4 ms·

Between what he did to children, and what his parents did to him, it's hard to really blame the guy for having extreme sleep problems though.

applfanboysbgon 5mo ago
> what he did to children The media and the people who bought into their shameless attention-grabbing lies are the reason he had sleep problems. He was unanimously acquitted of all counts, but the media made his life into a living hell by consistently portraying him as a pedophile because it drove incredible engagement numbers. A justice system should be "innocent until proven guilty", and yet MJ was deemed guilty even after proven innocent. Longform read from an actually good journalist, if you care to learn for yourself: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/one-of-the-most-shameful_b_610258 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/one-of-the-most-shameful_b_61...
- iwontberude 5mo ago
  I mean, he may have never done a sexual thing but his pedophilia was quite obvious and the degeneracy of parents to allow their children to spend the night in the bed of a grown man is not really good for society.
  - jvanderbot 5mo ago
    According to you. (And me, but just saying, society is a big place to be homogenized)
  - lukan 5mo ago
    "he may have never done a sexual thing but his pedophilia was quite obvious" How is it obvious pedophilia, if you say he may have never done a sexual thing to them?
    - hilariously 5mo ago
      because he paid families to sleep in beds and hang out with their children, this is not a normal adult man behavior, and defending it on the internet is weird.
      - applfanboysbgon 5mo ago
        There is a wide, wide range between "normal behaviour" and "sex offender". I'm fine with being weird, and have no qualms defending the right of other people to be weird. Maybe he liked playing with children because adults are evil and only saw him as a moneybag to try to extricate a payday from. If he wasn't harming them, it's not my business.
        iwontberude 5mo ago
        Normalizing children spending the night in the beds of billionaires isn’t just weird, it’s probably dangerous for children at large. Personal freedom isn’t a blank check, we control what is acceptable as society. Michael had a secluded ranch with private security to ensure we would never know what he did with the children.
        lukan 5mo ago
        Those security guards have been questioned extensivly by court, though. And they did not seem of the loyal kind, take secrets to the grave, rather the contrary.
      - lukan 5mo ago
        It is not normal adult behavior and he likely should have had therapy. But it is not necessarily pedophilia. Because that means wanting to have sex with children. The explanation I heard is he wanted to be close to children to compensate for his own lack of innocent childhood. Children don't do sexual intercourse. Now if he was a child in his mind, then I as a parent would surely not have gave my children to his care, but this is still something very different from child molesting.
        5mo ago
  - jp_sc 5mo ago
    And you know this because of your firsthand experience observing it... or because the media told you so? Considering how readily the media is willing to lie for engagement, the truth is more likely to be the opposite of what they report.
- openasocket 5mo ago
  That article was written 16 years ago and misses a lot as a result. it doesn’t mention the new allegations, including those documented in Leaving Neverland. It also glosses over the accusations in the 1990s. It’s papered over that those allegations were lies, but he settled the lawsuit with them for over $23M.
  - applfanboysbgon 5mo ago
    Settling isn't an admission of guilt. It's plausible that he wanted to avoid the media circus that would inevitably result, and given that fighting it out in court was significantly more damaging to his reputation than settling the 90s case was despite being exonerated, he was probably right to settle. The article does also touch on the indications that those allegations were also not credible, although it doesn't do a deep dive. I don't give much credence to new allegations. Where were these allegations when he was alive, and why are people still publishing documentaries? You don't need a documentary to make an allegation. They're doing it because they want to make money, then. Off a dead man, who can't defend himself.
    - openasocket 5mo ago
      > I don't give much credence to new allegations. Where were these allegations when he was alive It’s worth noting that it’s common for it to take years or decades for victims to speak out against an abuser. Especially when the victims are children. Especially when the abuser is a prominent figure, like the literal King of Pop. I’m not going to try and convince you that these allegations are credible (though I believe they are), I just want you to think about how a child victim might behave in that situation. There’s almost never any objective evidence or 3rd party witnesses of abuse. It’s almost always the word of one person against another. And it may be years before a child victim even fully understands what was happening, and years beyond that to come to terms with it.
      - applfanboysbgon 5mo ago
        The most recent allegations are from the Cascios. Frank Cascio turned 18 in 1999. He would have been 30 by 2011, when he was writing a book and in the media defending Michael. He tried to get the book turned into a documentary, but when that fell through, he instead extorted Jackson's estate for millions of dollars by threatening to make public allegations, and then did it anyways despite being paid off, allegedly after trying to extort the estate again for $200 million. Another big allegation is from Wade Robson, who has turned the accusations into two documentaries. Wade Robson was 25 years old when, in 2005, he testified under oath that Jackson had never abused him as one of the witnesses called by the defense. He is now suing the Jackson estate for $400 million. It's not like I can't imagine a child victim growing up and taking time to come to terms with abuse, but these people were actively defending him as fully mature adults, only to suddenly turrn on his estate for some reason. I see a pattern in the accusations, and that pattern is $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
- sokoloff 5mo ago
  > yet MJ was deemed guilty even after proven innocent. He was not “proven innocent”; that’s not how the legal system works. He was “found not guilty” which is a much lower standard than “proven innocent”. (OJ Simpson was similarly found not guilty; do you think he was also “proven innocent”?)
  - applfanboysbgon 5mo ago
    I am aware. Being pedantically correct would ruin the intended rhetorical point of reversing the standard phrase, though. "Deemed guilty even after found not guilty" just doesn't really work. I even knew I was going to get a reply about OJ when I wrote it. Miscarriages of justice certainly do happen, but still we should broadly presume innocence until proven guilty, and none of the evidence or testimony in MJ's case came close to being as compelling as OJ's, nor was there any indication that the jury was making a political statement by acquitting.
    - appletrotter 5mo ago
      > Being pedantically correct would ruin the intended rhetorical point of reversing the standard phrase, though Maybe it's a sign
falsaberN1 5mo ago
It's not only not been proven, but the island man stuff and testimony of people like Culkin suggest he actually did the opposite of doing bad things to children and was most likely a scapegoat for the "elites" of Hollywood because of his race. At the very least drop an "allegedly" or something to make it sound a little tasteful.
- Barbing 5mo ago
  > a scapegoat for the "elites" of Hollywood because of his race Never connected Jackson to e.g. Weinstein - if allegation’s true that’s a horrible thing
malbs 5mo ago
Here's a podcast deep diving into what it was he did. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J1JQaIrxRU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J1JQaIrxRU

applfanboysbgon 5mo ago

> what he did to children The media and the people who bought into their shameless attention-grabbing lies are the reason he had sleep problems. He was unanimously acquitted of all counts, but the media made his life into a living hell by consistently portraying him as a pedophile because it drove incredible engagement numbers. A justice system should be "innocent until proven guilty", and yet MJ was deemed guilty even after proven innocent. Longform read from an actually good journalist, if you care to learn for yourself: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/one-of-the-most-shameful_b_610258 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/one-of-the-most-shameful_b_61...

iwontberude 5mo ago
I mean, he may have never done a sexual thing but his pedophilia was quite obvious and the degeneracy of parents to allow their children to spend the night in the bed of a grown man is not really good for society.
- jvanderbot 5mo ago
  According to you. (And me, but just saying, society is a big place to be homogenized)
- lukan 5mo ago
  "he may have never done a sexual thing but his pedophilia was quite obvious" How is it obvious pedophilia, if you say he may have never done a sexual thing to them?
  - hilariously 5mo ago
    because he paid families to sleep in beds and hang out with their children, this is not a normal adult man behavior, and defending it on the internet is weird.
    - applfanboysbgon 5mo ago
      There is a wide, wide range between "normal behaviour" and "sex offender". I'm fine with being weird, and have no qualms defending the right of other people to be weird. Maybe he liked playing with children because adults are evil and only saw him as a moneybag to try to extricate a payday from. If he wasn't harming them, it's not my business.
      - iwontberude 5mo ago
        Normalizing children spending the night in the beds of billionaires isn’t just weird, it’s probably dangerous for children at large. Personal freedom isn’t a blank check, we control what is acceptable as society. Michael had a secluded ranch with private security to ensure we would never know what he did with the children.
        lukan 5mo ago
        Those security guards have been questioned extensivly by court, though. And they did not seem of the loyal kind, take secrets to the grave, rather the contrary.
    - lukan 5mo ago
      It is not normal adult behavior and he likely should have had therapy. But it is not necessarily pedophilia. Because that means wanting to have sex with children. The explanation I heard is he wanted to be close to children to compensate for his own lack of innocent childhood. Children don't do sexual intercourse. Now if he was a child in his mind, then I as a parent would surely not have gave my children to his care, but this is still something very different from child molesting.
      - 5mo ago
- jp_sc 5mo ago
  And you know this because of your firsthand experience observing it... or because the media told you so? Considering how readily the media is willing to lie for engagement, the truth is more likely to be the opposite of what they report.
openasocket 5mo ago
That article was written 16 years ago and misses a lot as a result. it doesn’t mention the new allegations, including those documented in Leaving Neverland. It also glosses over the accusations in the 1990s. It’s papered over that those allegations were lies, but he settled the lawsuit with them for over $23M.
- applfanboysbgon 5mo ago
  Settling isn't an admission of guilt. It's plausible that he wanted to avoid the media circus that would inevitably result, and given that fighting it out in court was significantly more damaging to his reputation than settling the 90s case was despite being exonerated, he was probably right to settle. The article does also touch on the indications that those allegations were also not credible, although it doesn't do a deep dive. I don't give much credence to new allegations. Where were these allegations when he was alive, and why are people still publishing documentaries? You don't need a documentary to make an allegation. They're doing it because they want to make money, then. Off a dead man, who can't defend himself.
  - openasocket 5mo ago
    > I don't give much credence to new allegations. Where were these allegations when he was alive It’s worth noting that it’s common for it to take years or decades for victims to speak out against an abuser. Especially when the victims are children. Especially when the abuser is a prominent figure, like the literal King of Pop. I’m not going to try and convince you that these allegations are credible (though I believe they are), I just want you to think about how a child victim might behave in that situation. There’s almost never any objective evidence or 3rd party witnesses of abuse. It’s almost always the word of one person against another. And it may be years before a child victim even fully understands what was happening, and years beyond that to come to terms with it.
    - applfanboysbgon 5mo ago
      The most recent allegations are from the Cascios. Frank Cascio turned 18 in 1999. He would have been 30 by 2011, when he was writing a book and in the media defending Michael. He tried to get the book turned into a documentary, but when that fell through, he instead extorted Jackson's estate for millions of dollars by threatening to make public allegations, and then did it anyways despite being paid off, allegedly after trying to extort the estate again for $200 million. Another big allegation is from Wade Robson, who has turned the accusations into two documentaries. Wade Robson was 25 years old when, in 2005, he testified under oath that Jackson had never abused him as one of the witnesses called by the defense. He is now suing the Jackson estate for $400 million. It's not like I can't imagine a child victim growing up and taking time to come to terms with abuse, but these people were actively defending him as fully mature adults, only to suddenly turrn on his estate for some reason. I see a pattern in the accusations, and that pattern is $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
sokoloff 5mo ago
> yet MJ was deemed guilty even after proven innocent. He was not “proven innocent”; that’s not how the legal system works. He was “found not guilty” which is a much lower standard than “proven innocent”. (OJ Simpson was similarly found not guilty; do you think he was also “proven innocent”?)
- applfanboysbgon 5mo ago
  I am aware. Being pedantically correct would ruin the intended rhetorical point of reversing the standard phrase, though. "Deemed guilty even after found not guilty" just doesn't really work. I even knew I was going to get a reply about OJ when I wrote it. Miscarriages of justice certainly do happen, but still we should broadly presume innocence until proven guilty, and none of the evidence or testimony in MJ's case came close to being as compelling as OJ's, nor was there any indication that the jury was making a political statement by acquitting.
  - appletrotter 5mo ago
    > Being pedantically correct would ruin the intended rhetorical point of reversing the standard phrase, though Maybe it's a sign

falsaberN1 5mo ago

It's not only not been proven, but the island man stuff and testimony of people like Culkin suggest he actually did the opposite of doing bad things to children and was most likely a scapegoat for the "elites" of Hollywood because of his race. At the very least drop an "allegedly" or something to make it sound a little tasteful.

Barbing 5mo ago
> a scapegoat for the "elites" of Hollywood because of his race Never connected Jackson to e.g. Weinstein - if allegation’s true that’s a horrible thing

malbs 5mo ago

Here's a podcast deep diving into what it was he did. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J1JQaIrxRU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J1JQaIrxRU