The Tube.

[blessed1]

I think I'll leave it so.  The thing I find strange is that MJ must have had an entire entourage around him who knew what was going on and appeared to actually assist him by auditioning his victims... sickening.

the whole thing is pretty fucked up. the parents of those kids especially.

[Emphyrio]

I haven't watched it but didn't these 2 testify in his defence back in the day? I know it's allegedly being portrayed in a quite one-sided way . Is there much in the way of people speaking out in MJ's defence in the documentary?

I might be cynical but I reckon there's an element of cash-grabbery going on.

[Eoin McLove]

It is 100% one sided, that is undeniable. 

[Emphyrio]

It's easy make a story seem convincing if there's only one side covered. I don't think I've much interest in an exercise in tarring a dead man.

[Eoin McLove]

I believe their story and to that end I think it's important that the truth comes out. 

[Emphyrio]

Again, without having watched it, I can't really offer an opinion of their credibility. I just think in the interest of fairness I'd prefer if people who might be able to counter their claims were given a voice.

I suppose there's probably a significant element that wants to keep separation of artist and the art, as Jackson was the first musician that really captured my attention.

[Eoin McLove]

No doubt,  his musical legacy remains untouchable and to be honest,  it's not as if these revelations are new or all that startling (in that everyone knew he was an oddball), so it'll be interesting to see how many radio stations decide to ban his music or decide the music stands alone. 

[Pedrito]

I haven't watched it but didn't these 2 testify in his defence back in the day? I know it's allegedly being portrayed in a quite one-sided way . Is there much in the way of people speaking out in MJ's defence in the documentary?

I might be cynical but I reckon there's an element of cash-grabbery going on.

Haven´'t watched it and yes they did testify for him in the past as kids. However, I saw another doc inwhich one of them lads said he was just railroaded into it. He had no support, no adult figure in his life who hadn't been bought off. Imagine your parents handed you over to that creep? Your own parents stand aside and allow AN ADULT MAN bring you into his bedroom every night. All these excuses over the years, he was a boy in a man's body, all that absolute bollox. It's the same thinking that allowed priests abuse kids for years, the idea that certain people are exceptions.

He was a grown man who had a ranch built to be a child's fantasy world. He had children who would sleep with him. Everywhere he went, he was holding some little boy's hand. There's pictures everywhere of it. He had Mcauly Culkin and these lads all hanging off him. Now take him out  of the superstar scenario and imagine your male next door neighbour walking around holding little boys' hands, bringing them with him on plane trips and dressing them up like him...fucking sick. In no circumstances is that behaviour acceptable.

People are willing to believe anything to avoid the horrific truth. I have a couple of mates who were in a boarding school that was infested with predators. They told their mother back in the day about in the day and she dismissed them as imagining it. Thankfully, my mates were never physically touhed but had to witness certain things that a child should never have to witness. Many of their classmates were not so lucky..many parents were told and many just couldn't believe it, it was something that priests would simply never do. So fuck Michael Jackson..yes he was a great artist, but we've let this freakish behaviour off the hook for far too long. In many ways I feel sorry for the life he lead, he was obviously badly mistreated himself as a child, but there are no excuses for the adult behaviour.

Good article here> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/10/dan-reed-shocked-those-wont-accept-michael-jackson-abuser

[Paul keohane]

I watched the doc,thought it stank of bullshit.What i did take away from it though is Id definitely give the mother a belt of wavin,she looked better now than she did 25 years ago.

[Pedrito]

I watched the doc,thought it stank of bullshit.What i did take away from it though is Id definitely give the mother a belt of wavin,she looked better now than she did 25 years ago.

I'd better watch the thing so..nothing like a fine mature woman

[Eoin McLove]

Your one must have put that hush money to good use alright!

I think the parents have an awful lot to answer for here.  Yes,  they were manipulated and he was an incredibly clever and conniving man,  if you believe the lads' version of events.  But surely there must have been alarm bells ringing in the parents' heads,  especially as they were becoming more and more isolated from their kids. Was it wilful ignorance? Was it a case of them actually trusting MJ or was it a case of them not wanting to stall the gravy train and choosing to look the other way? Massive neglect either way.

[Pedrito]

I was listening to an interview last week where the person was saying that two of the fathers of Jackson victims, subsequesntly committed suicide. I'm not sure if that's mentioned in the doc. Yes, the parents are massively responsible. I am also very wary of throwing blame around especially in the present light of outrage culture, MeToo movements, Jussie Smollet etc.

All that said, everything points to grooming. All this sleeping in the same bed shit and trying to fob it off as being like Jesus and only feeling love. I'm sorry but it's all wrong. There is no pass for any adult man and kids as young as 7 being in their bed, no, no and no again.

My best mate when I when I was a teenager and in my early 20's had been subjected to all of this by his father as a child. To sit there as he tried to pick through the fragments of his mind and his youth and just listen to him  when he was trying to make sense of it all was beyond fucked in the head. Despite everything he used to say he loved his father. It all looks easy from the outside. We all think you'd just hate the guy and end of. But it's a total attack on everything that seems to make sense to people who haven't gone through it. I didn't know what to say to my friend..we moved apart as the years went on because I couldn't be around all the self destruction. Just a massive waste of a really great kid, a beautiful person, who had to suffer that shit..makes my skin crawl even thinking about it now. 

In terms of the behaviour of the parents, we see it again and again, repeated ad nauseum..cults, religious orders, education, Hollywood etc etc. Wide eyed idiot parents, with no cop on, who take everything that is told to them as gospel. If you look at the likes of Rose McGowan's childhood..is it any coincidence that she ended up in Hollywood the victim of abusers. She's known nothing else since day one. And yet we continuously give passes to the likes of Jackson, nowadays to these parents who are pushing their kids into hormone replacement and gender reassignment therapy..it's all the same thing as far as I'm concerned, just with a different mask.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Good article here> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/10/dan-reed-shocked-those-wont-accept-michael-jackson-abuser

Written by the director of the documentary though, and reads in places like a commercial: "Part two of the documentary leads all but the most hard-bitten fan to an understanding of why he lied then, and is telling the truth now."

Haven't seen it myself, but I've little interest in a one-sided story. And it's not a case of "not believing" the victims either, much more a case of drawing a clean distinction between belief and fact. You can believe someone but at the same time withhold full judgment until it emerges as fact. I'd go further and say that the lack of ability to do this, among the general population, is behind a large part of fake news of all kinds. Weird things can happen, and weird stories get told, and memory isn't the best bed-fellow for history, especially when your life after the events is bathed in third-party suspicions and declarations about how wrong certain behaviours are.

Jackson could easily have been a conniving sexual predator, imposing an adult sexuality via an infantile facade, upon young children. That is absolutely possible. He could also have been the essentially asexual, mentally ill individual, who found it difficult if not impossible to connect on an adult level with other adults, and constantly trying to live the childhood experiences he never had for himself, including sleep overs, dressing up, etc., etc.

Does the documentary provide enough/any evidence capable of slicing between those two hypothetical psychological scenarios? They're schematic, but in the first Jackson would have been a self-aware abuser, in the second naïvely mentally ill, in which case the parents and the machine around him are the ones to be judged and condemned, much more than him. I find it very difficult to believe that either of the victims would have had the necessary psychological discernement to differentiate between the two, much less so in retrospect. But that said, if he was a self-aware abuser, then that's what he was... and that shouldn't be so much of a surprise to people that they just can't accept it. But maybe we just have to deal with the tension of ambiguity.

[Trev]

Finished up the Ted Bundy Tapes last night. Other than him being a serial killer I didn't know too much about him, was shocked at the extent of his crimes, and how he was able to get away with it for so long

[Pedrito]

Good article here> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/10/dan-reed-shocked-those-wont-accept-michael-jackson-abuser

Written by the director of the documentary though, and reads in places like a commercial: "Part two of the documentary leads all but the most hard-bitten fan to an understanding of why he lied then, and is telling the truth now."

Haven't seen it myself, but I've little interest in a one-sided story. And it's not a case of "not believing" the victims either, much more a case of drawing a clean distinction between belief and fact. You can believe someone but at the same time withhold full judgment until it emerges as fact. I'd go further and say that the lack of ability to do this, among the general population, is behind a large part of fake news of all kinds. Weird things can happen, and weird stories get told, and memory isn't the best bed-fellow for history, especially when your life after the events is bathed in third-party suspicions and declarations about how wrong certain behaviours are.

Jackson could easily have been a conniving sexual predator, imposing an adult sexuality via an infantile facade, upon young children. That is absolutely possible. He could also have been the essentially asexual, mentally ill individual, who found it difficult if not impossible to connect on an adult level with other adults, and constantly trying to live the childhood experiences he never had for himself, including sleep overs, dressing up, etc., etc.

Does the documentary provide enough/any evidence capable of slicing between those two hypothetical psychological scenarios? They're schematic, but in the first Jackson would have been a self-aware abuser, in the second naïvely mentally ill, in which case the parents and the machine around him are the ones to be judged and condemned, much more than him. I find it very difficult to believe that either of the victims would have had the necessary psychological discernement to differentiate between the two, much less so in retrospect. But that said, if he was a self-aware abuser, then that's what he was... and that shouldn't be so much of a surprise to people that they just can't accept it. But maybe we just have to deal with the tension of ambiguity.

They're fair points Chris, and of course we should be careful to hear both sides of the story. However, this isn't the first documentary that has come out about this and I've watched a lot of stuff over the years in relation to it all. I just don't buy the reliving childhood waffle that is thrown out there as a defence. You listen to any of his interviews over the years and he appears very lucid, well able to communicate.

Ultimately, as you say, none of us were there, only Jackson and those kids know what really happened behind those walls, but, for me, the mere fact that those kids were even in a bedroom with a grown man is enough for me to say "enough with the bullshit", and let's cut to the chase.

It will always be ambiguous, too much time has passed, and as happened with the original case, there was enough money behind Jackson and not enough evidence to prove what the kids were saying. Added to that all the vested interests in a case going either way..it's a mess. I know what way I woud be leaning though..instinct I think is what it is called.