Jun. 26th, 2009 08:48 am
This is getting silly
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
textualdevianceI really should be avoiding the subject, because it's starting to piss me off too much, but...
If Jackson weren't a famous pop star, but instead the plumber down the street, with all the same "quirks", would YOU let your kids sleep at his house? Would you even let your kids play there?
A reminder of some of the evidence at his 2005 trial:
*Fingerprints of the boys on some books of porn Jackson had
*He gave them alcohol that he called "Jesus juice"
*He owned books with pictures of naked boys
*Testimony from four other victims, including the one from his 1993 trial, which he settled for $22 million. If you're innocent, you don't pay off your accusers.
This is all unargued fact. That it didn't result in a conviction is almost entirely due to a starstruck jury.
I don't care how much he was abused himself as a child. It's tragic, but it doesn't excuse what he did. I know, how about we excuse his dad for abusing Michael, because he had his own rough childhood, right? Oh, wait. I forgot. Joe is more eeeevil, because he abused someone with a lot of musical talent.
A history of abuse is an explanation for why some people become abusers themselves. It is NOT an excuse, and certainly not something that should be used as a pass for the guy to keep doing what he wanted without any consequences whatsoever. Are his victims somehow less important because they weren't famous musicians? Did they have less of a right to not have their trust violated because the guy who wanted to get them drunk and sleep with them was famous?
People are whining about the "character assasination" going on in his death. What about the same thing that's happening to his victims, who are still alive, and still living every day with what he did to them, and who are being labeled lying golddiggers?
Jackson was a pedophile who had virtually unfettered access to his victims because of his fame. And now those same victims are being victimized again as the world strives to plug their ears and pretend that nothing but his music matters. Disgusting.
If Jackson weren't a famous pop star, but instead the plumber down the street, with all the same "quirks", would YOU let your kids sleep at his house? Would you even let your kids play there?
A reminder of some of the evidence at his 2005 trial:
*Fingerprints of the boys on some books of porn Jackson had
*He gave them alcohol that he called "Jesus juice"
*He owned books with pictures of naked boys
*Testimony from four other victims, including the one from his 1993 trial, which he settled for $22 million. If you're innocent, you don't pay off your accusers.
This is all unargued fact. That it didn't result in a conviction is almost entirely due to a starstruck jury.
I don't care how much he was abused himself as a child. It's tragic, but it doesn't excuse what he did. I know, how about we excuse his dad for abusing Michael, because he had his own rough childhood, right? Oh, wait. I forgot. Joe is more eeeevil, because he abused someone with a lot of musical talent.
A history of abuse is an explanation for why some people become abusers themselves. It is NOT an excuse, and certainly not something that should be used as a pass for the guy to keep doing what he wanted without any consequences whatsoever. Are his victims somehow less important because they weren't famous musicians? Did they have less of a right to not have their trust violated because the guy who wanted to get them drunk and sleep with them was famous?
People are whining about the "character assasination" going on in his death. What about the same thing that's happening to his victims, who are still alive, and still living every day with what he did to them, and who are being labeled lying golddiggers?
Jackson was a pedophile who had virtually unfettered access to his victims because of his fame. And now those same victims are being victimized again as the world strives to plug their ears and pretend that nothing but his music matters. Disgusting.
Tags:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
I have a friend who had his first teaching gig in, of all places, Forks. We all told him it would be a bad fit for him socially; he's liberal lefty with a big belief in the power of education as well as the learning potential of kids. Forks is pure Red Republican so insular that their eighth graders still color pictures in class rather than doing, well, eighth grade work.
When my friend made a misstatement in class, one of the kids went home and accused him of attempting to coerce the kids into keeping secrets from their parents. Out of this alone, the parents decided he must be a pedophile and reported him as such to the school. The call I got from him that afternoon was searing. He was devastated. He'd been misinterpreted in class and in moments his entire career was on the line, four months after graduation. He was in pieces. It's heartbreaking to hear a man in his mid-thirties, big and burly, weeping with terror that his professional life is over before it had even begun.
Innocent until proven guilty is the law of the land and it's a good one. Everyone deserves it, even pedophiles.
no subject
But that's not what happened here. There was not only enough evidence to go to trial, but a considerable amount of evidence revealed during the trial that constituted inappropriate behavior with minors, at the very best. That he was acquitted was simply a matter of pressure on the jurors, which they've already admitted to.