having followed the trials and the payoff of the prior alleged victim, he engaged very blatently in “grooming” potential victims at the very, very least.
As a survivor I resent anyone who even attempts to justify what he may have done or explain it away as “he never grew up.” The hell he didn’t.
It is possible for someone to be both guilty of a crime but innocent as to its implications. When I worked at a group home for the mentally challenged, we had a kid there who was 21 years old but with the mind of a seven year old and explaining to him why rape was wrong was one of the more challenging things we had to do. Was he a rapist? Absolutely. Did he understand what he was doing? Not in the slightest. So what should we have done with him? Turn him over to the police and send him to grown up jail for doing something that his broken mind didn’t even know was harmful? That would be compounding the tragedy. We did watch him like a hawk and we restricted his contact with the female members of the group home and eventually he did have to go live somewhere more structured because he just couldn’t manage himself and his hormones in an open environment. It still makes my heart hurt today because he just didn’t get it, but that didn’t make him any less of a monster.
I don’t justify what Michael Jackson might have done (and for what it’s worth, I’m a survivor too) but I can also acknowledge that they were likely the actions of a deeply damaged person who’d probably been through a hell of his own and had regressed to a place not of his own making in an attempt to keep his sanity duck taped together. I can have compassion for that at the same time as I have compassion for the boys who may have been victimized by it. The ones I kinda have trouble not wanting to smack until their heads clack together are the parents of the young boys who handed them over to someone that they could certainly see was a full grown man, without proper supervision.
I’m sorry I do disagree here.
The former example and the latter are apples and oranges.
Michael Jackson was a grown man without mental disability to our knowledge and whether or not he was Peter Pan does not minimize the damage to the abused.
There is a huge amount of cutting slack being given to Michael Jackson. Which is a good thing as nothing was proven. But as the conversation delves into the territory of if he was guilty, an awful lot of people are justifying.
Amen, and I am sickened by how people excuse Jackson when they would excoriate someone who did exactly the same thing but who *didn’t* write music.
Yes; there are hard lines we cannot afford to soften, lest our children get carried past them.
For the good of society, “he never grew up” cannot be an excuse, and it isn’t. But it’s still true of Jackson, and the legal fiction that was his birthday resulted in tragedy piled on tragedy.
I would love to stick it to his family for allowing the abuse he suffered as a child, and for not assigning someone to be in loco parentis for him after they’d broken him so desperately.
I would love to stick it to his family for allowing the abuse he suffered as a child, and for not assigning someone to be in loco parentis for him after they’d broken him so desperately.
Isn’t it weird how white people say this even about non-celebrity, non-affluent, Black families?
The Jackson family most definitely had its issues. They still do. However, I’m not sure that whites with no idea about the trip from Gary to the wealth and heights that family took (their peers at the time? They had none, because the Osmonds sure as shit don’t count) are the ones to make the judgement call about what clearly went wrong.
ETA: Since it’s relevant to recent LJ goings ons…remember that LaToya stated quite some time ago that there were abuse issues at home. I still find it ironic how ‘taking the word of victims’ is still so selectively applied.
Are you saying that the Jackson family did not use Michael, and that the abuse of a celebrity life from the age of four years old did not harm him?
Or that no one should express anger over this– when the harm lead to further harm, such as Gwailowrite has expressed?
MJ needed support that he did not get. One reason he did not get support that he needed was because his eccentricities did not seem to interfere with the money machine.
This makes me angry. The damage from emotional trauma has been in public knowledge for almost four decades now.
I’ve seen it in other families too, such as Brian Wilson’s of the Beach Boys– who has been incapacitated with untreated depression several times– once, his therapist simply climbed into bed with him and dropped acid along with him– and in the context of this discussion, has never yet really understood that No means No with regard to pretty young women– although he does understand that ignoring No means problems with the lawyers at least.
I think it’s pretty obvious what I said. It’s still sitting there – saying what I said.
Whatever it is you are on about in your response does not *change* what I said, which actually does not say anything to prompt the questions you ask here.
I don’t have to believe *nothing happened* to think white people aren’t necessarily the best judges for the dysfunction of a Black family. I strongly doubt that you failed to understand my point the first time around, but there we are.
If this is truly not clear to you, I’m not sure what to tell you.
White people should not criticise the Jackson family, check.
You’re doing that ‘defensive white person thing’. Thought you might want to know.
But actually, if you can’t take the idea that white people can’t objectively criticize this family because they (because how many times have we heard WHITE PEOPLE JUST DON’T UNDERSTAAAAAAND?)might not have the tools to break down a Black family outside of white defnitions – then yes.
You most definitely should not criticize the Jacksons or any other ethnic minority family if you can’t accept that you possibly don’t have the insight necessary to do it properly.
That’s actually not a bad idea, when you think about it.
It’s very strange to be on the defensive side, too!
Of all the ways I expected my opinons to to be challenged– I didn’t expect this one. I never have made a generalization regarding black families and what they do or don’t do culturally. This family dynamic unusual in general society, and all too usual in entertainment society, and as i said I live amongst the entertainment society of Los Angeles.
May I ask you how you feel about this family and what happened to Michael?
Eh, my opinion is kind of irrelevant for now. I’m sitting on a possible post about it later.
I will say that the Jacksons can’t be viewed without the context of where they came from/what that means culturally, just as one can’t ignore the celebrity side.
How society views young Black men, the idea of celebrity and sex/sexuality and what that means to Black men, the scenario of children being the financial support for an entire family – that’s all a part of what was right and what went wrong for Michael. He also have to be viewed in context of the cultural zeitgeist of the late 60′s – Thriller(as an example) and what that meant for Black people.
If I make a bigger post, I’ll elaborate. Key word being *if*.
Okay. *if* you do write it, I’ll gladly read it.
But it’s ironic– I have angered some people who tell me I am making excuses for MJ because I feel that his actions have a context.
And you are critical because I haven’t placed the context of his actions– the family industry– into context.
So let me see if I can, just a little. I don’t want to include his position as Role Model for the world, because in this context it was the least, IMO, of his problems. The public persona can be separated from the private; indeed, he spent enormous effort on doing that very thing.
I agree that there is a context of family need; But that need was well-satisfied by the 80′s, when his problems became apparent, and the eighties was three decades ago.
I am aware of the effects of celebrity on individuals and their families, although I’ve never spoken much on that subject. As I said, I live within that melieu.
When we speak of family in the Jackson’s case, we are talking about more than the immediate family by the way. I built custom and very much luxury dollhouses in the early 80′s, at a store in Beverly Hills, and two second-cousin-Jacksons brought their approximately four-year-old, and entirely uninterested, daughters in to purchase two-thousand-dollar mansions, one apiece. Plus the furnishings. They left in a Mercedes. I am not complaining or holding these young women up to scorn, I’m just saying that the scale had gone far and away past comfortable middle-class, and well into luxurious wealth. These were not parents or siblings, either, but children of someone’s cousin. There was a *lot* of wealth to be shared in the Jackson clan. And I contend that the money was so important to so *many* people that it was preferable to ignore Michael’s peccadilloes lest the attention kill that goose, and end those eggs.
Really, truly, tragic.
Since you know the melieu so well, then you really don’t need me to say anything about it, do you?
I notice that you are not commenting on most of the things I mentioned prior to this comment, nor anything in the only post I am going to make on him that’s already in my journal. Surely if you were interested enough to make this post, you’re intersted in doing your own investigation/showing your work about the matter.
MJJ the Cash Register is a miniscule part of the picture. You want to ‘stick it to the family’ about abuse he suffered, but don’t seem to want to state more than “they were filthy rich” about them.
I’m actually not all that interested in having this conversation with you or anyone else that finds it easier to do if you ‘de-racialize’ the family (immediate, for they are the ones at the heart of its dysfunction).
Is this your “challenge”?
Yes, I’ve never been challenged by a white person to prove I actually do know what I’m talking about in regards to race and the part it plays in certain situations. This is such a thrilling new thing, I have to away for a lie down over it.
I’m sure there was a reason we mutually friended each other.
Do you recall what it was?
Ummmm…
I thought you weren’t necessarily the kind of person that needed to retreat to the usual bingo squares when someone says “Hey. This thing here – you aren’t looking at it from a non-white centric place, etc” to you.
Hey, this is your journal and you can have whatever kind of discussions you want disagreement free with the kind of folks you like. I don’t need to be here upsetting your balance. No skin lost.
And you don’t trust me now because I didn’t agree with you instantly. I haven’t earned the right to base my thoughts on anything other than your opinion.
May I ask you, very carefully and politely, to take a look at your wording in your first post. Do you think I might possibly have read it as an insult to my intelligence and tact? Just possibly?
Because I do.
Our disagreement here is not about me needing ‘instant agreement’. I certainly haven’t said you don’t have the right to think any particular way about something. I’m neither that foolish, nor young as to believe or want that.
What I said had to do with looking at the full picture of a family and saying that you cannot dissect MJJ without looking at the facts wrt race and it’s effects on him as a man and a hugely successful performer.
Do I imply in my first comment that people who tend to miss the boat on racial issues over fanfic (as one example) probably aren’t the best ones to do that? (nevermind that the mainstream media aren’t better equipped) Yes. I said that.
I would love to stick it to his family for allowing the abuse he suffered as a child, and for not assigning someone to be in loco parentis for him after they’d broken him so desperately.
Do you think you’re making this comment in a vacuum? You’re asking me about what I think you had a problem with, but clearly can’t see what I found problematic with this statement.
I’ve already explained as much as I feel needs explaining and it’s now getting repetitive, which is usually the sign that I’m supposed to soothe hurt feelings when the main point I was making has hardly been addressed.
You do not have to sooth my hurt feelings. I can take that task upon
myself.
Like you, I resent, deeply, the invisibility of POC and also women, in popular culture and in fanfic. I intend to try to address that lack in my writing, and in my discussions, as well as I can, as I did before racefail and for the rest of my writing life– career, if I can make it into one. That’s what I can do. That’s my statement.
I fail to see what’s racist about wishing that a group of incredibly wealthy people had taken better care of the family cash cow. You take care of your own. You return value for value if it’s at all possible. Love for love, care for care. That seems like an axiom for any loving family.
I mean, I can understand why a father would brutalise his children to make them successful. I don’t like it, but I can understand it. I can even imagine finding it necessary. Life sucks that way.
It was never very well addressed within the family, that’s all. And nobody got Michael the help he needed.
This is very specific. The context is, of course, much larger. But this one issue is the one issue that I was reacting to when gwailowrite and logophile both told me how horrible I was for defending Jackson in any way shape or form.
I’m off to bed– sleep well, I prithee!
and– let me if I may, make that challenge. Since white people are not capable of explaining the dynamics of a black family. I’ve given you the part I think I can legitimately explain, the part that is peculiar to entertainment. Please fill in the rest.
Explain how their Blackness excuses the abuse. Or explains it for that matter.
Don’t even try turning this into I said it ‘excuses’ the abuse. That’s beneath dignifying with an answer.
If you didn’t want anyone banging into your post and disagreeing, then you should have been up front about that.
I said what I had to say on the matter, in case you missed that. I don’t shuck, or jive, or explain on demand.
There are a lot of resources and talk from other PoC on the webs going on right now about MJJ and class/race intersecting. I trust you’re capable of finding the opinions that suit you.
Also, I’m really not at all moved by white people being offended that they aren’t automatically given the keys to understanding PoC by PoC. That’s filed under ‘tough titty’.
If you don’t think that the race of the family has any bearing on the abuse, why did you bring it up in the first place?
Explain how their Blackness excuses the abuse. Or explains it for that matter.
Wow.
yeah, my argument looks like shit.
I read and I re-read the things AbdysosAngel posted in this thread, and I *think* I can see where the disconnect happened, but I am not very sure of myself yet. I don’t want to say anything else until I can be more confident in my words.
We all have the limitations of our demographics and our experiences in the world. To suggest that we form no opinions about people who have different demographics or experiences is to suggest that we form opinions only about the small number of people who are just like us.
But humans live in a complex social world, and everyone not only does form opinions all the time, but we must do so; we can’t navigate a complex social world without doing so. Should we listen to folks who have information we don’t have? Sure. But just think how many kinds of information it would take:
Michael Jackson is
Human
Male
Black
a Musician
Famous
a Survivor of physical abuse
a Dancer
and many other things. If I suggested that you form no opinions about Mr. Jackson unless you were a famous Black male musician and dancer who had experienced physical and emotional abuse as a child, I imagine you’d tell me to go soak my head.
You can’t understand Mr. Jackson’s life if you aren’t musically gifted and famous. I can’t understand his life if I’m not Black. All of us grope for understanding within the limitations we have; such it is to be human.
If this is intended to make me rethink my position on the facts of white society feeling they can make accurate judgments about demographics they know precious little about most of the time on less serious issues – then it doesn’t work.
That people are so defensive about being told “no, you might not have a bead on this family for X reason” is very interesting. Not unique – but interesting. Because of course, being Black = being a dancer. LOL.
Right, because what the above poster said was “all black people are dancers”.
Just out of curiosity, why do you consistently capitalize “black” and not “white”?
Hmmm…
I could tell you, but then I’d have to do it in a post about the context regarding the contex about context and you know…that can’t happen.
Unless I’m challenged.
Oh dear. I’m done here. Heh.
Actually what you said wasIsn’t it weird how white people say this even about non-celebrity, non-affluent, Black families?
In other words white people (all presumably) say this about all Black families. Way to sweep a generalisation! No more of that, please. I don’t do it to you. There must have been a reason we are mutual friends.
Please, read respectfully in my lj, and with some sort of assumption of the goodwill I have always assumed for you. You missed the ‘ands’ in Chienne Folle’s post; “famous Black male musician and dancer”
And Michael Jackson most assuredly = being a dancer. Unless that Moon walk was a figment of our imaginations.
Do you honestly think I mean “all” white people? I’m that dense? I mean “all” Black families?
You’re reaching, you know. You also know that what I said is *still.not.incorrect. Because it is something said about Black families -not knowing how to manage themselves regardless of economic class.
Also – being a dancer =/= being a Black Male and what that means as an entertainer of his stature, unless you believe his being a dancer has the same amount of weight that being Black does, which is certainly your choice.
This is the point where we play “Ring Around The PoC” and I’m not playing that game with you when I’ve been more than clear with you, whether you like it or not.
Your deletion that you thought nobody saw about “Miss Condescending”- don’t even talk to me about my tone.
Do you remember why we friended each other?
being Black = being a dancer
Nope. But I think perhaps being Black and being famous have about the same weight in how deeply they affect a person’s life. One of Jackson’s best friends was Liz Taylor for a reason — only those who’ve grown up with that kind of fame can really understand how it affects a person. But the 99% of us who are not famous don’t recuse ourselves from making judgments about famous people; humans are busy forming opinions about one another all the time — that’s just how people work.
And disagreeing with you isn’t necessarily being defensive … sometimes people merely disagree with you.
Word. You said it way better than I could.
*smile* Thank you!
I know what you’re going for, but as a survivor I have to chime in
Naked sleeping? yes, probably. Hardons? Yes, probably– he wasn’t castrated physically. Mutual wanking? That’s what young boys do. He never was anything more than a young boy.
I’m sorry, he was not a young boy. He was a grown man. If any one of these things happened he was sexually moelesting those boys. Sleeping naked with young boys is sexualization, a form of sexual abuse.
“Mutual” is the same damn trick that every freaking lawyer tries to use to say that the victim wanted it. Just like every lawyer says a woman who was dressed provocatively “wanted it.”
Having followed the trials and the payoff of the prior alleged victim, he engaged very blatently in “grooming” potential victims at the very, very least.
As a survivor I resent anyone who even attempts to justify what he may have done or explain it away as “he never grew up.” The hell he didn’t.
It is possible for someone to be both guilty of a crime but innocent as to its implications. When I worked at a group home for the mentally challenged, we had a kid there who was 21 years old but with the mind of a seven year old and explaining to him why rape was wrong was one of the more challenging things we had to do. Was he a rapist? Absolutely. Did he understand what he was doing? Not in the slightest. So what should we have done with him? Turn him over to the police and send him to grown up jail for doing something that his broken mind didn’t even know was harmful? That would be compounding the tragedy. We did watch him like a hawk and we restricted his contact with the female members of the group home and eventually he did have to go live somewhere more structured because he just couldn’t manage himself and his hormones in an open environment. It still makes my heart hurt today because he just didn’t get it, but that didn’t make him any less of a monster.
I don’t justify what Michael Jackson might have done (and for what it’s worth, I’m a survivor too) but I can also acknowledge that they were likely the actions of a deeply damaged person who’d probably been through a hell of his own and had regressed to a place not of his own making in an attempt to keep his sanity duck taped together. I can have compassion for that at the same time as I have compassion for the boys who may have been victimized by it. The ones I kinda have trouble not wanting to smack until their heads clack together are the parents of the young boys who handed them over to someone that they could certainly see was a full grown man, without proper supervision.
I’m sorry I do disagree here.
The former example and the latter are apples and oranges.
Michael Jackson was a grown man without mental disability to our knowledge and whether or not he was Peter Pan does not minimize the damage to the abused.
There is a huge amount of cutting slack being given to Michael Jackson. Which is a good thing as nothing was proven. But as the conversation delves into the territory of if he was guilty, an awful lot of people are justifying.
Amen, and I am sickened by how people excuse Jackson when they would excoriate someone who did exactly the same thing but who *didn’t* write music.
Yes; there are hard lines we cannot afford to soften, lest our children get carried past them.
For the good of society, “he never grew up” cannot be an excuse, and it isn’t. But it’s still true of Jackson, and the legal fiction that was his birthday resulted in tragedy piled on tragedy.
I would love to stick it to his family for allowing the abuse he suffered as a child, and for not assigning someone to be in loco parentis for him after they’d broken him so desperately.
I would love to stick it to his family for allowing the abuse he suffered as a child, and for not assigning someone to be in loco parentis for him after they’d broken him so desperately.
Isn’t it weird how white people say this even about non-celebrity, non-affluent, Black families?
The Jackson family most definitely had its issues. They still do. However, I’m not sure that whites with no idea about the trip from Gary to the wealth and heights that family took (their peers at the time? They had none, because the Osmonds sure as shit don’t count) are the ones to make the judgement call about what clearly went wrong.
ETA: Since it’s relevant to recent LJ goings ons…remember that LaToya stated quite some time ago that there were abuse issues at home. I still find it ironic how ‘taking the word of victims’ is still so selectively applied.
Are you saying that the Jackson family did not use Michael, and that the abuse of a celebrity life from the age of four years old did not harm him?
Or that no one should express anger over this– when the harm lead to further harm, such as Gwailowrite has expressed?
MJ needed support that he did not get. One reason he did not get support that he needed was because his eccentricities did not seem to interfere with the money machine.
This makes me angry. The damage from emotional trauma has been in public knowledge for almost four decades now.
I’ve seen it in other families too, such as Brian Wilson’s of the Beach Boys– who has been incapacitated with untreated depression several times– once, his therapist simply climbed into bed with him and dropped acid along with him– and in the context of this discussion, has never yet really understood that No means No with regard to pretty young women– although he does understand that ignoring No means problems with the lawyers at least.
I think it’s pretty obvious what I said. It’s still sitting there – saying what I said.
Whatever it is you are on about in your response does not *change* what I said, which actually does not say anything to prompt the questions you ask here.
I don’t have to believe *nothing happened* to think white people aren’t necessarily the best judges for the dysfunction of a Black family. I strongly doubt that you failed to understand my point the first time around, but there we are.
If this is truly not clear to you, I’m not sure what to tell you.
White people should not criticise the Jackson family, check.
You’re doing that ‘defensive white person thing’. Thought you might want to know.
But actually, if you can’t take the idea that white people can’t objectively criticize this family because they (because how many times have we heard WHITE PEOPLE JUST DON’T UNDERSTAAAAAAND?)might not have the tools to break down a Black family outside of white defnitions – then yes.
You most definitely should not criticize the Jacksons or any other ethnic minority family if you can’t accept that you possibly don’t have the insight necessary to do it properly.
That’s actually not a bad idea, when you think about it.
It’s very strange to be on the defensive side, too!
Of all the ways I expected my opinons to to be challenged– I didn’t expect this one. I never have made a generalization regarding black families and what they do or don’t do culturally. This family dynamic unusual in general society, and all too usual in entertainment society, and as i said I live amongst the entertainment society of Los Angeles.
May I ask you how you feel about this family and what happened to Michael?
Eh, my opinion is kind of irrelevant for now. I’m sitting on a possible post about it later.
I will say that the Jacksons can’t be viewed without the context of where they came from/what that means culturally, just as one can’t ignore the celebrity side.
How society views young Black men, the idea of celebrity and sex/sexuality and what that means to Black men, the scenario of children being the financial support for an entire family – that’s all a part of what was right and what went wrong for Michael. He also have to be viewed in context of the cultural zeitgeist of the late 60′s – Thriller(as an example) and what that meant for Black people.
If I make a bigger post, I’ll elaborate. Key word being *if*.
Okay. *if* you do write it, I’ll gladly read it.
But it’s ironic– I have angered some people who tell me I am making excuses for MJ because I feel that his actions have a context.
And you are critical because I haven’t placed the context of his actions– the family industry– into context.
So let me see if I can, just a little. I don’t want to include his position as Role Model for the world, because in this context it was the least, IMO, of his problems. The public persona can be separated from the private; indeed, he spent enormous effort on doing that very thing.
I agree that there is a context of family need; But that need was well-satisfied by the 80′s, when his problems became apparent, and the eighties was three decades ago.
I am aware of the effects of celebrity on individuals and their families, although I’ve never spoken much on that subject. As I said, I live within that melieu.
When we speak of family in the Jackson’s case, we are talking about more than the immediate family by the way. I built custom and very much luxury dollhouses in the early 80′s, at a store in Beverly Hills, and two second-cousin-Jacksons brought their approximately four-year-old, and entirely uninterested, daughters in to purchase two-thousand-dollar mansions, one apiece. Plus the furnishings. They left in a Mercedes. I am not complaining or holding these young women up to scorn, I’m just saying that the scale had gone far and away past comfortable middle-class, and well into luxurious wealth. These were not parents or siblings, either, but children of someone’s cousin. There was a *lot* of wealth to be shared in the Jackson clan. And I contend that the money was so important to so *many* people that it was preferable to ignore Michael’s peccadilloes lest the attention kill that goose, and end those eggs.
Really, truly, tragic.
Since you know the melieu so well, then you really don’t need me to say anything about it, do you?
I notice that you are not commenting on most of the things I mentioned prior to this comment, nor anything in the only post I am going to make on him that’s already in my journal. Surely if you were interested enough to make this post, you’re intersted in doing your own investigation/showing your work about the matter.
MJJ the Cash Register is a miniscule part of the picture. You want to ‘stick it to the family’ about abuse he suffered, but don’t seem to want to state more than “they were filthy rich” about them.
I’m actually not all that interested in having this conversation with you or anyone else that finds it easier to do if you ‘de-racialize’ the family (immediate, for they are the ones at the heart of its dysfunction).
Is this your “challenge”?
Yes, I’ve never been challenged by a white person to prove I actually do know what I’m talking about in regards to race and the part it plays in certain situations. This is such a thrilling new thing, I have to away for a lie down over it.
I’m sure there was a reason we mutually friended each other.
Do you recall what it was?
Ummmm…
I thought you weren’t necessarily the kind of person that needed to retreat to the usual bingo squares when someone says “Hey. This thing here – you aren’t looking at it from a non-white centric place, etc” to you.
Hey, this is your journal and you can have whatever kind of discussions you want disagreement free with the kind of folks you like. I don’t need to be here upsetting your balance. No skin lost.
And you don’t trust me now because I didn’t agree with you instantly. I haven’t earned the right to base my thoughts on anything other than your opinion.
May I ask you, very carefully and politely, to take a look at your wording in your first post. Do you think I might possibly have read it as an insult to my intelligence and tact? Just possibly?
Because I do.
Our disagreement here is not about me needing ‘instant agreement’. I certainly haven’t said you don’t have the right to think any particular way about something. I’m neither that foolish, nor young as to believe or want that.
What I said had to do with looking at the full picture of a family and saying that you cannot dissect MJJ without looking at the facts wrt race and it’s effects on him as a man and a hugely successful performer.
Do I imply in my first comment that people who tend to miss the boat on racial issues over fanfic (as one example) probably aren’t the best ones to do that? (nevermind that the mainstream media aren’t better equipped) Yes. I said that.
I would love to stick it to his family for allowing the abuse he suffered as a child, and for not assigning someone to be in loco parentis for him after they’d broken him so desperately.
Do you think you’re making this comment in a vacuum? You’re asking me about what I think you had a problem with, but clearly can’t see what I found problematic with this statement.
I’ve already explained as much as I feel needs explaining and it’s now getting repetitive, which is usually the sign that I’m supposed to soothe hurt feelings when the main point I was making has hardly been addressed.
You do not have to sooth my hurt feelings. I can take that task upon
myself.
Like you, I resent, deeply, the invisibility of POC and also women, in popular culture and in fanfic. I intend to try to address that lack in my writing, and in my discussions, as well as I can, as I did before racefail and for the rest of my writing life– career, if I can make it into one. That’s what I can do. That’s my statement.
I fail to see what’s racist about wishing that a group of incredibly wealthy people had taken better care of the family cash cow. You take care of your own. You return value for value if it’s at all possible. Love for love, care for care. That seems like an axiom for any loving family.
I mean, I can understand why a father would brutalise his children to make them successful. I don’t like it, but I can understand it. I can even imagine finding it necessary. Life sucks that way.
It was never very well addressed within the family, that’s all. And nobody got Michael the help he needed.
This is very specific. The context is, of course, much larger. But this one issue is the one issue that I was reacting to when gwailowrite and logophile both told me how horrible I was for defending Jackson in any way shape or form.
I’m off to bed– sleep well, I prithee!
and– let me if I may, make that challenge. Since white people are not capable of explaining the dynamics of a black family. I’ve given you the part I think I can legitimately explain, the part that is peculiar to entertainment. Please fill in the rest.
Explain how their Blackness excuses the abuse. Or explains it for that matter.
Don’t even try turning this into I said it ‘excuses’ the abuse. That’s beneath dignifying with an answer.
If you didn’t want anyone banging into your post and disagreeing, then you should have been up front about that.
I said what I had to say on the matter, in case you missed that. I don’t shuck, or jive, or explain on demand.
There are a lot of resources and talk from other PoC on the webs going on right now about MJJ and class/race intersecting. I trust you’re capable of finding the opinions that suit you.
Also, I’m really not at all moved by white people being offended that they aren’t automatically given the keys to understanding PoC by PoC. That’s filed under ‘tough titty’.
If you don’t think that the race of the family has any bearing on the abuse, why did you bring it up in the first place?
Explain how their Blackness excuses the abuse. Or explains it for that matter.
Wow.
yeah, my argument looks like shit.
I read and I re-read the things AbdysosAngel posted in this thread, and I *think* I can see where the disconnect happened, but I am not very sure of myself yet. I don’t want to say anything else until I can be more confident in my words.
We all have the limitations of our demographics and our experiences in the world. To suggest that we form no opinions about people who have different demographics or experiences is to suggest that we form opinions only about the small number of people who are just like us.
But humans live in a complex social world, and everyone not only does form opinions all the time, but we must do so; we can’t navigate a complex social world without doing so. Should we listen to folks who have information we don’t have? Sure. But just think how many kinds of information it would take:
Michael Jackson is
Human
Male
Black
a Musician
Famous
a Survivor of physical abuse
a Dancer
and many other things. If I suggested that you form no opinions about Mr. Jackson unless you were a famous Black male musician and dancer who had experienced physical and emotional abuse as a child, I imagine you’d tell me to go soak my head.
You can’t understand Mr. Jackson’s life if you aren’t musically gifted and famous. I can’t understand his life if I’m not Black. All of us grope for understanding within the limitations we have; such it is to be human.
If this is intended to make me rethink my position on the facts of white society feeling they can make accurate judgments about demographics they know precious little about most of the time on less serious issues – then it doesn’t work.
That people are so defensive about being told “no, you might not have a bead on this family for X reason” is very interesting. Not unique – but interesting. Because of course, being Black = being a dancer. LOL.
Right, because what the above poster said was “all black people are dancers”.
Just out of curiosity, why do you consistently capitalize “black” and not “white”?
Hmmm…
I could tell you, but then I’d have to do it in a post about the context regarding the contex about context and you know…that can’t happen.
Unless I’m challenged.
Oh dear. I’m done here. Heh.
Actually what you said wasIsn’t it weird how white people say this even about non-celebrity, non-affluent, Black families?
In other words white people (all presumably) say this about all Black families. Way to sweep a generalisation! No more of that, please. I don’t do it to you. There must have been a reason we are mutual friends.
Please, read respectfully in my lj, and with some sort of assumption of the goodwill I have always assumed for you. You missed the ‘ands’ in Chienne Folle’s post; “famous Black male musician and dancer”
And Michael Jackson most assuredly = being a dancer. Unless that Moon walk was a figment of our imaginations.
Do you honestly think I mean “all” white people? I’m that dense? I mean “all” Black families?
You’re reaching, you know. You also know that what I said is *still.not.incorrect. Because it is something said about Black families -not knowing how to manage themselves regardless of economic class.
Also – being a dancer =/= being a Black Male and what that means as an entertainer of his stature, unless you believe his being a dancer has the same amount of weight that being Black does, which is certainly your choice.
This is the point where we play “Ring Around The PoC” and I’m not playing that game with you when I’ve been more than clear with you, whether you like it or not.
Your deletion that you thought nobody saw about “Miss Condescending”- don’t even talk to me about my tone.
Do you remember why we friended each other?
being Black = being a dancer
Nope. But I think perhaps being Black and being famous have about the same weight in how deeply they affect a person’s life. One of Jackson’s best friends was Liz Taylor for a reason — only those who’ve grown up with that kind of fame can really understand how it affects a person. But the 99% of us who are not famous don’t recuse ourselves from making judgments about famous people; humans are busy forming opinions about one another all the time — that’s just how people work.
And disagreeing with you isn’t necessarily being defensive … sometimes people merely disagree with you.
Word. You said it way better than I could.
*smile* Thank you!
YOu said in your previous post you didn’t want to hurt people, and yet this post is one of the most insensitive and hurtful things you could post.
MJ was a paedophile. No, he couldn’t help it, but he wasn’t ‘asexual’ either. He exploited and used children for his own gratification, and his behaviour follows a sickeningly familiar pattern that many victims of paedophiles easily recognise.
And I know, personally, you and other people making these excuses are hurting me, whose two brothers were abused (and one died as a result), and a close friend who was abused by someone who groomed him in exactly this way.
You don’t know what you’re talking about, and you are doing actual harm. I am utterly horrified you wrote this, and posted it. Stop excusing the abusers and believing their bullshit.
I am so very sorry. I did not intend harm, and I am angry with myself for causing it.
Should I remove this post from public view?
That’s entirely your decision. The harm has been done, unfortunately.
I sincerely apologise and I wish I’d had had more forethought.
My understanding is that Michael Jackson was acquitted of molesting the boy who took him to court, yet everyone seems to assume that of course he’s a pedophile. Is there some proof that I’ve missed, or is it “guilty until proven innocent” for famous folks?
Yep. Waaay too much smoke for there not to be fire, you know.
Waaay too much smoke for there not to be fire, you know.
I dunno. I think sometimes there’s a lot of smoke because somebody set off a smoke bomb….
A very lucrative smoke bomb.
Yeah. I read that he wanted to fight the first guy, not settle out of court, but Lisa Marie was worried that he’d have trouble handling the stress of a trial and convinced him to settle out of court so that he wouldn’t have to go through the circus of a trial. Of course, that only encourages more setters of smoke bombs….
YOu said in your previous post you didn’t want to hurt people, and yet this post is one of the most insensitive and hurtful things you could post.
MJ was a paedophile. No, he couldn’t help it, but he wasn’t ‘asexual’ either. He exploited and used children for his own gratification, and his behaviour follows a sickeningly familiar pattern that many victims of paedophiles easily recognise.
And I know, personally, you and other people making these excuses are hurting me, whose two brothers were abused (and one died as a result), and a close friend who was abused by someone who groomed him in exactly this way.
You don’t know what you’re talking about, and you are doing actual harm. I am utterly horrified you wrote this, and posted it. Stop excusing the abusers and believing their bullshit.
I am so very sorry. I did not intend harm, and I am angry with myself for causing it.
Should I remove this post from public view?
That’s entirely your decision. The harm has been done, unfortunately.
I sincerely apologise and I wish I’d had had more forethought.
My understanding is that Michael Jackson was acquitted of molesting the boy who took him to court, yet everyone seems to assume that of course he’s a pedophile. Is there some proof that I’ve missed, or is it “guilty until proven innocent” for famous folks?
Yep. Waaay too much smoke for there not to be fire, you know.
Waaay too much smoke for there not to be fire, you know.
I dunno. I think sometimes there’s a lot of smoke because somebody set off a smoke bomb….
A very lucrative smoke bomb.
Yeah. I read that he wanted to fight the first guy, not settle out of court, but Lisa Marie was worried that he’d have trouble handling the stress of a trial and convinced him to settle out of court so that he wouldn’t have to go through the circus of a trial. Of course, that only encourages more setters of smoke bombs….
He never was anything more than a young boy.
I completely disagree with this statement. He was an incredibly successful artist, businessman, and hitmaker. He didn’t just make joyful music–he made angry music and complex music. He had legions of friends and an ex-wife (LM Presley) who’s torn up over his death. You’re speaking of him as if he was some broken man-child who spent his life locked in a hidden room. He wasn’t.
If he was a child molester, he was no different from legions of others, with just as much agency.
yes, people are angry with this post.
I’m not angry, personally. Just strongly disagreeing. Your views expressed here resonate with a common trope about adults who behave inappropriately or strangely with children. It serves the adult to be seen as “a child at heart” because it excuses their strangeness and also helps them gain access to children.
I don’t blame you for accepting the trope, because it’s embedded in our culture; I’m just encouraging you to examine the base assumption of {tragic childhood=endless childhood}, because I don’t think it holds up. I don’t think someone who’s truly not a moral and mental adult can achieve the degree of success that MJ did, so I’m pointing out his adult-ness on that front.
I think it’s absolutely possible that someone can achieve the degree of success that MJ did and not be a moral or mental adult. It’s the entertainment industry. I was raised in it.
Well, fuck it. If I can put together a better post about this, I will. But I really should be writing porn… I’ve missed two deadlines this year…
*laugh* I love hearing “should” in the same sentence as “writing porn!” Not the usual thing.
I has a duty to fulfill! and miles to go before I sleep…
I find it interesting what a large percentage of the many discussions of Michael Jackson have little to do with the man or his music. Some people want to make an example of him for presumed pedophilia, some people want to see him as a Black Man Who Made Good, others want to see him as a post-racial example, and the list goes on and on.
Well, you’re out of it now, MJ. If there’s any afterlife, you can be who you are without being shoved into boxes and used as a poster boy for all sorts of things you never chose.
I hope the Goddess has a really BIG roller coaster you can ride … and people who will love you without wanting anything from you.
This–made me cry.
Uh, thanks, I guess?
He never was anything more than a young boy.
I completely disagree with this statement. He was an incredibly successful artist, businessman, and hitmaker. He didn’t just make joyful music–he made angry music and complex music. He had legions of friends and an ex-wife (LM Presley) who’s torn up over his death. You’re speaking of him as if he was some broken man-child who spent his life locked in a hidden room. He wasn’t.
If he was a child molester, he was no different from legions of others, with just as much agency.
yes, people are angry with this post.
I’m not angry, personally. Just strongly disagreeing. Your views expressed here resonate with a common trope about adults who behave inappropriately or strangely with children. It serves the adult to be seen as “a child at heart” because it excuses their strangeness and also helps them gain access to children.
I don’t blame you for accepting the trope, because it’s embedded in our culture; I’m just encouraging you to examine the base assumption of {tragic childhood=endless childhood}, because I don’t think it holds up. I don’t think someone who’s truly not a moral and mental adult can achieve the degree of success that MJ did, so I’m pointing out his adult-ness on that front.
I think it’s absolutely possible that someone can achieve the degree of success that MJ did and not be a moral or mental adult. It’s the entertainment industry. I was raised in it.
Well, fuck it. If I can put together a better post about this, I will. But I really should be writing porn… I’ve missed two deadlines this year…
*laugh* I love hearing “should” in the same sentence as “writing porn!” Not the usual thing.
I has a duty to fulfill! and miles to go before I sleep…
He never was anything more than a young boy.
I completely disagree with this statement. He was an incredibly successful artist, businessman, and hitmaker. He didn’t just make joyful music–he made angry music and complex music. He had legions of friends and an ex-wife (LM Presley) who’s torn up over his death. You’re speaking of him as if he was some broken man-child who spent his life locked in a hidden room. He wasn’t.
If he was a child molester, he was no different from legions of others, with just as much agency.
yes, people are angry with this post.
I’m not angry, personally. Just strongly disagreeing. Your views expressed here resonate with a common trope about adults who behave inappropriately or strangely with children. It serves the adult to be seen as “a child at heart” because it excuses their strangeness and also helps them gain access to children.
I don’t blame you for accepting the trope, because it’s embedded in our culture; I’m just encouraging you to examine the base assumption of {tragic childhood=endless childhood}, because I don’t think it holds up. I don’t think someone who’s truly not a moral and mental adult can achieve the degree of success that MJ did, so I’m pointing out his adult-ness on that front.
I think it’s absolutely possible that someone can achieve the degree of success that MJ did and not be a moral or mental adult. It’s the entertainment industry. I was raised in it.
Well, fuck it. If I can put together a better post about this, I will. But I really should be writing porn… I’ve missed two deadlines this year…
*laugh* I love hearing “should” in the same sentence as “writing porn!” Not the usual thing.
I has a duty to fulfill! and miles to go before I sleep…
Sorry Dharma. The amount of fail being displayed here is enough for me on all fronts.
I am sorry for that, Gwailowrite. I should have warned in the first damn place, not to mention thought more carefully about what I was trying to say.
But– some asshole like myself musing on a news item is not the same as a work of fiction.
If I had warned for triggers regarding child abuse, would you have clicked past anyway?
Of course you would be angry and disagree, but would the warning help brace you enough?
I find it interesting what a large percentage of the many discussions of Michael Jackson have little to do with the man or his music. Some people want to make an example of him for presumed pedophilia, some people want to see him as a Black Man Who Made Good, others want to see him as a post-racial example, and the list goes on and on.
Well, you’re out of it now, MJ. If there’s any afterlife, you can be who you are without being shoved into boxes and used as a poster boy for all sorts of things you never chose.
I hope the Goddess has a really BIG roller coaster you can ride … and people who will love you without wanting anything from you.
This–made me cry.
Uh, thanks, I guess?
I find it interesting what a large percentage of the many discussions of Michael Jackson have little to do with the man or his music. Some people want to make an example of him for presumed pedophilia, some people want to see him as a Black Man Who Made Good, others want to see him as a post-racial example, and the list goes on and on.
Well, you’re out of it now, MJ. If there’s any afterlife, you can be who you are without being shoved into boxes and used as a poster boy for all sorts of things you never chose.
I hope the Goddess has a really BIG roller coaster you can ride … and people who will love you without wanting anything from you.
This–made me cry.
Uh, thanks, I guess?
Sorry Dharma. The amount of fail being displayed here is enough for me on all fronts.
I am sorry for that, Gwailowrite. I should have warned in the first damn place, not to mention thought more carefully about what I was trying to say.
But– some asshole like myself musing on a news item is not the same as a work of fiction.
If I had warned for triggers regarding child abuse, would you have clicked past anyway?
Of course you would be angry and disagree, but would the warning help brace you enough?
Sorry Dharma. The amount of fail being displayed here is enough for me on all fronts.
I am sorry for that, Gwailowrite. I should have warned in the first damn place, not to mention thought more carefully about what I was trying to say.
But– some asshole like myself musing on a news item is not the same as a work of fiction.
If I had warned for triggers regarding child abuse, would you have clicked past anyway?
Of course you would be angry and disagree, but would the warning help brace you enough?