Michael Jackson

[C4tintherug]

Why has Michael Jackson not been cancelled?

I don’t understand why a musical has been made out of his music, and why his music is played at school discos and is still everywhere.

After I watched the documentary where the men described how he raped them, I won’t listen to his music at all, in fact, I feel a sense of disgust when it is played publicly.

I don’t understand why we seem to have cancelled everyone else except him. Is it because he died before he was officially found guilty?

Totally agree.
Radio/tv turned off if his music comes on. I know he was never convicted but along the same line RKelly, convicted paedophile/groomer .....He was initially found not guilty. Allowed to continue the abuse before more details.came.out, thanks to some.brave individuals, and he was convicted
I watched the documentary where people.still adore him for his music. I know some US stations have banned him but j can't listen to him at all.

35 - which, l grant you is quite a bit, but not ‘upwards of 45’. And if you actually read my posts l am not defending him personally, or his behaviour, which l’ve described as odd and concerning, but not proof in itself of abuse, otherwise he would have been convicted. Simply saying that he was acquitted and regardless of people’s ‘gut feelings’ that was because there wasn’t enough evidence to convict beyond reasonable doubt. He’s dead it’s going to take something extraordinary to overturn that verdict, if it’s even possible. At no point have l offered any opinion as to whether l personally think he’s guilty or not, or even questioned, never mind denigrated the testimony of the witnesses. And you quoted me before posting, so it wasn’t unreasonable to assume your comments were directed at me.

It's complex.

I have no doubt he abused those children. But, the time to take action would have been while it was happening. Lots of people complicit in why that wasn't so - a large scale systemic failure that is all wrapped up in how fame, money, power and patriarchy operates.

Probably the best thing is focusing on doing better, now.

On a related note I do think we've become quite puritanical but also scattershot with this whole notion of cancelling artistes especially after death. It was different before, when we had religion to tell us what was right and wrong. Not that I want to return to that but there were clear rules. Now we just decide that something makes us uncomfortable, retrospectively, we look at it through our personal purity lens and the opprobrium begins and thanks to how information gets around so fast and in such volume before you know it every fucker is shouting about it on the internet.

Scratch the surface and a lot of men are problematic in one way or another, because the world enables problematic men to thrive. Hell, a lot of people in general are problematic. We all have bad days, are mean to people, get short tempered etc. If you only ever consumed art made by people who are nice all the time you'd be closing yourself off to a heck of a lot of content. And ofc in 40 years' time those same people wouldn't be viewed as nice because at some point they'll have said something that people in 40 years disagree with.

You keep banging on about that one court case. There are multiple other victims, often reporting a similar pattern of grooming and abuse. The police investigating over the decades believe there are more victims. There are others who are known to have been paid off. Do yourself a favour and read the Slate article I linked. Here it is again:

Michael Jackson sexual abuse allegations: The complete list of accusations. (slate.com)

And for someone who is "not defending him" you have posted let's just say an extraordinary number of posts on this thread.

Jesus H. Christ.

And as l said, none of them are defending him personally.

Since you appear to be trolling my posts l’ll save you the trouble of finding this one copied and pasted below, in which l tried once more to explain what l meant. Note the question at the end - the same question l posed to the OP in response to her picking up the point. Interesting that neither of them are interested in responding, in spite of one poster doggedly tagging me because l wasn’t answering a totally irrelevant question to their understanding.

Mirabai · Yesterday 16:29

I’m inferring you don’t actually have kids as this approach is very strange.

You either believe your kid of you don’t. If you do, you know they’re telling the truth about abuse and the perpetrator is found not guilty - if you took the approach you outlined above you would simply lose your child’s respect and trust for good.

Rosscameasdoody · Yesterday 16:46

I give up. And yes I do have children. I just don’t believe in standing by a family member if there is any doubt as to the veracity of their accusations against someone, and that, as I’ve explained several times, would depend on the circumstance - whether they were a truthful person, whether their evidence had been adequately weighed during the trial, and whether I had any reason to doubt them even before the verdict had been returned. It’s not black and white.

Let me ask you a question. If your adult child was accused of being a paedophile and they were adamant that they were innocent, would you continue to believe them even if they were convicted ?

I am not "trolling", as you weirdly put it, your posts. You said you had "never denigrated the testimony of the witnesses", which was not how I remember your postings, and I went back to see if I had misinterpreted something and came upon this gem.

Good for you your life was not blighted, ruined, or cut short because of the actions of some pedophile. Perhaps you would not be so doggedly... whatever it is you're being on this thread.

It’s better than yours .

Objective ? Recognising that not being privy to all the evidence in front of the jury when they retired to consider their verdict means l’m not in a position to judge either way ? Forgive me if l’m wrong but your last paragraph makes me wonder if this issue is somehow personal for you. If that’s the case then l apologise and maybe it’s best to draw a line under this.

That was one court case. You seem to be deliberately overlooking all the other victims who have come forward, who have been privately paid off, those who the police are aware of, and those who are seeking currently recognition of his crimes against them as little boys.

Objective is not the term I would use to describe your posts on this thread.

I don't understand this either. I realise it hasn't been 'proven', but the notion that those men were lying in the documentary to make money or get attention or whatever is ridiculous to me.

One of them is a massively successful high profile choreographer for a start - surely by coming and speaking out against somebody considered such a legend in the music industry he would be if anything only risking irreparable damage to his reputation and livelihood.

Both men have risked and likely brought to fruition the life sentence of people calling them liars at best and sending them constant abuse and death threats at worst upon both themselves and likely their families. And they would have known this beforehand.

I also think if they were lying, why not do this when he was alive and they could cash in on it? Probably because in a twisted way they loved the parts of him which weren't abusive and couldn't betray him and put him through that while he was around.

You only need to watch that ridiculous interview where Michael is saying that if he is guilty of anything it is of loving children all over the world. It is so overblown and such an obvious attempt to paint himself basically as a saint that it should have rang major alarm bells at the time and certainly should now. Normal people who have nothing to hide simply don't speak about themselves that way.

I get that 'cancelling' him without a conviction might feel unfair to some people. Although anybody familiar with the law will tell you that trials are not really about finding the truth but about painting a feasible enough picture to convince a jury. However, actively celebrating him as though this doesn't exist is absolutely unfathomable to me. Isn't it better that we don't risk completely letting a child abuser off the hook? What kind of message does that send to other victims of rich and/or powerful abusers?

There are lots of abusers in Hollywood however I've never been convinced that Michael Jackson was one of them for the reasons PPs have cited.

What I do believe is that MJ became a convenient scapegoat to take the attention off high-profile individuals who WERE up to no good, who have never - and will never - be held to account.

Almost like: 'Don't look over there, look over here!'

I mean, just who IS on Epstein's List!?

For what it's worth, I don't think the two men in the documentary were looking for him to be cancelled.

Both stated that he had good qualities and showed them kindness, in spite of the abuse.

I think really what they wanted was what most victims of abuse want; to be seen, acknowledged and most of all believed.

Ah, mumsnet. Where the overwhelming consensus is that children can be traumatized by things like moving house once, being served food they don't like, having siblings and not getting fresh school uniforms every September. And yet there's pages of debate on whether or not a grown man who made families financially dependent on him and then slept with their children in his bed did anything harmful.

OJ Simpson was also found not guilty in court... Just saying.

Nothing was ever proven and at least one of the accusers admitted he lied

I think it's very difficult to get to the bottom of the truth when there's such an imbalance of power and wealth. Did they lie or did he make it worth their while to say that? Celebrities have paid off accusers for decades and turned to super injunctions to cover up their less appealing acts.

Having read the evidence, I think he's guilty and being found not guilty clearly doesn't mean he's innocent either. Celebs can afford the best lawyers and in his case, being an iconic pop star worked in his favour (albeit I'm sure plenty on the prosecuting side were keen to chalk up a win).

Hell would freeze over before I'd let my sons sleep in an adult's bed in those circumstances. It's grim whatever way you look at it. And yes, I have stopped listening to MJ songs as it feels wrong to celebrate his work with the question mark of child sexual abuse hanging over him.

Absolutely 👏

Why do you think that though?
I can't come up with one reason that a full grown man would continuously want to share a bed or bedroom with little boys...
And it was always boys, never little girls so to me it seems he had a type.
I really don't understand why people make excuses for him, he waved it under everyone's nose... I LIKE SHARING MY BED WITH CHILDREN!! They were his words!
The excuse his fans like to make about his lack of childhood is absurd, I'd bet money that if you questioned 99% of pedophiles and rapists they will have a sad childhood story to tell.
Historical sexual abuse allegations rarely comes with evidence, doesn't mean Micheal Jackson is innocent, the evidence for me is that boy after boy have consistent accounts of what happened. Add that to the fact that Micheal Jackson's admitted sleeping with them, while at the same time lying about surgeries and dangling babies he'd paid for out of windows paints a picture of a man who is out for himself, with no regard for the pain he was causing these little boys.

He's a grave danger to children on this basis alone.

On the basis of material found posthumously at his Neverland Ranch, if it walks, quacks and swims like a duck, it's a duck.

But indeed, who cares?

Sleeping with other people's children is a boundary between an adult male and a prepubescent boy which should never, ever be crossed. This constitutes at the very best a serious safeguarding failure. The worst is a place we don't need to go to here, but certainly the images and documentation found at his home points to that conclusion.

I grieve for all the boys who, like so many other victims of sexual abuse, go unheard and unbelieved.

Fuck Jackson. I'm not sorry in the slightest that he's dead. He'll never harm or endanger another child again and that, at least, is a blessing.

He could have slept with adults, not little kids, if he wanted to feel safe. Plenty of kids out there have diffucult lives, become carers at young age and don't use that as an excuse to sleep with children.

@SerafinasGoose Well said, I completely agree with you.