Fun Stuff > CHATTER
Michael Jackson Died, Guys
Zingoleb:
--- Quote from: Ptommydski on 30 Jun 2009, 11:18 ---Rumours is one of my favourite ever records but I don't think it had the same kind of crossover success.
--- End quote ---
It's similar in that each song on the album ended up getting a ton of airplay, the record itself is in pretty much everyone's collection, and it's the most widely known by that artist.
Aside from album sales (that would go to Dark Side, obviously), Rumours is the closest the 70's had to Thriller.
mberan42:
thread tl;dr
So Farrah Fawcett dies and goes to heaven. God says, "Farrah, you've lead such an enriching life, filling so many people with joy. I'll grant you one wish now that you're dead." Farrah thinks about it and says, "thanks, God, that's really nice of you. I just want all the children of the world to be protected." God says, "Ok" and kills Michael Jackson.
What were Michael Jackson's last words?
"Take me to the children's hospital!"
What are Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon and Billy Mayes getting for Christmas?
Patrick Swayze
Zingoleb:
Boo.
Johnny C:
--- Quote from: KvP on 30 Jun 2009, 09:57 ---I don't agree. You can replace "one of the richest most famous most well-known dudes in pop culture" with "the captain of the Varsity football team" or "the biggest mattress dealer in the tri-state area" or "a police officer" and the implication is the same - that this has to be about collecting money at the expense of a successful and respected man's reputation as well as the community at large's investment in that man (thus making the accusation a threat to all of us, not just the defendant), that a person's power and wealth is a good indicator of how we should view their capacity for committing crime, and that people who claim sexual abuse are so often the sort of people that would lie about it that we should be automatically suspect (and since conclusive proof is so rare, you're effectively advocating for disbelief by default).
--- End quote ---
No it doesn't because none of those people are the Michael Jackson who performed Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad. He is the only person to ever have done this. He's pretty much the only dude who moved 109 million copies of one record by virtue of that record being really fucking awesome. Everything else you're talking about is way down the ladder. Did the captain of the Varsity football team shoot the music video for "Beat It"? He didn't. Did the biggest mattress dealer in the tri-state area come up with the moonwalk? He didn't. Did a police officer find startling early fame as one of the dudes who sang "ABC"? He didn't. There have been more Popes than there have been Michael Jacksons. There have been more U.S. Presidents than there have been Michael Jacksons. Think about that for a second. I wouldn't say this about anyone else because anyone else is not Michael Jackson. That's what I meant when I typed that. I wouldn't be going out on a limb and typing massive defenses of those people because they aren't Michael Jackson.
Nobody should "automatically suspect" anyone who accuses their pastor or their teacher or their football coach or their lawyer or their doctor or whatever of lying because those people don't have Neverland Ranch, you know? Besides, those people weren't the sort of figure that Michael Jackson is. Those people didn't expressly want to recapture a youth they simultaneously never had and never left by surrounding themselves with children. Far be it from me to speculate or whatever but the dude wasn't interested in hanging out with kids because it put him on a power trip, he hung out with kids because he effectively lived a prolonged adolescence in an attempt to live out the childhood he felt he deserved. What's been documented of his life over the last twenty years is pretty solid proof of this.
--- Quote ---It plays into the idea that sex abusers have to be a certain type of person - poor, uneducated, possibly a minority, someone who wouldn't be targeted by gold-digging "sex abuse victims". In those cases we can be more sure, those are the only people we can be certain do these things. How much higher than that 1% do you think these false accusations corroborated by victim statements will go in relation to ever-more rich defendants? 5%? 25%? 50%?
--- End quote ---
No it doesn't because like I said pretty much everyone else existed on a completely different scale than Jackson? It's not so much that he, by virtue of being rich and powerful, is untouchable; instead, it's that he, by virtue of being the Michael Jackson whose life has been comparatively well-documented over twenty years, at the very least seemed to have completely different motives for hanging out with these kids, motives confirmed by people like Macaulay Culkin that had spent time with him as children.
And again I hate to be the dude who says this but is it entirely impossible for Jackson's accuser to be in that 1%, the one case in one hundred that was a false accusation? It's a lot more nuanced than simple statistics but the simple statistics suggest that while there's a slim possibility there is nevertheless a possibility, a possibility corroborated by the fact that he was found not guilty. Does that 1% have to happen exclusively to the poor uneducated minorities?
--- Quote ---If we're talking about factors that would play into false accusations, I would say that it was his open and unselfconscious interest in and affection for children that would have made them more likely, since his wealth and status were not exceptional, in America if not the world. Someone really really really really really should have prevented MJ from letting children reside in his residence unsupervised, in any case. The parents should have refused (I can't remember, did he pay them a stipend for the stays?) but more importantly Jackson should never had been allowed to fulfill his sad desires, for his safety or for the safety of his guests.
--- End quote ---
His love for children and his wealth and status weren't mutually exclusive factors at any point. And, once again, his wealth was not acceptable but his status as the world's only Michael Jackson who performed Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad was.
For any other case this speculation wouldn't be happening. I wouldn't be typing this argument for anyone else; instead, I'd be letting the evidence present itself and opine once the case was concluded. I'm not a judge. The 2005 case concluded, though, and it concluded with a verdict based not by absence of evidence that there was wrongdoing but testimony that there was in fact no wrongdoing, testimony provided by other kids who could have been potential victims. When I said "literally" up there, I meant it. That wasn't hyperbole. Whether you like it or not, the insane amount of errata surrounding the case meant that the allegations against Jackson - like almost all of the events of his weird, tragic life - were a totally unique case of the sort that really didn't happen before him and hasn't happened since. And because of the factors that informed his weird, tragic life, he was acquitted.
You can say all you like that Jackson's wasn't a unique case. You'll be wrong.
Patrick:
--- Quote from: mberan42 on 30 Jun 2009, 14:13 ---MJ jokes
--- End quote ---
Dude you got the wrong thread
Also Johnny, I don't know how much better anybody could've put it. A salute to you, sir.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version