Something to say.

[platedlizard]

Okay, this is kinda something that's been bothering me for awhile, and since Micheal Jackson has died I thought I would blog about it.

I'm sure by now everyone has heard about the weirdness, the pedophilia accusations, etc about him. The weirdness is definitely true, but the pedophilia? I dunno. He settled out of court with that family, which I find weird. Not that he settled out of court, but that they took the money rather then pressing the case. I mean, if someone did that to my hypothetical child I'd want his fucking ass in prison. I would not want money. And yet that's exactly what they got from him, not justice, just money. and of course once targeted, someone else tried it again with him.

Anyways, I know what you're thinking, if he's so innocent, why'd he pay them off? Well, frankly, accusations of pedophilia are absolutely ruinous. Horrifically so. There's this guy who goes to my parents' church, let's call him George (not, of course, his real name). George is kind of a loser, at the time he was morbidly obese, horrible diet, out of control diabetes, etc. He's on disability and at the time had about six years to live before the obesity+diabetes killed him. His daughter and grandson needed a place to stay, so they moved in with him. The next thing we know the kid, who was about five at the time, is accusing George of molesting him. George gets arrested and because he has no money for bail he got to stay in jail for about six months or so.

Long story short, it turned out the person that was molesting the kid was actually his mom's boyfriend. The reason why he accused his grandfather of molesting him was because his mom didn't get along with him and the kid wanted to please her, as well as deflect attention away from Mom's BF. The charges were dropped against George, but not before he'd been in jail for over half a year.

This whole thing ended up being good for George because it forced him to get his diabetes and weight under control (he lost about 100lbs in jail, and I think he's lost another 100 since then, and he now takes way less insulin). But how many people have good outcomes like this?

I've seen this tactic used to discredit people too. I remember seeing this video of a little girl riding a Tennessee Walker in the 'Big Lick' competition. Unlike the other Walkers who all had the giant padding and chains (and, presumably, sores on their legs under the wrappers, nice people those Big Lick trainers), hers was flatshod. The crowd was jeering and screaming, trying to get her horse to freak out, simply because they didn't like the fact that her family was trying to challenge them into treating their horses better. Guess what her father was accused of in the comments section of the video? That's right, molesting her! and not just there, that is a MAJOR rumor about that family and as far as I can tell it was totally made up to destroy them (it didn't help that the family is black and this was in the South, who says racism is dead?)

Teal Deer:

So yeah, I can see Micheal paying off someone to shut them up about that kind of rumor even if it wasn't true.

Comments

[akuni.livejournal.com]

You know, I've always had second (third, fourth...) thoughts on the MJ situation. There's just so much crazy, it's almost too easy to believe each new thing that comes up.

That said, it all seemed rather convenient to me, too. I can't decide if maybe I just don't want to believe he did it, or if I don't want to condemn someone of something so awful without more to go on. Those sorts of accusations really can utterly ruin your life. =/

[platedlizard.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the more I read about him, the more I feel sorry for him. He was apparently so scared of his dad that he would throw up at the thought of seeing him. I can't even imagine being that scared of my dad. And now guess who has Michael's kids? So much pain and craziness, poor guy. No wonder he got addicted to drugs.