My idea for the Onion Headline

[womzilla]

"Nation Mourns Beloved Child Molester"

Comments

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

ILOL at this one. Even Australia TV has been running more specials about MJ than I think are appropriate. Can't imagine what y'all must be going through in the US.

[sarah-ovenall.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen any TV news because I just don't watch it, but the response on the online sources I read has been complicated. Remembering the talent he once had, acknowledging how disturbed he was, and regretting the shambles his life became.

Also, in the actual trial for child molesting wasn't he acquitted? I still believe he was a pedophile, as I'm sure do many, but I think the MSM would have to be careful to treat him as innocent since a court declared him so.

[redbird]

They can say anything they want now: the dead cannot sue for libel. Of course, that isn't limited to him or to that charge: a headline "Nation Mourns Beloved Drug Dealer" could legally, if embarrassingly, be written about any dead celebrity, regardless of the facts or even previous rumors or lack thereof.

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

Honestly, given that he was never found guilty, nor was he found liable in any civil suit, and every set of complaining parents was less-than-credible? I'm willing to accept purely that he had issues, and may not have actually done anything wrong, as opposed to just the appearance of impropriety, with any children.

[nppyinzer.livejournal.com]

"Billion Mourn the Death of Pop Legend Jermaine Jackson in an Alternate Universe"

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

At least the 1993 incident (a kid named Chandler) never came to guilt or innocence, but was settled out of court by Jackson with a big payment to Chandler's family. Chandler purportedly could describe Jackson's penis in detail.

So, at least in that case, Jackson was not found guilty, but neither was he found innocent. I do not generally assume that settling=guilty, but it looks kind-of bad in this case.

According to Wikipedia (where I checked my memory), Chandler (with a journalist) wrote a tell-all book, and I'm trying to decide whether O want to try to get a used copy online: is that too sleazy, or just sleazy enough?

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

What do you think about his settlement out of court with the Chandler family? That looks very bad to me, but at one point I had the opinion you do, and I'd be happy to be re-convinced.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

My feelings about Jackson were neatly (and hysterically) wrapped up on one of the best episodes of South Park (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jeffersons_(South_Park)).

Note to self: Next time I achieve fame and fortune at age five, remember to grow up.

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

All settlements are (theoretically) based on expected values and externalities. Where L = chance of loss (which is not entirely independent of the truth of the matter, but varies quite a bit from it), J = amount of judgment in case of loss, E = External Factors (quite a few things: time lost to trial, legal expenses, further negative publicity, the emotional agony of actually being at trial, etc.), you settle if you can for less that LxJ+E (Also note that there's another factor, W, for additional plaintiffs, both reasonable and unreasonable, likely to come out of the woodwork in case of a loss, and further Jw and Ew and Lw associated therewith (AND, though diminished, Ww! People love a Pinata), so it's really LxJxW(LwxJwxWw+Ew)+E). Note that whatever L was in this case, J was very very high; given Jackson's emotional state and other factors, E was astronomical; and I'd bet on W being pretty big too.

Any lawyer who wants to go to trial is a bad lawyer. If you can settle, settle, if you can't settle, litigate.

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

And also, you can always turn the fact of the settlement around against the Chandler family. What kind of unfeeling greed-hogs would take the filthy lucre of the inhuman beast that did that to their child? Wouldn't any real, loving parents beggar themselves, spend years doing the legal work themselves if they had to, lose their jobs, be branded crazy people, to see public judgment for what was done to their beloved child?

What I'm saying is this: He may have done horrible things, he may have done mildly improper things. He may have been just a scarred, scared little boy in a grown-up body, trying to spend time with other children or he may have been a sexual predator, taking out his rage over his own lost childhood by destroying the innocence of children. Nobody knows for sure, not even the children, now grown.

If we'd had a full finding of fact, or real, concrete, publicly available information against him, it would be a different story. As it is, I'm content not knowing.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

In a civil suit, "filthy lucre" *is* the public judgment against the defendant, so getting it is most of the vindication that is possible.

That's not completely true, of course. One of the clear patterns of civil suits is the number of plaintiffs who really are just looking for an apology. A private settlement *might* include a private apology, but it's not the way to bet.

"He may have been just a scarred, scared little boy in a grown-up body, trying to spend time with other children or he may have been a sexual predator, taking out his rage over his own lost childhood by destroying the innocence of children. Nobody knows for sure, not even the children, now grown."

The children, now grown, almost certainly *do* know whether Jackson made inappropriate sexual contact with them. It's also certain that Jackson did not take the reasonable course after his first public accusation, which is to stop acting in ways that would make accusations of child molestation credible. It's unmistakably true that after the Chandler case he still spent large amounts of time with young boys un- or barely supervised, overnight. Basically, he didn't act like someone who took accusations of child molestations as if they were important; he acted like someone to whom they were a trifling legal inconvenience, nothing more.

(Somewhere I came across a write-up of Jackson as having a form of progressive schizophrenia. While of course any psychological profile of a celebrity based purely on the public record is suspect, it made sense of Jackson's life in a way very little else has--one of the most universl symptoms of true schizophrenia is "a divorce from common sense".)

[bugsybanana.livejournal.com]

Do you recall where you saw that? I'd like to read it, because I came to the same conclusion, and I'd love to see confirmation from a professional viewpoint.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

No, I haven't found it, which makes me wonder if I heard it from you.

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

As to whether the children know, that's not clear. Children also "knew" that they had been spirited down secret tunnels to be molested by clowns and watch newborns be fed to wolves. I'm not claiming that the children involved have constructed memories, but the memories of children are notoriously malleable.

His actions after the Chandler case could also be the action of someone who believed he was innocent, believed his actions were innocent, and who believed he was right to spend that time with children.

Unquestionably, he had some sort of connection with children that our current society regards as creepy. Whether it was sexual, neither of us know, and the now-grown children have the best idea.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

"His actions after the Chandler case could also be the action of someone who believed he was innocent, believed his actions were innocent, and who believed he was right to spend that time with children."

I was initially thinking of that, but as I thought about it more, I remembered his incredibly cavalier behavior at the start of the criminal trial. Actions showing up hours late for a hearing and dancing on top of his car outside the courthouse demonstrated (though did not prove) that he failed to take the entire legal process seriously.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

I attempted to perform praeteritio on the child-molesting charges in an lj post about how people hated him (for not growing up) long before the charges began, and I am getting comments like "Hey, did you know he was a pedophile?"