Way to change goal posts there. This is about whether or not he molested them sexually, not whether or not it’s a great idea or harmless. That would be a different discussion.
I know I’m wondering out my ass here, but it’s an interesting question – if an adult has a child in their bed (clothed or unclothed may make a difference here) and is sexually aroused by him or her, but doesn’t touch, is it comparable to possessing child p*rnography?
A pet, the child of an acquaintance- same thing, right?
A parent can share a bed with a child and (usually) nobody will think there’s anything odd or sexual about it. When an adult repeateadly shares his bed, over the course of many years, with many children to whom he was not related, it’s a good deal stranger. None of it is proof for a court of law, but to me, it seems the most likely explanation for what we do know.
That is an interesting question. I know my automatic answer is “EW, gross,” but it’s definitely more nuanced than that, I think. Actually, I think an even broader question is what if an adult, knowing they are a pedophile but not acting on it, still spends time with children. Is that wrong? Is putting your arm around a kid (an act that an adult can do without it being creepy) weird if you’re attracted to them but no one knows it? On some level, is the kid going to realize this, thus making it too weird for a pedophile to ever get that close to a child?
Okay, fine. Do you really think the simplest answer as to why he shares a bed with children is that he wants to relive his childhood? There are people who do want to give children, their own or others, a better life than they have, but they manage to do it without sharing a bed. What makes him so special that he has to sleep next to a young boy to do it?
ETA: Agreed, I know we can’t say for sure anything. But does it sound innocent to you? I think it’s one thing to spend the night with someone when there’s no room and it has to be done. I don’t think we have to see sex everywhere. But to go out of your way to share a bed with a child when A) People already think you’re a child molester and B) There’s no good reason for it…why do it?
I really have no dog in this fight, but it does bother me that this keeps coming up.
$22 million probably didn’t mean much to him.
If you were facing these accusations, and you were as busy and famous and admired (and naive) as Michael Jackson, and you were told you could pay a nickel to just make it all go away, don’t you think you would?
You can say something like “no, I would fight until the end of my days to prove my innocence, sacrificing my time, fortune, and career, whatever it takes to make sure the truth wins out”. But sometimes people do go through all that and the truth still doesn’t win. The legal system makes mistakes. The “court of public opinion” makes A LOT of mistakes. If the alternative to that ugly fight that you might lose is giving up an inconsequential amount of money, you can’t tell me you wouldn’t be tempted. Well you can, but I won’t believe you.
The payoff didn’t make everything go away, it just kept him out of jail. Part f what’s involved in making that payoff is knowing that an awful lot of people are going to see it as an admission of guilt. It’s a move which can’t help but damage the reputation and career. I think the only reason to pay that much (and $22 million isn’t chump change even to Michael Jackson) is if there is a fear that a criminal trial could end in conviction.
Even when I was 12 year old boy, I didn’t share beds with other 12 year old boys. One of the reasons I think the “reliving his childhood” hypothesis doesn’t work is that sharing beds is not something that real boys that age do or have any desire to do.
Keep in mind that with OJ, we were allowed to watch the court case and saw the evidence presented.
Who said they’re the same thing? The object is immaterial because it is simply not the case that merely sharing a bed with some creature requires one must hump it. Don’t conflate the issues.
It’s not proof in a court of law because it isn’t evidence of sex. It’s evidence that someone doesn’t understand what our society values in the terms of boundaries, but that doesn’t make it illegal, let alone child molestation.
It’s curious that you keep throwing out all these fallacies. I haven’t said I think he’s reliving his childhood. Indeed, I’ve said he’s out of touch with such a thing as propriety, but I’m not going to assume that he’s automatically a pedophile just because it’s an easy conclusion to draw. He made many, many poor choices in life despite the faulty assertions that he was a shrewd businessman. Shrewd business people don’t ordinarily wind up broke. He was more like a kid in a candy store just grabbing everything he wanted.
He need a serious dose of reality. He, like other celebrities in my view, live in a small world which is removed from the world most other people live into. In a very real sense, they buy into their own PR.
What it sounds like isn’t relevant. What can be shown to me is. Also, you focus in on a few oddities and ignore all other data. The people making claims against him don’t have a great deal of credibility to start with. Those with money frequently throw it at problems to make them go away because it’s convenient to do so, and they have the resources. At the time, he had the resources.
I wouldn’t have settled if someone levied such a charge against me. But I’m not a recluse or a whack-job. And I enjoy crushing liars. And I have a burning need for truth to be known. But to assume that his mindset is anywhere near mine I would have to ignore the overwhelming list of odd behaviors he has that most people don’t. To be sure, he was troubled on a deep level. Still, that doesn’t make him a child molester. That one of the alleged victims couldn’t even identify his pecker says much to me.
I don’t much care what people think of me. Nor does it matter how many people agree that they believe it; that doesn’t make it true. I can’t think of a good reason to sleep with a kid regularly, particularly during the awkward period of puberty. But I don’t know the circumstances, and neither does anyone else here. None of was there, and there’s no credible evidence anywhere that he broke any law relating to what we’re discussing here. But even if there is no good reason to do it, I can’t imagine that it’s actually harmful.
I don’t sleep with other people as a rule, even when I’m dating them, at least not for a long, long, LONG time. It’s difficult for me to fall asleep in general, so another body (yes, even my cat) exacerbate that. But I can’t think of how it would actually emotionally harm the person in question. But I’m not a psychological expert or anything. That notwithstanding, I’m generally limiting my inquiry into the topic of the OP, which is pederasty.
This is true, in as far as that if he wasn’t such a high profile figure, we might never have been exposed to two weeks’ worth of continuous, detailed coverage.
Of course it looks as squicky as hell on the surface. Hell, even when you look closely, there’s clearly some sort of pathology at work.
Still, if you looked at all the evidence and testimony presented, the defense’s side is consistent, and witnesses for the prosecution had stories which weren’t even self-consistent, much less in accord with each other.
This has nothing to do with Michael Jackson as an artist. He actively annoyed me at the height of his popularity, and for the last twenty years he’s hardly registered on my consciousness, apart from OHMYGODWHATHAPPENEDTOHISFACE?!?!
I’m looking at the facts of the case as dispassionately as you might reasonably expect of anyone, and they don’t add up to “child molester.”
Hell, no. I think it’s squicky as hell, I think that the parents who allowed their children to participate in the described “sleepovers” were extremely ill-advised to do so, and I sure as hell wouldn’t want any kid of mine modelling their behaviour off of observations of Michael Jackson.
“That’s not normal!” is in no way interchangable with “That’s sexual abuse!” though. If you’re going to hang the “child molester” sign on someone, you’d better be able to make a persuasive argument that they’ve actually molested children. The prosecution utterly failed to do this in The People V. Michael Jackson, and this has everything to do with why he was acquitted. To suggest that the same evidence would have been sufficient to convict some other weirdo is an insult to the judicial process.
Your comparison conflated the issues with a very silly comparison.
It’s not proof of sex, I agree. It’s one piece of evidence of an inappropriate relationship, with sexual involvement being one type of inappropriate relationship here.
I find the idea that he simply “didn’t understand boundaries” unconvincing, that’s all. I’m aware none of this is proof, I’m talking about the likeliest explanation for what we do know. Given what he said and what’s been reported, I think it’s more likely he was a pedophile than someone who just didn’t understand how society felt about children.
But they do add up to “pedophile.”
Only chosen to point out the absurdity of the original position. Sleeping together doesn’t mean fucking. This thread is about him allegedly having fucked children. Someone made the very bad argument that implies that sleeping together requires fucking. My absurd counterpoint was meant to be as ridiculous as the original position.
So, essentially you’re left with making my point for me: it’s possible he shagged them. It’s also possible he didn’t. And there’s 0 evidence that he ever did. Yes, sex with a kid is one type among many other types of inappropriate contact.
It’s curious how in one second you can say “I know it isn’t proof, and there’s no evidence to support my position, but I won’t let that stand in my way! It’s the likeliest explanation!”
From the first page of the first Vanity Fair article:
Apart from the private zoo, the giant sundial made of flowers, the merry-go-round that plays “Like a Virgin,” the miniature choochoo train, the hall filled with every video game imaginable, the theater stocked with nearly every film and videocassette ever made for children…
Wait, back the truck up to this part:
** the merry-go-round that plays “Like a Virgin,”**
The merry-go-round that plays “Like a Virgin”. Like a fucking Virgin. As the song on a merry-go-round. :eek: That pretty much seals it for me. The pasty-skinned son-of-a-bitch was a kiddy diddler.
Probably because (according to the accuser’s own testimony,) the chime which was triggered by these motion sensors was inaudible in the bedroom, which would have made it singularly useless as a sinister “Inxnay on the iddykay iddlingday!” alert system.
And sitting on a strange old man’s knee isn’t something most kids would beg their parents to do, but put the old guy in a Santa suit… Hugging a complete stranger is a great idea so long as that stranger is dressed as Minnie Mouse, etc…
Of course Michael Jackson did some things that were startlingly inappropriate in the light of his accusations: What a pitifully stupid idea for a man in his position to continue sharing a bed with children*, but I really think he could be seen on a continuum (albeit at its farthest reaches) with Santa, Ronald McDonald, etc. We do not know that he abused this position. What we do know, or at least what is evident, is that his having been in this position leads many to believe the worst more easily. (I’m not claiming to know who’s right.)
The ‘You’d be singing a different tune if it was one of the teeming millions sleeping in a bed with children.’ doesn’t quite make an accurate comparison in my book.
If we’re talking about Michael Jackson, we’re talking about Michael Jackson.
That doesn’t make anything illegal or immoral excusable, but it could perhaps make the unusual more understandable. Maybe.
The sleeping in a bed with children issue, to me, is distinct from the more precise and graphic allegations of abuse. There is something irresistably persuasive about the vanity fair articles, and the transcripts of the children’s testimonies, but the shock component and revulsion at the topic doesn’t necessarily make it true. Does it?
Finally, it bothers me that anyone expressing doubt, or attempting to discuss the unknowns about Michael Jackson is so frequently responded to as though they tacetly condone pedophilia. What’s worse is the implication that we’re blinded by the sparkly glove. I would have thought it more respectful to assume that anyone despises the idea of pedophilia until they declare otherwise.
*Y’know, when I saw him saying that it’s the most beautiful thing in the world to share your bed with a child, I always read it as him expressing that in an ideal world it could be a beautiful thing - just doing so in the Michael Jackson ‘camera’s rolling’ persona. Realistically, the last thing he was going to say was, ‘Yeah, it’s pretty squicky, huh?’ I don’t think the man represented himself well at all, guilty or not, because he didn’t seem like he really knew how people saw him anymore.
Not only did I make your point for you, I did it unprompted, before you asked me. So you correctly deduced that my opinion was an opinion. Can’t get anything past you, can I?
I think it’s curious that you’re pretending I expressed my viewpoint fanatically and unequivocally when I made it clear from the beginning that it was my opinion, based on the incomplete evidence that is available.
The evidence isn’t incomplete; it’s non-existent. For you to say the conclusion is the likely result, one would think you’d have to have some evidence to support your claim; to date, you’ve offered none --only speculation.
/shrug
You’re speculating as much as I am. I don’t have facts about what happened when he went to bed with those kids, neither do you. (That’s what I was saying about the record being incomplete.) We do know, by his admission, he often went to bed with children. We know he paid the family of one child a lot of money after being accused of molestation, we know he was charged with abuse by the family of another child.
Did he pay off the first family to just make the problem go away, irrespective of guilt? It’s possible, but he was accused sometime in mid 1993 and didn’t settle until January 1, 1994. So if he was trying to make the problem go away, he failed completely, since it had been in the news for months by then. He wasn’t charged criminally, but if he’d wanted to keep it quiet, he could have paid them off many months earlier and dealt with less scandal. I won’t argue that the man was wise with his money, or that he never would have blown $22 million foolishly, but if he was trying to make this go away, he had many opportunities to do so and apparently did not choose to go that route until the problem had already exploded.