Return of the Mighty Observations Thread

[Rat Patrol]

Those aren't U.K.-specific blinders. . .




If you made it as far as 1990 without your pedo bear sense tingling just a little bit you were probably late to the party (note: if you changed the channel most times on MTV out of force of habit "because I was unaware / don't really like the music"...that was really your spidey sense acting out a self-defense whether you realized it at the time). If you sat through the prime-time premiere of the extended "Black or White" video and didn't find the whole thing powerfully off for exactly the reasons we now know it was off, you probably were in a bit of denial. If the '93 allegations provoked any surprise stronger than "well, of course he did"...you probably were in quite a bit of denial. I won't even get into the people who worshipped at the Cult of Michael unshakeably, but if you were engaging in any active rationalization of the last 15 years of his life. . .



I was 10 when I went on vacation to Epcot at Disney World. And I was creeped out by Captain Eo...it just seemed off and a little icky. Cross-refereed with a whole 18 months in to the Bad media overload on MTV, it just got me thinking. Why does this guy who's like 28 now want to spend all his time with children; why is there not a single adult friend he seems to hang with anymore like that Beatles dude he was always recording with? Why would the kids want to spend ALL their time with a single adult with no kids...I mean, some of the time I can see because some adults are cool like that, but ALL of the time? Do these kids he's always seen with look half as enthusiastic to be around him as he is with them, and all the adults filming this seem to be? I dunno...those 2 kids over there look like they're getting a little tired of this shit and just want some time to themselves. And why would some guy who has to be Michael Jackson 24/7 and put up with all the show biz shit day after day after day be so excited all the time? Like...doesn't he ever wake up and tell his agent, "Man, I'm really not up for playing video games with goddamn orphans today...can we do something else for a change? Is Brooke Shields up for a quick weekend on a private island near Antigua?" Why is every media outlet falling all over themselves to film him in situations with kids instead of adults? Who the fuck builds an entire movie theater at an amusement park to run nothing but Eo every hour on the hour and thinks this is a completely normal consumer activity?


And so on. As a 10-year-old who thought 'bad touch' was only something creepy old dudes did with scary music blaring in the background (thanks, "Dudley Gets Molested" episode of Diff'rent Strokes for probably putting me in danger promoting such an extremely narrow definition of pederasty!)...I didn't know what conclusions to draw from this. I just had a growing mountain of evidence that something was not normal with this guy's personal friendships and the way they were being depicted onscreen. By the time "Man in the Mirror" was released as a single end of the year and pretty much slapped you across the head lyrically with it (oooh, but we were told it's all metaphorical about how the nations of the earth need to stop killing each other, seriously!) I was like "nuts to this". I had no reaction left to give by "Black or White"...just, "Yup...of course he's violently smashing personal property then masturbating in an alley 5 minutes after rapping with Macauley Culkin. Why wouldn't he? He's Michael Jackson."


Eo was filmed at the end of '85 I think. It was the screen debut of 'white' MJ after he spent most of that year on the surgeon's table with the scalpel and dyes. So, it's not like it took until 90's midlife crisis Mikey for the signs to start showing with his choices of friendships. And of course Disney brought the attraction back to all its theme parks after his death, because now it's all about bizarro retro-kitsch where Gen X'ers pay money to ironically relive that strange foreboding WTF? feeling I got back in '88. Or something.

[matedog]

To this day, I don't think MJ molested children. I honestly believe he was probably asexual. His stunted childhood combined with a probably very lonely existence of having to associate with the music industry his entire life probably contributed to his certainly bizarre and inappropriate obsession with children. Still, I don't think he ever acted sexually with kids, and I am very certain the second kid (back in 03 or 04?) was not molested.

[Silent Majority]

To this day, I don't think MJ molested children. I honestly believe he was probably asexual. His stunted childhood combined with a probably very lonely existence of having to associate with the music industry his entire life probably contributed to his certainly bizarre and inappropriate obsession with children. Still, I don't think he ever acted sexually with kids, and I am very certain the second kid (back in 03 or 04?) was not molested.

I dunno, even the best reasoned MJ defences have the same really hard hoping and selective understandings of the Woody Allen defences.

[tepista]

9yo matey was totally MJ's type. You missed out, pal.

[matedog]

To this day, I don't think MJ molested children. I honestly believe he was probably asexual. His stunted childhood combined with a probably very lonely existence of having to associate with the music industry his entire life probably contributed to his certainly bizarre and inappropriate obsession with children. Still, I don't think he ever acted sexually with kids, and I am very certain the second kid (back in 03 or 04?) was not molested.

I dunno, even the best reasoned MJ defences have the same really hard hoping and selective understandings of the Woody Allen defences.

In regards to the second kid, the mother had a history of suing over falsified claims of physical and sexual abuse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Arvizo#Gavin_Arvizo under the JC Penny incident). I remember seeing that Martin Bashir doc that featured the kid where his name was given and he was shown unobscured. The documentary addressed the inappropriateness of Jackson's behavior towards kids pretty extensively. After the documentary aired, "oh shit, he molested my kid." I don't buy it for one second.

[matedog]

WTF? Wade Robson testified in MJ's defense during the trial, but now is saying he WAS molested and is suing the estate. I don't know anything anymore.

[matedog]

Just skimmed through the articles on the 1993 and the 2005 accusers and they both scream of people falsifying claims against a weirdo because, come on, he has to be a pedo, to reap (or attempt to reap) huge sums of money.

[Rat Patrol]

No asexual person on the face of the earth sleeps in a bed with children most nights of the week and has an elaborate system of motion sensor silent alarms and video cameras set up in his living quarters to warn him if one of the servants is in the vicinity of his bedroom so he has adequate warning to make himself look decent by the time they reach the door. It's proven what his security rig was...and it is not like any intruder detection system in the world used around Hollywood estates.

We're not talking guilt or innocence. That is damn hard to prove, especially in cases where he had a lot of unwise contractual agreements with desperate families leaving him open to a lot more risk of blackmail. I'm talking behavior patterns, and the people who were enabling those patterns. It's not normal. It doesn't cut across asexuality lines. Really, I'd inform yourself a bit more about the psychiatry behind asexual tendencies first...there is no confusion whatsoever between asexual inclinations and predatory inclinations any more than homosexual inclinations correlate to risks of predatory inclinations. Asexuality is a sexual orientation, not a risk-associated diagnosis.

The Saville parallel here is that nobody caught him because burden of proof is so hard to achieve, and extra difficulty in treating child abuse allegations is one of the unsolvable downfalls of systems of criminal-justice-by-burden-of-proof that we have to put up with...otherwise the harm in throwing away innocent accused far outstrips the lives saved. But patterns of pathological behavior and risk factors are a lot easier to identify. You can't throw somebody in prison for perpetually compelling himself to be in compromising situations. There's no crime until a crime is committed, then burden of proof comes into play. But harms reduction from abnormal pathology...yeah, society's also built (to varying degrees) on shared responsibility for minimizing those risks. If some guy in a position of power is exhibiting screamingly obvious predatory behavior patterns there's kind of an obligation to intervene...by maybe not doing so much enabling when the person's in a position of power, and maybe trying to hold them to a standard of self-restraint. That didn't happen with either of these guys because it was bad for business.

When we teach our kids not to talk to strangers and to watch out for signs of predatory behavior, that is NOT encouraging discrimination of odd but upstanding/well-meaning people even though that is the #1 potential negative consequence of it. We do it because it's Public Health 101. Questioning the decorum of public figures' provocative behavior around children is no different--literally, no different. If kids are told to be vigilant about who's influencing them, and adults are told to be vigilant about how they're influencing the impressionable...where does it enter into the picture "It's OK...he's rich and famous, he's allowed to blur the lines without having trustworthiness questioned."


The fact that is S.O.P. these days says a lot rich/poor, famous/not living in separate castes with separate moral standards. And MJ doesn't even scratch the surface of MTV/Viacom's crimes against humanity on that front when you peel back the layers on all the fucked-up shit that's been rumored for decades going on behind the scenes on Nickelodeon's 'tween original programming department. Again...nobody's nailed legendary kids producer Dan Schneider (a.k.a. Dennis from Head of the Class) yet for the number of underage female leads he's allegedly coerced over the years or the pimp operation his chief talent scout has allegedly been running. Because burden of proof. But the pattern of behavior...yes, Viacom, shouldn't the number of allegations over the years have been deemed "potentially bad for business" enough at this point to pull him aside and give a stern lecture about appearances and recklessness? If not an outright decision to reassign him to less-risky programming?

THAT'S the point of this. Exempting the pattern of behavior when the person is powerful, but warning the kids about it when the person isn't powerful. That explains why things were allowed to go as far as they did with Saville, Jackson, et al. to the point of actual legal and criminal trouble. The pattern was there waaaaaaaaaay before the crimes and alleged crimes. It always is with that type of pathology. Because predatory pathology is distinct and not to be confused with sexual orientation or even most types of inward-oriented personality disorders.

[matedog]

No asexual person on the face of the earth sleeps in a bed with children most nights of the week and has an elaborate system of motion sensor silent alarms and video cameras set up in his living quarters to warn him if one of the servants is in the vicinity of his bedroom so he has adequate warning to make himself look decent by the time they reach the door. It's proven what his security rig was...and it is not like any intruder detection system in the world used around Hollywood estates.

We're not talking guilt or innocence. That is damn hard to prove, especially in cases where he had a lot of unwise contractual agreements with desperate families leaving him open to a lot more risk of blackmail. I'm talking behavior patterns, and the people who were enabling those patterns. It's not normal. It doesn't cut across asexuality lines. Really, I'd inform yourself a bit more about the psychiatry behind asexual tendencies first...there is no confusion whatsoever between asexual inclinations and predatory inclinations any more than homosexual inclinations correlate to risks of predatory inclinations. Asexuality is a sexual orientation, not a risk-associated diagnosis.

I was suggesting that it wasn't just his (possible) asexuality, but a combination of that with his extreme wealth and fame and his stunted/traumatic childhood was responsible for his behavior. Asexuality isn't terribly common and neither are extreme wealth and fame and stunted/traumatic childhoods, let alone all of that combined. So comparing his actions to typical asexual patterns is probably not terribly accurate.

[Rat Patrol]

No asexual person on the face of the earth sleeps in a bed with children most nights of the week and has an elaborate system of motion sensor silent alarms and video cameras set up in his living quarters to warn him if one of the servants is in the vicinity of his bedroom so he has adequate warning to make himself look decent by the time they reach the door. It's proven what his security rig was...and it is not like any intruder detection system in the world used around Hollywood estates.

We're not talking guilt or innocence. That is damn hard to prove, especially in cases where he had a lot of unwise contractual agreements with desperate families leaving him open to a lot more risk of blackmail. I'm talking behavior patterns, and the people who were enabling those patterns. It's not normal. It doesn't cut across asexuality lines. Really, I'd inform yourself a bit more about the psychiatry behind asexual tendencies first...there is no confusion whatsoever between asexual inclinations and predatory inclinations any more than homosexual inclinations correlate to risks of predatory inclinations. Asexuality is a sexual orientation, not a risk-associated diagnosis.

I was suggesting that it wasn't just his (possible) asexuality, but a combination of that with his extreme wealth and fame and his stunted/traumatic childhood was responsible for his behavior. Asexuality isn't terribly common and neither are extreme wealth and fame and stunted/traumatic childhoods, let alone all of that combined. So comparing his actions to typical asexual patterns is probably not terribly accurate.

Well...abused children are FAR more likely to become abusers themselves. That's the acknowledged #1 transmissible trait of pederasty. We know Daddy Joe beat the everloving shit out of his kids in a daily reign of terror. There is plenty of evidence those grotesque displays of dominance included sexual abuse, though--the same--never proven. And yet, he is still to this day managing the business affairs of some of his kids and they never left him despite pretty much all of them acknowledging publicly that they hated his guts and were scarred for life by him. That can't be any more textbook an example of how kin process that kind of abuse in adulthood. So out of 9 kids who had to live through that...the odds that at least 1 of them would become a controlling abuser himself were astronomically high. Astronomically high. And needn't be a violent abuser, because the pathology is about the control of someone weaker than them as overcompensation for the trauma of one's own weaknesses at the hands of a controlling abuser...not whether the control was through violence or friendly coercion.

Again...patterns, not crime. For the same reason psychopathic disorder exists on a realm of "I am always aware that my brain processes things without empathy and achieve equally meaningfully healthy relationships with others by load-shifting other positive traits"...to high-functioning business leader who loves playing head games with subordinates for shits-and-giggles...to necrophiliac clown cannibal. Not everybody acts on it, and you damn well have a hard time proving they ever acted on it. But the defining traits of an abuser are pretty clear-cut, and MJ is an example that SCREAMS it and damn straight should've been better risk-managed by his people who for decades enabled, enabled, enabled situations where nothing was stopping him from acting on it except the thin line of self-control in his own head. Well...considering how fucked his own head was by fame, then drugs...what are the odds that discipline held strong without any slip-ups into very bad things. Not very good at all. Even though proof and evidence is a big leap from odds. We clearly don't know the did it/didn't it answer. That doesn't excuse the senselessness of how much risk the kids--and him--were put in and the hundreds of people through the years who rationalized it.

[Rat Patrol]

WTF? Wade Robson testified in MJ's defense during the trial, but now is saying he WAS molested and is suing the estate. I don't know anything anymore.

Oh, Corey Feldman did too. And then he changed his story to "I now realize there were very troubling aspects about our relationship" the second Jackson died. But he was coked up and/or in debt for almost 20 years so consistency from mouth was never his strong suit. So another one that'll never be proven (and given the framing, probably was more a toe-the-line-very-wobbly kind of situation that should've set off alarms rather than an actual unreported crime). But it is a near-certainty that Feldman was subject to attempted molestation from other people during his child star career and was pigeonholed as an easy mark for abusers in the industry. He talked at graphic length after Corey Haim's death about how some unnamed exec on one of their movies abused Haim from start-to-finish on the whole production, and the solidarity between Coreys over that was one of the reasons he was so unflailingly loyal to Haim even as they were both fucked up beyond belief and had to be separated. He definitely wasn't lying or trumping it up when he dropped that shocker. It was left VERY implicit that this was a shared experience, though it appears Feldman had a little more fight in him for resisting it and sticking up for himself all those years than Haim did.

There is not a worse fit on the planet for matching a kid and an adult drawn to kids who possesses some worrisome behavior patterns. And it's evidence that of all the child stars of the day...why did Corey Feldman make the innermost of the inner circle? It's not an admissible statement. But it's also not a coincidence. And absolves no one for not intervening on "this is a really bad idea that does no one any good to have THAT much unsupervised time together, guys" grounds.

[101Walterton]

Marky in response to your post:


Yes terrible situation made worse by the fact that those that would have ridiculed Lydon or the victims or anyone else for speaking out knew what was going on as well.
Not unlike Lance Armstrong and others who destroyed anyone who tried to speak out.

[Dr. Medulla]

But it is a near-certainty that Feldman was subject to attempted molestation from other people during his child star career and was pigeonholed as an easy mark for abusers in the industry. He talked at graphic length after Corey Haim's death about how some unnamed exec on one of their movies abused Haim from start-to-finish on the whole production, and the solidarity between Coreys over that was one of the reasons he was so unflailingly loyal to Haim even as they were both fucked up beyond belief and had to be separated. He definitely wasn't lying or trumping it up when he dropped that shocker. It was left VERY implicit that this was a shared experience, though it appears Feldman had a little more fight in him for resisting it and sticking up for himself all those years than Haim did.

I thought I read not too long ago that Feldman said that, yes, he too was molested by an exec(s?).

[Marky Dread]

Marky in response to your post:


Yes terrible situation made worse by the fact that those that would have ridiculed Lydon or the victims or anyone else for speaking out knew what was going on as well.
Not unlike Lance Armstrong and others who destroyed anyone who tried to speak out.

Yes due to his high profile through charity work it appeared to most that he could do no wrong. I would suggest those close by who were aware of his actions had their pockets well and truly lined or were cut from the same cloth. Complete evil.

[101Walterton]

Marky in response to your post:


Yes terrible situation made worse by the fact that those that would have ridiculed Lydon or the victims or anyone else for speaking out knew what was going on as well.
Not unlike Lance Armstrong and others who destroyed anyone who tried to speak out.

Yes due to his high profile through charity work it appeared to most that he could do no wrong. I would suggest those close by who were aware of his actions had their pockets well and truly lined or were cut from the same cloth. Complete evil.

And Rolf Harris!!! What the fuck made him think that was OK and does he really think anyone will believe his denials??