Not only was he one of the best performers, he was also an incredible composer. He heard “Beat It” in his head so clearly, he recorded a demo of the whole song using an 8 channel mixer and cassette.
There's a good chance he really was innocent, but being weird around kids like that is enough to tank your career regardless, which is probably for the best.
It's an odd case. Whilst most agree that he wasn't a full blown child rapist, it's clear that he had an interest in young boys that went further than just fantasy, but people choose to ignore it because "BeAt It ThO!!!".
You can appreciate art whilst knowing that the artist was sick.
Testimony from those around him and supposed victims go the opposite way. Film and music industry is full of a lot of pedos, but MJ seems to have done his best to shield them from it and make moves to distupt the process established pedos used to lure in victims.
Think of how Wienstien used his connections to ruin those who opposed his rapist methods and now imagine how people with money, wealth and relative anonymity to everyone but those they have power over would try to get revenge on a public figure like MJ literally cockblocking them.
Definitely not the impression I got from everything I've read. The whole sleeping in the same bed with kids, keeping books with naked pictures of children, showing porn to kids (perhaps the most common method predators use to try to groom children), and the whole thing with setting up an alarm around his bedroom.
Keep in mind that a lot of the information I've seen was from a Wordpress blog bent on defending Jackson in any and every way possible, and yet I still think the case they make is not really convincing. The author speculates about what "true grooming" looks like, and why MJ's actions supposedly don't fit their personal expectations of grooming. They also try to justify him keeping those books with pictures of naked kids as if that was a normal thing to do.
Maybe if it was just one of these things it could still be justified as MJ just being weird. But it's all off these things, a clear pattern of behavior and accusations for which the simplest explanation is that MJ was indeed a predator. What I can say is that if these accusations were directed at some random dude down the road I definitely wouldn't want my kids going near him.
I mean you should know better than thinking that pedos being acquitted means something. If we have learned anything from Epstein, its that famous pedos and powerful people like to mingle.
Michael Jackson is a good example of how being rich and successful can lead to behavior that just feeds into mental sickness. He probably thought being rich and successful justified his aberrant behavior and that he shouldn't put himself on the level of those below him, until he eventually ended choosing drug abuse over therapy. His whole obsession with children can be traced back to his insecurities that he had been deprived of a childhood, probably in no small part due to growing up as as part of the Jackson musical group family. He must have thought he could relive with his childhood through someone else's by using his wealth and power to create Neverland Ranch.
Anyone who thinks Jackson wasn't a pedophile is willfully blind.
Being a great artist doesn't stop you from being a very sick man. His upbringing certainly is an extenuating circumstance, but it doesn't change the nature of his relationships with young boys.
Edit: to the people defending him, I put it to you that you are blinded by stardom. If any other man was fascinated with young boys in the same way, you'd think they were extremely weird at best and probably think much worse.
I don't really care for his music and his behavior was immature at best (all can be chaulked up to his father.) but I'll believe evidence of his misdeeds when I see it. Every single accusation was walked back and admitted to be pressured by parents or lawyers for an out of court settlement and every investigation, including by the FBI found zero wrong doing. If he had inappropriately touched a child we'd have some evidence about it.
His father was a complete piece of shit and treated him horribly and also he was never really allowed a proper childhood.
So I have heard some people argue that perhaps he was not a pedophile, but rather just really mentally ill, partly believing to be a kid that just wanted child playmates. Still wrong for an adult to act like this, but perhaps there was no sexual misconduct.
Not sure what to believe and perhaps I just don't want him to be a villain, but I would like to hear if there is some concrete evidence.
The thing is - there is no evidence of sexual misconduct. He's been investigated by just about everyone from local cops to the FBI since the early 90s, and despite the outcry there's never been evidence. Considering how our justice system dealt with another high-profile figure's history of sexual abuse, I have to believe something concrete would've turned up by now.
Inappropriate? Absolutely. Illegal? Pedophilia? Doubtful. I mean, provided we genuinely believe in "Innocent until proven guilty" ideal...
Every accusation is super weak and some get walked back. Michael Jackson suffered from toxic masculinity, he wasn't allowed to play with children because he was a man. Society is the issue there.
Second reason that sells it, Macaulay Culkin, Hollywood fucked this dude up he's literally talked about it and he says Michael was legit.
I watched this not just with an open mind, but like you and many others here, with the mind that people were colluding to extort money from Jackson. This completely changed my mind.
I mean, I get it. If one of my favourite artists was accused of being a pedo, I'd defend them and say the claims can't be proven etc.
In this case, I think it's safe to say that whilst he wasn't a full blown child rapist, that he clearly had an attraction to young boys that went much further than just fantasy.
There are probably just as many people coming out to say they accused him just for the money than people actually accusing him.
I'm not saying he's innocent, but i'm pretty sure i know him just as well as you do. Maybe you are willfully blind because you just want him to be a paedophile
Did he ever get convicted over anything? Even though i won't say he was not a pedophile, is there actually any evidence that he was? Are people really that needy for hate?
I had a roommate who was actually hating on me for listening to micheal jackson for that "reason". Back then i sadly was afraid enough to even "associate" with a person "like that" via listening to his music. Pathetic, i know.
He likely did have vitiligo, but as far as I know, it doesn't lighten all your skin gradually and evenly. I don't know if he did do something about it on purpose. You'd think if he did, at least some other people with vitiligo might choose the same option...
But either way, I don't begrudge him the choice if it was something he did to deal with vitiligo. Honestly, I don't know if I would begrudge him the choice even if he didn't have vitiligo. It would certainly be an odd choice, with some social consequences, but it would be his choice.
His skin changing to white was only part of it too, he also had plastic surgery to make his facial features shaped more in-line with facial features common to white skinned populaces. His nose infamously took too much work to get the way he wanted it and ended up with problems later. Could be entirely co-incidental that the plastic surgery he wanted happened to make him look more like someone that was born genetically white skinned...
But taken together, it does seem pretty likely he wanted to identify as white.
If that was the most noteworthy thing about him, people would probably have been upset for a while, but got over it at some point. I mean "Black Alien" has certain done more to purposefully change his appearance and while we see him pop up on the internet every now and then, we tend to go back to fogetting he exists between mentions.
But Michael Jackson is noteworthy for reasons that would hold just as much merit if that part of his life completely never happened.
I, for one, am not convinced of any of the pedophilia stuff, but alot of people are. To me, the descriptions of activities the kids gave sounds so much more like a stunted childhood than anything sexual. But, assuming they were true, it's much closer, but still wouldn't be the most noteworthy thing about him.
He was just that much better than the next closest musician. That he could get through both those news stories coming up all the time, and still have most people think positively of him.
It's very probable that he had some form of body dysmorphia. The multiple plastic surgeries surgeries to chase after some kind of ideal self while his appearance got more and more unusual is kind of a tell.