Newsflash - Human Being "Still not interested" In Jacko's Sex Life
Yeah, I know, what kind of a freak does that make me? Since I'm not currently otherwise occupied (in the middle of a war, for instance, or starving to death, or fighting a losing battle against Aids) who the hell do I think I am not to have an opinion on this? Popes die (or don't die), cities fall, whole countries battle hopelessly against rising sea-levels, Bird Flu threatens to swoop out of Asia and decimate us all, but Michael Jackson's trial still gets number one slot on the evening news. He's on page 1 of the newspapers (even the big serious ones), psychiatrists and pundits sit on TV studio sofas and discuss the ifs and the buts, political organisations and even churches are taking sides. So why can't I bring myself to care?
Certainly, the charges against him are serious ones, and deserve to be taken seriously. If they turn out to be true, then who could argue against packing him off to jail with the rest of the paedophiles? Having been (or not been) a victim himself doesn't excuse victimising others (if he did). In most cases, we could all sit back and let the court decide - a person is innocent until proven guilty, right? However, as OJ Simpson proved to all of us who bothered to take notice, in the US, justice is a saleable commodity. No offence, OJ, but plenty of people have been hanged, fried or injected on far less evidence, and in fact continue to be offed in States like Texas every month. A casual flick through the pages of Amnesty International Magazine will provide you with the names of plenty of people on Death Row who were convicted on far more tenuous grounds; Ryan Matthews, for instance, who was sentenced to death at age 17 for a murder which, 5 long years later, DNA evidence proved he didn't commit. Ryan is, in fact, the third juvenile offender in Louisiana to be sentenced to death for a crime of which he was later proved innocent; these three were lucky enough to be retried before the sentence was carried out. Anyone care to make a guess how many innocent people weren't so lucky?
So back to Jacko. It seems to me that the man (?) has no possibility of a fair trial, and that part of the blame for this lies with his own publicity machine. I don't like him, and if you put a gun to my head and demanded an opinion, I'd probably have to say I think he's as guilty as sin, but with so much money and publicity being thrown around I doubt very much we'll ever know the truth. If the boy in question really was abused, then shame on his family for allowing it; would you let your child spend nights alone with a man with such a dubious reputation? After the Jordy Chandler case (and exactly who in this world pays $X,000,000 hush-money if they're innocent, anyway?) surely no parent, however dim or Jackson-obsessed, would knowingly put their child in such a potentially dangerous position - unless they intended to make money out of it, of course, which is yet another thing I expect we'll never know.
So on one side, we have a person who, by most people's standards, is a loony-tune. I'd weep tears of blood if my daughter were so deeply unhappy with herself that she had to have her face sliced and diced the way Jackson has, if she were so emotionally dysfunctional that she couldn't have a relationship with a human being, if she inflicted her own misery on the children she had to pay someone else to have. Sad as it is, though, there's no law against being a danger to yourself, apparently; what the jury is being asked to decide is, in fact, whether Jackson's obvious mental problems are now making him a danger to others. On the other side, we have a family so stupid (Oops! I mean "trusting" of course) or so avaricious that they put their son in the care of a man with such a soiled reputation. I'm of the opinion that, if Jackson is guilty, then so are they, and in all fairness they shouldn't get a cent.
This morning, on BBC News 24 (who should know better), I watched Jackson turn up for the first day of his trial dressed up (apparently) as Lee Van Cleef in a Spaghetti Western. It makes me wonder if, in his strange and dissociated world, this is just another role he's playing. I'd love to take a peek into his mind; like millions, maybe billions, of others, I watched the 1 minute video-clip he made to protest his innocence, and it made me feel somehow dirty, as though I were visitng Bedlam to laugh at the inmates. I don't doubt that he at least believes what he's saying, but when you look at that mad, ravaged face, you have to wonder if what he believes has any connection with "reality" at all.
Another source of wonder to me is that black civil rights organisations are so willing to support him, given that he's spent so much time and effort on being as un-black as possible. This is not a race issue, so why are so many legitimate campaigners for social justice ready to pick up the race card he had the nerve to play? Nothing about this trial, as far as I can see, is about Jackson's ethnic background; he's not being prosecuted because he's black(ish), but because he's accused of child abuse. He certainly isn't poor, oppressed or in need of funding. No-one has the right to pre-judge him, for or against. As it is, Jackson seems to be deliberately confusing support with proof; "Look how many people believe in me, I must be innocent". If that were true, then we'd all be apologising to the ghost of Adolf Hitler. As for the "fans" who travel across half the world to "support" him, what exactly do they think they can acheive? None of us have access to the facts, and whatever the outcome of the trial there'll still be people who believe he was either unjustly condemned or that he got off scot free.
Even though I'm not interested in Jackson as a person, I am interested in this trial; what's really on the stand here is the American justice system, and how far that system can be manipulated by money and fame. Jury selection must have been a bitch; even people who really aren't interested or prejudiced for or against would have to have lived in a cave for the last year in order to avoid the publicity. Child abuse is the bete noire of Western Society, something we all have strong opinions about. There's no middle ground here; on one side we have the people who do it, and on the other side - well, the rest of the world, I most sincerely hope. Virtually every other crime, up to and including murder, can have some mitigating factors; child abuse doesn't, can't, and should never have.
I'm also interested in what will happen to Jackson if he does go down. We all know what usually happens to "nonces" in prison, and I know that, personally, in my heart of hearts, I don't really care. I know I should, I know that the human rights of paedophiles ought to be as important to me as the human rights of any other section of society, but they just aren't. Far too often, in my opinion, abusers get off with ridiculously light sentences, so why should I care what happens to them on the inside? It won't be as bad as the physical and emotional damage suffered by their child-victims, after all. But somehow I don't see Jackson, however the trial goes, ever being subjected to the ordeals that paedophiles usually face when they're sentenced to jail. That, he will certainly be able to buy his way out of.
Certainly, the charges against him are serious ones, and deserve to be taken seriously. If they turn out to be true, then who could argue against packing him off to jail with the rest of the paedophiles? Having been (or not been) a victim himself doesn't excuse victimising others (if he did). In most cases, we could all sit back and let the court decide - a person is innocent until proven guilty, right? However, as OJ Simpson proved to all of us who bothered to take notice, in the US, justice is a saleable commodity. No offence, OJ, but plenty of people have been hanged, fried or injected on far less evidence, and in fact continue to be offed in States like Texas every month. A casual flick through the pages of Amnesty International Magazine will provide you with the names of plenty of people on Death Row who were convicted on far more tenuous grounds; Ryan Matthews, for instance, who was sentenced to death at age 17 for a murder which, 5 long years later, DNA evidence proved he didn't commit. Ryan is, in fact, the third juvenile offender in Louisiana to be sentenced to death for a crime of which he was later proved innocent; these three were lucky enough to be retried before the sentence was carried out. Anyone care to make a guess how many innocent people weren't so lucky?
So back to Jacko. It seems to me that the man (?) has no possibility of a fair trial, and that part of the blame for this lies with his own publicity machine. I don't like him, and if you put a gun to my head and demanded an opinion, I'd probably have to say I think he's as guilty as sin, but with so much money and publicity being thrown around I doubt very much we'll ever know the truth. If the boy in question really was abused, then shame on his family for allowing it; would you let your child spend nights alone with a man with such a dubious reputation? After the Jordy Chandler case (and exactly who in this world pays $X,000,000 hush-money if they're innocent, anyway?) surely no parent, however dim or Jackson-obsessed, would knowingly put their child in such a potentially dangerous position - unless they intended to make money out of it, of course, which is yet another thing I expect we'll never know.
So on one side, we have a person who, by most people's standards, is a loony-tune. I'd weep tears of blood if my daughter were so deeply unhappy with herself that she had to have her face sliced and diced the way Jackson has, if she were so emotionally dysfunctional that she couldn't have a relationship with a human being, if she inflicted her own misery on the children she had to pay someone else to have. Sad as it is, though, there's no law against being a danger to yourself, apparently; what the jury is being asked to decide is, in fact, whether Jackson's obvious mental problems are now making him a danger to others. On the other side, we have a family so stupid (Oops! I mean "trusting" of course) or so avaricious that they put their son in the care of a man with such a soiled reputation. I'm of the opinion that, if Jackson is guilty, then so are they, and in all fairness they shouldn't get a cent.
This morning, on BBC News 24 (who should know better), I watched Jackson turn up for the first day of his trial dressed up (apparently) as Lee Van Cleef in a Spaghetti Western. It makes me wonder if, in his strange and dissociated world, this is just another role he's playing. I'd love to take a peek into his mind; like millions, maybe billions, of others, I watched the 1 minute video-clip he made to protest his innocence, and it made me feel somehow dirty, as though I were visitng Bedlam to laugh at the inmates. I don't doubt that he at least believes what he's saying, but when you look at that mad, ravaged face, you have to wonder if what he believes has any connection with "reality" at all.
Another source of wonder to me is that black civil rights organisations are so willing to support him, given that he's spent so much time and effort on being as un-black as possible. This is not a race issue, so why are so many legitimate campaigners for social justice ready to pick up the race card he had the nerve to play? Nothing about this trial, as far as I can see, is about Jackson's ethnic background; he's not being prosecuted because he's black(ish), but because he's accused of child abuse. He certainly isn't poor, oppressed or in need of funding. No-one has the right to pre-judge him, for or against. As it is, Jackson seems to be deliberately confusing support with proof; "Look how many people believe in me, I must be innocent". If that were true, then we'd all be apologising to the ghost of Adolf Hitler. As for the "fans" who travel across half the world to "support" him, what exactly do they think they can acheive? None of us have access to the facts, and whatever the outcome of the trial there'll still be people who believe he was either unjustly condemned or that he got off scot free.
Even though I'm not interested in Jackson as a person, I am interested in this trial; what's really on the stand here is the American justice system, and how far that system can be manipulated by money and fame. Jury selection must have been a bitch; even people who really aren't interested or prejudiced for or against would have to have lived in a cave for the last year in order to avoid the publicity. Child abuse is the bete noire of Western Society, something we all have strong opinions about. There's no middle ground here; on one side we have the people who do it, and on the other side - well, the rest of the world, I most sincerely hope. Virtually every other crime, up to and including murder, can have some mitigating factors; child abuse doesn't, can't, and should never have.
I'm also interested in what will happen to Jackson if he does go down. We all know what usually happens to "nonces" in prison, and I know that, personally, in my heart of hearts, I don't really care. I know I should, I know that the human rights of paedophiles ought to be as important to me as the human rights of any other section of society, but they just aren't. Far too often, in my opinion, abusers get off with ridiculously light sentences, so why should I care what happens to them on the inside? It won't be as bad as the physical and emotional damage suffered by their child-victims, after all. But somehow I don't see Jackson, however the trial goes, ever being subjected to the ordeals that paedophiles usually face when they're sentenced to jail. That, he will certainly be able to buy his way out of.
posted by holojojo at 1:44 AM
1 Comments:
still checking
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