Tuesday, a former maid, the mother of one of his accusers, testified she saw the cleanly Jacko shower with an 8 year old boy, Wade Robson, who is now a choreographer.
Yesterday court was recessed while Jackson attended the funeral of Johnnie Cochran Jr.
But today the bunker buster bomb hit: Neverland nightshift security guard from '91 and '94, Ralph Chacon, told the jury he heard Jackson shower with, then saw him caress, kiss passionately, then perform oral sex on a young boy in late-'92 or early-'93.
"I was thinking: 'What's going on in there? Grown man in the shower with a boy... it wasn't right. I saw Mr Jackson caressing the boy's hair, he was kissing him," said Chacon.
"He put the little boy's penis in his mouth."
"Did you actually see that?" prosecutor Tom Sneddon asked.
"Yes." And he added that Jackson's hands were "all over" the 9 or 10 year-old boy's body, the boy who won the $20+ million settlement from Jackson in '94.
Chacon is one of five former employees to unsuccessfully sue the King of Pop for wrongful termination, who were then successfully countersued by Jackson for court costs.
In cross-examination, lead defense attorney Thomas Mesereau asked, "This is a good way to get even with him, isn't it, sir?"
Sneddon objected; the judge sustained.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - mihos
Im not a jackson fan, don't buy or listen to his music and detest jackson syncophantical groupies.
But this trial is a bunch of dog shit.
Everyone smells its though they aren't absolutely certain if they tracked it into the house and nobody puts nose to the ground to "do the rounds' to diligently find out who has tracked the offending calamity in with their shoes.
The salacious gossip reported as news receives three times the coverage as any cross-examination that reveals how transparent the motives of these accusers have been to date.
As long as the dog poo isn't on your shoes and the booze is free, why worry about it? The party continues without one person stopping the music long enough to track down the party or parties that have tracked the filth into the house and no one but the house owner is going to be responsible for cleaning up the carpet and furniture.
My friends and colleagues have been covering the case for next years college
level courses on the American justice system and media course.
One glaring issue that comes to the fore
in examination of the recorded data collected from media reporting and print both electric and paper is that racism actually is alive and well in this case.
Even Dan Abrams a veritable corner stone of objective ethicals in reporting took an incredulous tone over jackson's black luminary posit ( itself another example of stupidity on the part of jackson's hubris inflated persona).
Regardless of jackson's appearance, he is black. Both his parents are black and all of his siblings are black. Most of the people who we have documented as consistently contributing to his musical ambitions are also black.
What is more, we found both his parent's parent's surnames listed in the Daws Report of Freedmen and Black Indians.
Evidentally both sides of the family are primarily Black Indian and both sides of the family were rejected from Indian settlements though some were slaves of Cherokee or Chocktaw because of the appearance of the families clearly belied generations of Indian African intermarriage.
The most compelling information gleaned over the last few months concerns the presence of partial albinism ( vitiligo) in upwards of five percent of relocated Chickasaw Indians and Black Indians from the state of Alabama where Mrs. Jackson's family came from. In those days, this condition of vitiligo was considered a mark of inferiority and as a sign of race mixing between whites and blacks, an intolerable event in the minds of a majority of whites that had never been exposed to blacks or Indians and the smaller minorty that had.
Regardless, vitiligo and complete albinism is a very common occurence in many African regions including those that exploited their population for the slave trade. The condition when present in dark skinned and Asiatic peoples has
resulted in unique forms of discrimination often from the individual with the condition- the individuals own family. In poor, illiterate communities this condition would present a real problem for Black Indian families obliged to march the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma. As a condition that tends to behave symptomatically to irreversable
immune system problems, the de pigmentation tends to increase exponentially under stress and illness.
A person with a few white, half dollar sized marks on their chest might have their entire upper body depigmented three months later as they marched through inclimate conditions and starvation to Indian territory, only to be turned away because of the condition.
That the Jackson family as a whole are neither Black nor White but persecuted for their natural features, largely North American Indian, ( court tv and fox tabloid reporting discussing high cheekbones and reduced lips etc) reveals the level of blatant, unambiguous presuppositional bias against non caucasians still acceptable in this country.
This case has already been tried in the court of public opinion, something the overzealous prosecutors are betting on.
I don't know if jackson is a child predator. The manner in which the case is being reported and the information gleaned by our student interns and our group of academics with no special interest in the case or jackson, point to the not likely deduction.
The visceral reaction most people have for jackson is telling.
If the person is white, middle class and
educated like most of the professional reporters involved in the perpetuation of salacious rumours, it is understandable. Because they themselves and their parents likely abhor racism they can't imagine that anything they could possibly be engendered in their minds could be racist.
So trying jackson for looking like a white woman when he is supposed to remain a cute little pickaninny like superstar Gary Coleman or Emmanual Lewis
is acceptable.
There is an underlying resentment that at least two generations have for jackson's obvious physical transformation.
The reporting suggests to us that the jacksons never mattered enough to the white establishment to enjoy the sort of quality journalism affored to white peers of jackson, for example Kurt Russell.
So most Americans don't have any idea who Jackson has ever been except what the media saw fit to project of the jacksons that was considered socially acceptable of a black person in the early seventies and later in the safe eighties.
When Nancy Grace reports on national television that jackson has never had a girl friend and never had special relationships with black boys suggests to us that she knows everything she knows about jackson by reading tabloids and celebrity rag magazines. She followed his career through media.
when she and her colleagues repeat time and again that there is something unseemly about jackson's relationship with young men and adolescent boys while simultaneously unerreporting and generally omitting that he enjoys heterosexual adult magazines including barely legal- suggests at least in my mind that he is wise to not have sleepovers with young girls.
Anyway, the whole case seems like a mockery of the justice system and is more about the aggrendizement of overzealous prosecutors that want soe claim to fame than child molestation.
anyone who has seen jackson perform for even ten minutes knows that his sexual appetite if he has one- would hardly be contained by reach arounds and tickling bouts wiht under age boys.
There is no logic being applied here, only the racist ideology of a mindset that believes black people are oversexed subhumans who rape children.
Jackson's appearance is proof in their convoluted thinking that he is guilty because he doesnt appear to want to look like a black man anymore.
Any of these court reporters could have done the small amount of homework we have managed over the last few months and provided the public with a very different coverage that didn't dispossess jackon's family from their inheritence and didn't assault the entire world with seedy unsubstantiated rumours.
What is jackson is dying of AIDS or some other immune system disorder Lupus or hepatitus or all the above?
He could be blackmailed easily by anyone who knew why he spends so much time at the doctors office and why he wears diapers. They would also know if they cared, that this trial would likely kill him but not his money.
2 - Joe
Well, I don't know about any of that, but that sure is a hell of a headline, Eric.
3 - Eric Olsen
um, okay, some very interesting bits and pieces of information spread among broad generalizations. You've done all this research? What have you learned? That might be helpful in analyzing your allegations and dismissals.
4 - jane
Mihos
In cases concerning alleged child abuse the concern is always about the child's welfare.
It is not uncommon for prosecuters and defense alike to bring up habitual behavior to demonstrate the personality of their clients, whether it be good or bad.
Jackson has had a long history of being involved in inappropriate behavior with young boys and, as far as I can see, has gotten away with it because of his fame or through buying people off.
Quite honestly, I do not think that this case can be wholly reduced to a simple argument about race or the desire for police and prosecuters to seek fame.
I believe it has everything to do with stopping a clearly disturbed 46 year old man harming more young boys in his quest for personal pleasure.
And, as an aside, as I have seen Jackson's physique and face change via multiple plastic surgeries not related to his supposed vitiligo, I have wondered: If this is what is happening on the outside what is happening on the inside?
5 - mihos
Rereading what I wrote above, I realized again why it is I never write on the fly especially distracted with babysitting duties.
I'll apologize for my rambling typos.
Though still distracted with young people, i'll attempt to clarify a few points. Really, the objective here is to
just really make a concerted effort to
revitalize intelligent (sic) writers and readers to use their critical thinking skills and make some noise with it.
The research end of this project is compiled by four student interns. Their responsibility is to record or make arrangements to procure news reports and court tv reports covering the jackson case.
The second group collect internet reports.
The responsibility I volunteered for, focuses on the origin of the Jackson family, an effort to better understand the phenomenon of the Jackson family's celebrity. After listening to students and colleagues discussing the case I thought that it would be crucial to get an understanding of who the Jackson family is, how they see themselves we need to get an objective grasp of where they have been, in the United States of
America that we modern people tend to try and turn a blind eye to.
Compilation and data crunching involves counting specific words used, and recording points made and any major omissions.
Listening to compiled data on the case, (I live and work in extremely rural academic Vermont, not known for its interest in media or celebrity to put it lightly.)... it is stunning how much time is spent discussing Jackson's appearance. Two of our project members are not sighted. They brought the issue to my attention. I've become so desensitized to the rhetoric I forgot my ethics. History has taught us that to prejudge people by their appearance is to perpetuate a grievous error.
Why had the issue of Jackson's appearance become such a volley of subjective? Is he being tried for his appearance? And what if anything do we know about his appearance? Perhaps his liberal use of cosmetics,wigs and costume are a valiant effort to obscure some larger issue, a failing health for example?
The point is, public opinion has nothing invested in accuracy when it comes to popular news reporting. There is very little accountability available for people that have been slighted by subjective or inaccurate reporting.
Anyone that has had an elderly relative suffer through cancer, has probably been witness to the lengths the afflicted occasionally travel in efforts to disguise their fear of their failing health and especialy the appearance of infirmity.
A person of such enormous celebrity with
so much riding on their vitality is made vulnerable by the weight of their burden- the aptitude to perform well.
A person that has been the primary resource for not only his family, but also the family's attorneys, publicists and tax auditors, may have an unrealistic concept of their image.
This can only be exacerbated by an entertainment industry that lacks ethics , that has proven to be nothing less than a fat opportunist and one that is prejudical and given to ingrateful omission of past works and royalties.
The issue that comes to mind in viewing the reporting and very recently the blog dialogue, is a general lack of empathy and objectivity in analysis presented by the majority of those
that take the time to weigh in.
Just about anyone weighing in has an opinion and we are all entitled to have our own opinions. Studying the judical system and cultural history, often in the context of the great progress that is civil rights, the lack of empathy for jackson or his perported victims in reporting is frightening.
Where is the outrage for what has just transpired under our noses? I don't jsut mean the last presidential elections.
Jackson's civil rights were sold off for ratings and his right to due process has been robbed by the medium that has taken on the responsibility to report facts to the general population.
It stings actually.This could and does happen to anyone.
Middle to upper class people that own or work for these major media companies are largely White. The same can be said for those responsible for the largest percentage of researching,producing,directing, editing
and presenting "news". This means that the principle source of evidence in the court of public opinion is formulated and edited for public consumption by
the same portion of the population that has been taken to task for several successive generations of insensitive dealings with minorities
and an alarming proclivity to marginalize and even wilfully omitt
the contributions of individuals that are not White and many that are for that matter. Either way, a few people decide who is going to be popular enough to have access to a fan base and remain popular enough to become mini industries into themselves. When the mini industry begins to work independentally free of the old boy's network it becomes isolated and often fails entirely.
How many people of colour for example, that would include Persians, Chinese, BAsque, Portugese, Italians, Catalinans, Greeks,Turks, East Indians, Amerindians, Black or Arab peoples did you ever see watching the generations most watched tv shows? Friends, Seinfeld, and Growing Pains for example were alot like Happy Days, Eight is Enough and the BRady Bunch. Even though it is all pretend, the entertainment industry can't pretend
that people that live in NYC live, eat and travel with people that are not White. Why? Because the highest paying advertisors are more likely to sign exclusivity contracts with popular television shows that fit their demographic. People of colour are simply not the largest consumers addressed in advertising campaigns?
I don't know. And now we have a huge push to popularize the least intellectually honest music and art from the black community. Mysogynistic, violent and materialistic, but mostly just vapid "black" culture now assaults anyone daring to turn on the tv or radio.
Never mind that is a huge insult to most black folk, white kids are eating it up and acting out the worst parts of it.
All white tv now puts out all black shows that dont have the imagination to include anyone not black in the plot lines of the story. Stereotype sells?
You and I may not like racism but our apathy or tendency to accept its more subtle forms leads us to reaquaintence with a stranger we avowed to never let in to our conscious .
I mentioned Kurt Russell earlier because as a year by year contemporary of Michael Jackson's, his career contrasts greatly with Jackson's though they have been of equal popularity to the same entertainment industry for the length of their careers. But the industry Im describing, is the contract career. Obviously they work in very different fields but for the longest period of their respective careers, that is until about fifteen years ago, the same media outlets were responsible for reporting news and information about the contract players, whose only responsibility is to make their contract's holders and their investors to cover their investment and bring home a profit.
Russell had talent and success and the industry rewarded him for it by keeping his image in the press and making him the focus of attention in
films, television, magazines and even records. Scandals made their way to the tabloids. But Russell's child hood status as contract holder included unfettered access to a media industry within the entertainment industry umbrella. Disney needed to make numbers and Russell has a picture ready for release promote the picture and promote Russell. Magazines geared to meet the impulses of young girls and their boyfriends would be provided with the images necessary to keep one's profile on the front page. And even while Russell was still in elementary school, he had contracts and commercials and an income.
Jackson and his siblings were watching Russell's career and the Osmonds.
But the environment of media was very different in the early seventies than it is now. The generation at the heads of the companies, the collective administrators and their handlers, they had different perceptions of what the American family looked like. They had a different experience in that America was
divided racially until the seventies and then, and now it is still present in many communities. Black and Latin communities can be as discriminatory as whites in many a regretable instance.
The consumer base the industry desired to attract fit a demographic that no longer exists. But it was very much in place during the Jackson five years.
Jackson may have been popular as a child. But as the record clearly shows, black performers were at a premium and as a token black child MJ and his brothers were afforded some press.
But the print media was not responsible for selling the Jackson five as much as the music and television. Regardless, the Jackson brothers simply did not have equal opportunity that their white peers did. They had to work just as hard and just like their white peers, there was no guarantee of continued success.
This must have been exspecially stressful for a family from Gary Indiana
that lived in a two bedroom house with nine children.
We tend to forget how much black were excluded from popular press in the sixties, seventies and eighties.
for recollection, have a look at the tv or walk through the video store looking for east Asian extras, secondary characters, or leads in movies of the last forty years. East Asians have contributed so much to this country, it seems nothing short of disheartening.
American Indians no one wants to talk about the history of genocide and suppression of these indigine cultures.
That fact becomes all the more ironic when research into the Black Indians
and Indian relocation revealed to me a whole chapter in American history I ws completely unaware of.
The Jackson family's recent ancestors were not only slaves just a few generations past-thats a great grandmother for a sixty year old.
They were also Seminole and Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Cherokee Amerindian.
Their recent ancestors experienced Slavery, the Civil War, the Trail of Tears, The Great Depression, WW1 and WW2- Buckwheat, the Korean War, Kennedy and martin Luther King assasinations, Vietnam, the Race Riots and Muhamed Ali.
But no one had ever seen anything like Michael Jackson.
He was the most colourful and delightful of all our great minstrels and pickaninnies. Talented too. But the black man's sexuality was taboo in Jackson's childhood experience. He ceased to be popular when his weak, over exposed and manufactured competitors ,like Donny Osmand and Shawn Cassidy's careers were at their peak.Their were no mainstream black sex symbols. Marvin Gaye was a cult favorite but children's movies and television were growing with their white middle class demographic.
Jackson was out of running and contracts dried up.
Puberty wasn't kind to Jackson.
His career bottomed out and his siblings careers were in a worse situation.
Late adolescence tends to mark the point when vitiligo makes its first appearance and it frequentally appears on or around the genitalia. In a dark skinned family with six brothers it can't have been a good omen for their futures.
Whatever the case, Jackson's voice stayed high and unthreatening and he learned to walk like jiminy cricket and mickey mouse. He dated white teen starlets that also seemed clueless.
And he moved to NYC to star in the Wiz, his first time away from home as an adult man with money in his pocket.
The cast, crew and especially the dancers introduced MJ to studio 54.
Apparently, he just about lived there for a few months.
Quite a night owl evidentally. Two albums later MJ is certified superstar.
And his face keeps getting paler. His weight is approaching Karen Carpenter's
and he is frequently hospitalized for dehydration during concert tours.
The press apparently unconcerned with reality, started publishing mean spirited reports based on rumours about his appearance. Was he ill? Was his biggest and best performance the appearance of perfect health?
I don't know, but based on what we are learning about vitiligo and its immune system disorders, tabloid tv and the
history of dark skinned people with the condition- the special discrimination suffered, i can appreciate now what i sense is a giant snowball that is rolling on its own. It doesnt matter what is true or not at this point.
Anything published about this Jackson is so filled with hyperbole or bias its really more a representation of commercial interest than biography.
If I accept that he is suffering from immune disorders and that vitiligo is one symptom, and the weaker he appears the louder his imageless detractors bark their prejudice. The sadder the clown appears the more we all hold our breath waiting for the thing to do something dramatic to help us not feel so bad for having feelings. We allow the persecution coming in all sides, comics, standup late night comics, talk show hosts and court tv all dragging the freak from its lair, tarring and feathering it and lynching their glory filled revererie.
so numerous
were the incursions against innocent people
tracking down the origins of the Jackson
myth
6 - mihos
Sexual abuse against children is abhorrent and intolerable. If Jackson molested children he will be charged and pay for his crime. If the prosecution had a case I wouldn't be spending this time typing to anyone about the shocking reality of the Michael Jackson Child Molestation CASE.
What I should have said in a lot fewer words is that everything you have read or heard about Jackson is suspect due to the great omissions of facts.
Jackson never paid twenty million dollars to settle with a kid in 1993.
jackson's insurance lawyers convinced him to not go to court 15.7 million dollars would settle the matter and still cost less than what he would have to spend on attorneys if it did go to court- this includes publicists and security, and avoid the major drop of income and credibility as an artist for the year long trial.
Nancy Grace and Diane Dimond keep repeating another version of the facts.
The one I just relayed is truth.
The court tv facts are intentionally misleading.
If Jackson's health status is worth keeping a secret he's made visible and an easy target for those that desire to
blackmail him out of money to keep those health secrets. These witnesses for the prosecution are unconvincing. Morevoer they all have the same three parties involved as the first case.
the same attorney, the same psychologist or the same boss.
I bet someone with vitiligo all over their body doesn't often get naked in front of people. And someone that wears that much makeup doesn't bathe in the company of other people. A person that wears wigs does not take showers with other people.
And a person that reads heterosexual porn depicting nude women does not find preadolescent boys sexually attractive.
If he did it would not culminate in tickling or hand jobs.
Anything such an attraction desire is readily availble in countries like Thailand and Brazil for a price.
There are simply not enough victims to make this an accurate depiction of his proclivities.
His bedroom is a two floored wing,the size of a large condominium replete with movie screen and several beds.
7 - Jane
Mihos
I don't live in America and, in some ways, I agree that the media has a lot to answer for with regards to its reporting of this case. However,in the past, when it has suited his needs, Jackson has used the media to his own ends in much the same way. It was not long ago that he stood waving from a limo as he arrived at court the first day manipulating the waiting media and crowds.Jackson has just realised that what he has nutured for so long has come back to bite him and the loss of his control over that is interesting to watch.
The point is, and always has been, he has a long history of behaving inappropriately with little boys, has paid people to shut up in the past and has used his fame to deflect critical analysis and investigation into his behavior in a way that average people in similar situations would not be able to do.
My comments about his appearance may sound shallow and judgemental but, in the end, vitiligo does not require plastic surgery procedures to treat it with success. What is happening there is something completely different. Jackson is perhaps suffering from what plastic surgeons refer to as facial dysphasia, where he has become unable to honeslty assess his facial features against any norm. It is something that happens alot among celebrities (and others) challenged by the aging process and is an indicator of mental illness.
Having said that, I don't feel empathy with Jackson because I believe he has been well aware of his actions and behavior and its caught up with him. He has publicly stated that he doesn't see anything wrong with his behavior which is what exactly what all pedophiles believe.
However, if you dismiss my position you'd probably hate the following link. Visit it.It's interesting.
www.milkandcookies.com/keywords/michaeljackson
8 - jane
Mihos
If there was no case then why pay $15 m to settle? The pay another 2.5 for the same thing?
You are summising about his personal habit as much as anyone. How do you know he does not shower with people, take off his makeup behind closed doors, or his wigs? That is as much conjecture as anything and is all supposition.Who knows. The case is not about whether he does these things but what he has done to little boys.
And Mihos, one abused child would be enough in my book.
9 - mihos
Regarding Jane's post,
At 46 years old Jackson has had more than thirty years of wealth and success to develop proclivities. Because the media is only interested in covering newsworthy or odd Jackson has certainly played a strange game with the media. I didn't suggest I find his behaviors justifiable. What im attempting to suggest here, is our precepts of Jackson are only what is published by a media that Jackson has willfully misled and even had the last laugh with for decades.
If Jackson is actually a pedaphile, why is it that there are so few cases?
No one has come forward that has been molested but a 24 year old youth pastor whose mother forgot to alert the police to what she supposedly witnessed and yet was also so stupid as to bring her young child to work regularly and leave him alone with Jackson on a regular basis.
She sells her story to the enquirer and has frequently changed her story to suit
different audiences.
I have a difficult time believing that none of jackson's nephews or neices, or any of his many child star friends have
any problem rejecting the claims made.
And every one of them starts their rejection of the claims with ' you dont know the man' ' he's nothing like you think' etc. i used to believe that there must be some truth to the stories of his behaviors and he looks like a monster at times. But in collecting data on the coverage of the case and studying the press from the past you quickly come different conclusions.
Tabloid media doesnt make money unless it gets people to buy their papers.
The rest of print media has found jackson less than interesting enough to cover. his picture may appear with some little comment about something trivial. Jackson has watched the media game. he watched his peers, Donny Osmond and Kurt Russell for example get good coverage -positive coverage and yet Jackson and his siblings were all but ignored.
When jackson reinvented himself he started a reckless game of eccentricity for coverage for an apathetic media.
It got him coverage and he kept himself
on the front pages. but he is being tried for sexual assault on a child.
Now it is coming back to haunt him.
The only press on Jackson is negative publicity and the details of his supposed acts are reported without regard to the ethics journalists are supposed to honor. The entire case he is now being tried for the grand jury testimony was leaked before the trial.
How does that happen?
Im not on Jackson's team and Im not defending him, his appearance or his eccentricities. i am however attempting intelligent people to acknowledge how
prejudical the coverage of the case is and continues to be. People want to believe the charges against Jackson.
Their suspension of disbelief stays on when they listen to the salacious rumours posing as facts. They don't have interns collecting data and probably are not that interested other witnessing jackson get his comupance.
The empathy I feel is for the jackson family who know more than anyone how cruel the press can be and how fickle the public is. They also have experienced one take down artist after another.
Lastly the surgery that Jackson Has had done to his face his nose that is clearly an obsession of his.
Until you study the condition he suffers from you may not be aware of just how disabling vitiligo is for dark skinned people. It may also be suprising to many people that they never really looked at Jackson before his skin colour changed.
We've studied the photos and can see he has had some work done. But the most dramatic difference is his skin colour not his features. His cheekbones are clearly evident in his siblings and so are his lips and just about everything you have read he has supposedly had done.
But then blacks are not supposed to have plastic surgery are they?
We uncovered a batch of material written about Janet Jackson that brazenly asserted that everything on her body was
a product of plastic surgey, even though she admited to the prerequisite nose job and admited she had it fixed a asecond time because she wanted the old one back. But fifteen different writers reported that her breasts were artifical, her ribs had been removed and she had liposuction ignoring the fact that most blacks cannot have liposuction because of scarring it creates on highly pigmented skin. when her breast popped out for two seconds on national tv it was clearly not enhanced and yet there was not a single retraction.
It pays to put the Jackson family down.
jackson's vitiligo may have arrested his sexual development and even his identity .
His celebrity is unparralled the world over. China and India buy his records by the millions. it pays to report that he is a sexual predator of young boys and his apearance proves their claims in that convoluted logic.
http://www.zebracorn.com/history.htm
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/7203631/michaeljackson?pageid=rs.ArtistArticles&pageregion=mainRegion
10 - mihos
Regarding the second Jane post.
The settlements of two million plus and fifteen million dollars respectively,
are insurance settlements.
When you count how much money Jackson has lost in this court case paying a team of attorneys, publicists additional security and hospital bills for failing health, one can clearly see why settling will be preferable.
Hiw own publishing contracts make upwards of thirty million dollars a year. One performance contract is worth at least fifty million dollars.
Arnold the governor was paid two hundred million a picture.
Jackson is paid hundreds of millions of dollars for his concert tours and is worth over a billion dollars in assets including his own publishing not to mention that of the Beatles and Elvis which earn him another forty or so a year. The prosecution grossly underestimated Jackson's wealth. For them fifteen million dollars a year is
a huge sum. to jackson's insurance attorneys, an artist that sells twelve million copies of an album that is considered a flop- making his label at least ten dollars per album- you do the math!
If he has a life threatening illness induced by stress he would be wise to not be dragged to court where the threat of losing control of bodily functions could occur- where discussion in court is likely to end up revealing to the world just what it is he is suffering from physically- the damage has already been done true or not.
To me the case is ridiculous and should never have been brought to court.
i have a fifteen year old son and am wll aware of the capacity for children to embelish or lie if encouraged to do so.
Studying pedaphilia cases and discussing
the issue with psychiatrists leaves us with more questions. Jackson would have thousands of victims by now. His access to young children has always been unfettered. The reports of his behavior the actions supposedly performed to do not fit the profile of a pedaphile.
It seems more likely that he was blackmailed and his ego got the better of him. He tried to fight back and his freak status makes it easy for the general person to agree without thinking about the validity of the accusations.
look around the site below. It belongs to a Black American women with the condition of albinism. Until I visited the site and related sites on vitilogo I never imagined how disfiguring the condition can be.
I dont understand how people could believe that a person that spends that much time and energy putting on their face to even out dramatic demarcations of pigment would jump into a shower wig and all with a kid.
ive never even seen a photo of the man wearing shorts or a short sleeved shirt.
Its easy to believe the worst case scenario until you realize the man is 5'11" and weighs 120 some lbs wet.
His face clearly shows the signs of wasting syndrome.
I don't believe that African Americans or American Indian people lack a cerebrum. I don't believe that they are purely sexual creatures. So I have a difficult time imagining a person could do something so hateful and hurtful to a child. It is even more difficult for me to accept when I see the parents accepting a pay out and dropping the case entirely. Of course the 93 accusor is not going to come to court to level his accusations. He can't remember them.
The legal secretary for the attorney handling the 93 case was on Larry King discussing what she new of the case. She stated that the entire case was a shake down an extortion case from the beginning to the end.
She walked away believing Jackson was innocent of the charges. She had believe d the opposite. that says alot don't you think?
http://www.zebracorn.com/history.htm
One way or another the trial gives both sides to put it all into the open.
If the boy is found to be credible and wins his case Jackson goes to prison where he no doubt die in short time.
if Jackson survives this trial and his family recovers from the pain of the media making money off of their pain then what?
The court of public opinion has already been lost. what I am learning is that there are two different rules afforded to people in this country.The tabloid media working in conjunction with expert extortion attorneys and a deep seated bigot streak win the court of public opinion and wear the accusor down.
his credibility was already lost with his last nose job.
The right of a fair trial has already been robbed from Jackson when the grand jury testimony -not recorded in the presence of a defense attorney is posted all over the web.
i don't believe anything one of these prosecution witnesses have claimed and not because i feel a need to champion jackson's cause. Im a led zepplin man.
I don't believe the prosecution is interested in justice here. If they were they would not have brought these witnesses forward. There are ulterior motives behind every word said by witnesses and court tv.
It sells papers and it employs reporters. But that doesnt make it factual. i think everyone taken to court deserves objective anaysis in the press.
this is not the case here.
To digress in closing,
people are so pathetically eurocentric
they assert that jackson no longer wants to black and does so because he hates his own race.
it took a half an afternoon to research the facts of their family history.
They accrued most of the features that have made them the butt of every joke from their very recent Black Indian ancestors.those same ancestors were documented with the condition of partial albinism and sent away from the Indian territory to find subsistence somewhere else. Had the tabloid styled court reporters been interested in actual facts, it would have been in everyone's interest to report the fact that vitiligo is a serious malady for some people. they might have learned that it behavez exponentially especially under stress. Too much of his skin suffered depigmentation to keep trying to put dark make up over the patches. Jackson put his creative genius to work to make the most of the situation and point fun at people that consistently marginalized his accomplishments as an instantly identifiable black American. The jester in him begged for negative attention. i think he wanted to prove to the world that his detractors would be prejudiced against his success no matter what colour? Who knows?
I don't. But reading these materials and listening to the reporting, reading the bloggery, I feel sick that so many people could be tricked into an old fashioned lynching.
Features that people appreciate under white skin were always present under brown skin but no one bothered to really notice.
11 - cookie
I was abused and I don’t remember much of it and if my sister as an adult hadn’t identically corroborated the occurrences , I wouldn’t have believed it happened. My memories of the abuse pre-date our sharing; most survivors survive by forgetting, that’s the human instinct. It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen and i never reported it either.
Since time immemorial such 'animals' have gotten away with destroying children’s futures across the globe in all communities, black white Indian Asian etc; no race is immune from this predatory disease.
I am all too aware of the racialisation and marginalisation of certain racial groups across the globe (Aboriginals in Australia/ blacks & Indian in America/low castes in INDIA etc); BUT I refuse to comply with banning of children/ adults voices for political expediency.
IF racist (overt and implied) elements of American society/ serious media want to distort the reality of Jackson based on his race that’s wrong but I don’t support sacrificing and silencing (thereby further abusing)victims and survivors of child sexual abuse at the alter of the civil rights struggle. You cannot tie the two together no matter how wrongly black/ other minorities are sexualised in the racist public mind because there are plenty of white paedophiles and victims from amongst the journalists themselves undoubtedly.
12 - mihos
I agree wholeheartedly. More than anything justice must be had here. My biggest concern is that thanks to blatant attempts of this high profile case, that is certain to fail to convict anyone on such trumped up nonsense, people will not take sexual abuse of children seriously and their cases will be met with undue criticism.
13 - Eric Olsen
I am working my way through all of this information, which I appreciate very much by the way even though it appears I have been labeled as unintelligent.
1) why on earth would anyone find it surprising that media reports focus on Jackson's appearance? It is, um, noteworthy, and even granting some "natural" aspect to his dramatic change in skin color, the sturctural changes are all voluntary: he has chosen to make himself look like this. Do you expect the press, people in general to ignore the simple fact that Jackson has voluntarily, and I presume at great expense, CHOSEN to look the way he does?
There is no "grievous error" whatsoever in "judging" people (in the most general sense, not the legal sense) based upon what they have done to their appearance OF THEIR OWN ACCORD.
14 - Eric Olsen
re the rest: mihos, I am astonished how far you are willing t obend over backward to give this person the benefit of the doubt, making any number of unfounded assumptions and generalitzations.
Aspects of the media are sensationalistic - shocker! - no shit, but if you can dismiss everything ever reported about Jackson's behavior toward boys out of hand, then I believe your perspective is even more skewed than the most sensational quadrants of the media.
And this isn't about the Jackson family, it's about Michael.
15 - Richard Porter
Again I agree with Eric on this one.
I cannot even recall the media commenting about any racial overtones to this case. True, MJ's appearance is mentioned because (as Eric described) he has evolved voluntarily into this very strange looking man. And certainly, his clothes with the armbands, medals and masks do not help.
Mihos, if you want to make this simply into a black and white case, you will fail trying to convince many people (black or white)including myself.
The OJ Simpson and Kobe Bryant cases were classic examples of the media (as well as regular people) speaking loudly about the strong racial overtones to their individual cases.
Shouldn't you be more concerned with MJ's tainted background and large payoffs to past alleged victims?
16 - mihos
I realize where you are coming from. And if you open your mind for a split second you will realize that if i believed everyone was ignorant I wouldn't have spent so much of my valuable time typing these rambling manifestos.
With an open mind not prejudiced with salacious rumors about his perported behaviors with young boys a person can learn about what some preliminary investegation by our nine person classroom has compiled. im not weighing in on the case that has yet to be tried yet. I am strictly talking about the court of public opinion. And from our data we are measuring each word and sentence dedicated to the topic on several wires services, the news stations and of course the cable networks.
If you believe that jackson wanted to see his image turn whiter than a ghost from vitiligo than you are keeping a closed mind. My posit above is that vitiligo made it impossible for jackson to keep the image he had so carefully groomed for all the years we were familar with him. The nose is his prerogative. But when you take the extra step to actually investigate albinism in African descended ethnicites and there are web links and libraries with that information available- any of the news reports could have done the same,
you may have to reanalyze what you thought and have been conditioned to perceive and that is the crux of this effort here. As ive clearly stated three times here. I am not a Jackson supporter and am not an advocate either. My job is to study cultural history and its architects. this project was a sideline I was not interested in taking until i started reading what the students and professors had compiled. It was a round table faculty discussion here. We are not a bunch of zit faced teenagers here. None of us own a jackson record. And i only know two people with cable. I have volunteered and mentored abused children every summer for the last twelve years of my life. I have learned quite a bit about the topic of sexual abuse and am very keen to protect those people that advocate for stronger laws and more counselling. But we also need to protect child abuse victims by manking certain false claims don't obscure the real ones.
This is why rape claims must be taken so
seriously and when we learn that they are occasionally fabricated it is disheartening. It doesnt mean that most people that bring a rape charge to the police are lying.
In this specific situation, a person is obliged to address the reporting and the objectives of tabloid reporting.
It sells papers.
jackson's immune system is shutting down. people close enough to him to rifle through his medical cabinet are capable of learning even more.
As this theory is as stated just another unquantified unsubstantiated theory,
try and keep an open mind long enough to absorb the parameters provided with that theory before making a decision on a person's guilt or innocence.
If jackson is suffering from wasting syndrome resultant from chronic infection or immune system breakdown,
perhaps his obsession with reliving a childhood might make more sense to you.
We interviewed a thirty year prosecuting attorney for a county in California, a nineteen year career adult probation officer and three case workers with many years of child welfare work between them.
Each of them stated unequivocally, that if the first accusor had actually described jackson's genitalia as court tv and fox news have continually aired as facts though no formal report was ever released to the press- he would have been arrested and charged regardless of any out of court settlement. He would have been in trial with or without the testimony of the accusor.
The 93 case was a shakedown according to
the high paid legal secretary of attorney who landed that fifteen million dollar settlement.
A critical mind is useful when applied.
Prejudice is another issue entirely.
Most people with opinions about the case come to the conclusions that they have through these unethical tabloid styled reports. This is the point of what Im trying to relate here. Look at the headlines of this article.
It screams look at this headline.
It humiliates the entire Jackson family.
On cross examination the so called witness was exposed for the lying thief that he is. He all but admitted fabricating the entire thing in the office of the civil case attorney!
But that is barely covered in todays headlines. Every major story on the case opens with guard witnessed Jackson performing oral sex and fondling the 93 accusor.
If this were the case in 1993, Jackson would already be behind bars.
There was no case to bring to court in 1993 and not because the child refused to testify. they had no evidence.
Now the prosecution is fabricating evidence. People one after the other are taking the stand and willfully misleading people because they want revenge. The guy is odd there is no doubt. And he was once very powerful.
He may have fired people in an unempathetic manner. But the data we have compiled so far presents a different story.
The court of public opinion has already been won by the prosecution.
We are curious how this can be the case when we have all the information the media has provided and quite a bit more because we did the digging.
I think perhaps this is the most objective, even handed article we've come across to date:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/7203631/michaeljackson?pageid=rs.ArtistArticles&pageregion=mainRegion
the writer is letting jackson off on anything but take a close look at how a professional journalist frames the central theme of his discourse.
He doesn't have the answers but from the meager evidence presented so far, the
prosecution is guilty for assaulting anyone with a telivision with details of sexual acts that may very likely never have occured.
This is a very serious issue.
One of our informal panelists that is a practicing psychologist working with sex abuse survivors thinks that jackson may very well be a pedophile. The others are less certain. From what we have learned he simply does not fit the bill.
Yes he has a fancy house and has sleep overs with young kids. But on cross examination we learn that there are several beds in this double floored wing described in press as his bedroom.
We also learn that when Jackson has a sleep over he almost always has an adult audience of friends he trusts and people that can vouch for his behavior because of past allegations.
Lastly, Jackson's video dvd collection of adult porn was extensive and yet neither the 93 accusor nor this latest grifter ever mentioned watching porn with jackson. The latest kid claims they looked at a magazine together and found one finger print of jackson's and hundreds of the two brothers.
Why didnt the latest kid testify that jackson plied him with porn on the big screen? possibly because he never found that porn stash as he had discovered the brief case in Jackson's private bathroom.
It is not adding up the rush to make judgment based ont he shocking allegations is very understandable, unless of course you read everything written and search for omissions.
Very little of what has been shot down by cross examination is considered news worthy and it doesnt often make headlines.
So you decide.
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/7203631/michaeljackson?pageid=rs.ArtistArticles&pageregion=mainRegion
What facts are the important ones?
The real untarnished truth or the wishful lies?
If we can keep an open mind why is it so hard for other people? that Ive taken the liberty to post here.
17 - DrPat
Thanks for the link (which might have been better in link format) - the article is short on fact, but long on self-denigrating description:
Jacko's super-white skin (and the hovering umbrella) may be due to his choice of treatment for the vitiligo:Aside from that, I failed to find anywhere a reference that vitiligo causes a person to develop a "Peter Pan" personality. So the color of his skin (black or white) has nothing to do with this case.18 - Eric Olsen
good point DrPat
mihos, I do very much appreciate your input and I would be very interested in reading the results of your study once you have completed/compiled it, and if Jackson does have vitiligo that would indeed explain his complexion, but I still have seen or heard nothing that dissuades me from assuming that Jackson has an untoward thing for young boys.
19 - mihos
I concur on all points. Thank you for taking the time to read the links in question. Under url above ive posted a pertinent link that describes the condition in the special instances of African derived people. It is truly worth visiting.
I have to ask what leads you to believe that jackson has a special things for young boys? Aside from the witnesses on the stand who have all miraculously seen the same behavior in the dead of night without a seemingly paranoid jackson being aware of his being observed- even after ordering in french fries at 3:00 a.m. It is very damning testimony. The cross examination is also telling. But to this moment, it is woefully undereported. Why is that do you think?
If a trial is about bringing the truth to the fore regardless of who benifits this is supposed to be about child abuse a serial abuser. Reporters are publishing new news lines ever few hours all around the globe. Have a google search under news and MJ.
Note how little of the entire case is being reported. Its definately slanted against Jackson. The cross examination
has pointed out a few things about the character of these witnesses over the last few days and next to noone is covering it. Ive seen dozens of headlines detailing the supposed sex acts. And yes the court of public opinion wants badly very badly to believe that these witnesses testimony is spot on.
But the reporters are evidentally not obliged to report with the same flourish a detailed analysis of the cross examinations. Bits are mentioned in these reports at times. But isn't it interesting to you that only two or three have mentioned the gaping holes in their testimonies revealed in cross?
Why doesn't it matter that these witnesses were found in a court of law to be behaving in an unlawful, intentionally malicious and oppressive manner? Their testimony is still more credible than Jacksons?
Why is this? Because of his Peter Pan act? With a family as large as jacksons with all the hundreds of cousins all his nephews and nieces and all the inlaws many of which are bitter exes and a few have even written books about their lives as jackson wives, not one has come forward to corroborate these charges.
His ex wives claim he is actually a very normal man behind closed doors.
yes he created the impossible persona but that is not what he is being tried for. I want to understand what makes smart people take the word of disgruntled thieves over an artist with thirty plus years of celebrity under his belt? Are you certain that in all these years jackson has been molesting little boys? None have come forward but the 93 case which is on the surface very suspect. His parents are suspect their motives were obvious. The 93 accusor divorced both parents suing them for emancipation. interestingly that accusor with his entire fifteen million dollars
chose to live in Santa Barbara, a whole forty minutes from Jackson.
We have never heard his side of the story. And I doubt we ever will.
one thing is for certain, alot of money was made in reporting the case facts and non facts and a huge number of people were prejudiced by it regardless of its merits.
20 - HW Saxton
I just heard this strange little tidbit
on MJ on MSNBC recently. It seems that
in one of the "secret" rooms in M.J.'s
California estate(the room was a very
large closet used by the previous owners
wife for the use of storing her fur coat
collection in) that there is/was a large
painting of Da Vinci's "The Last Supper"
normal by all appearances but for the
fact that instead of Christ surrounded
by his disciples it is M.J.,not J.C.
How can this person get any creepier???
Wait,on second thought,don't answer that
OK?
21 - Eric Olsen
mihos, to answer your most basic question, I do not know for a fact that he legally is a child molester, but therer is a vast amount of evidence that amply displays his "romantic" relationships with boys
22 - DrPat
In addition, mihos, let me add to Eric's comment that reporting is sequential - right now, testimony is coming from several parties who report observing Jackson in decidedly pedophilic behavior. So the reports from the courthouse reflect that "bias."
Next week, the "bias" may be all the other way, as reporters detail the defense's cross-questioning.
We're all (well, most) of us bending over backwards not to judge until we've heard it all. Even though many of us already have a good idea of where this is going, that doesn't mean we're cheering for it...
23 - Eric Olsen
yes, exactly, and today most of the reporting I've seen has emphasized Mesereau's vicious cross-examination of the blow-job security guard and another observant maid - so it goes both ways.
24 - mihos
I'm not certain that trivializing the claims of "observant" witnesses is any different than sugar-coating reporting bias. It doesn't pay to insult anyone'e intelligence (sic).
In the five years we've collaborated on this program, most collected data for course case study is of the dry, legaleze order. We haven't had many opportunities to present unambiguous examples of bias in reporting before now.
We have to really fish and debate instances in most cases. Historical cases are a mixed bag with some obvious chestnuts. The Kobe Bryant case is a final project for about two thirds of the student groups this year.
Martha Stewart and Greenpeace round out the remaining term papers.
I don't think we've ever found fox fair or balanced, especially with Martha Stewart, but a few interesting examples below provide the sort of alternative trajectory reporting is allowed to take.
(http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,151665,00.html)
(http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,152708,00.html)
25 - Eric Olsen
mihos, if you can't laugh a little about the absurdity of this case on just about every imaginable level, then you don't find life very funny. Its unending hilarity is its only redeeming feature as far as I'm concerned