I seem to recall Jackson settled several lawsuits out of court. That doesn’t make him look innocent.
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Plenty of reasons to settle civil suits even if you aren’t guilty. The money motive for the families works regardless of whether Jackson ever actually assaulted their children. Dunno.
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True but it goes both ways. “I’ll give you a bunch of money to go away and forget about this whole thing if you sign this non-disclosure agreement with it.”
Yeah, I’m very tempted to assume there is something to that. There certainly is, in my mind, when Bill O’Reily settles sexual harassment suits. But, since he’s dead, I don’t really have to worry about it much one way or the other. Cosby, on the other hand, is still alive 
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But another consideration in Michael’s favor is that no one has yet come forward as an adult, either during MJ’s lifetime or after his death, to claim he abused them as a child.
One of the reasons that Cosby’s many accusers are so credible is that most of them have no clear financial motive for falsely claiming he assaulted them. Adults are also much less likely to be coached into false testimony by family members or authorities who may have their own motives or agendas.
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Jackson is one of those figures who helped me formed the whole “separate the art from the artist” theory of mine. As someone who grew up on his songs, I don’t want to be all those accusations to be true. And you’re right the guilt has never been certain - though there were out of court settlements. But frankly, if it were anyone else, no one would be giving him the benefit of the doubt.
But at the same time, one is likely to give their heroes a pass on their misdeeds. Bowie showed up like 3 times on BB last week, and he was guilty of statutory rape.
I guess this is understandable to a degree. A musician especially can feel like family with the amount of time you “spend” with them, and we often continue to love family even if they do horrible things.
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So is Bill O’Reilly! I’m sure he has more lurking too.
That’s a good point.
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Lip synced by Macaulay Culkin?
That’s ok. We all look alike anyway.
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Bill O’Reilly’s dead?
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Less likely? I’d say yes. But the whole “recovered memory” trend in the 90’s showed us that adults can be convinced of demonstrably unlikely childhood sexual abuse, too.
(Not to say that real repressed memory is impossible, but that bad interview/therapy methods that presume repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse exist may eventually unearth them, whether the events really happened or not. (Also, not doubting the Cosby accusers, who were abused in their late teens and/or adulthood and aren’t suddenly finding repressed memories of their abuse years later, rather they didn’t come forward publicly in the past because Cosby’s financial and industry power and fatherly public persona made doing so potentially ruinous to the accusers.))
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That’s it. I’m firing my copy editor.
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Only on the inside.
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Unlike Rob Ford, who is dead on the outside and inside.
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A thread?
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Nice assumptions there. You do know his vitiligo was confirmed by the autopsy report, right?
Naw forget that, it’s fun to make fun of burn victims with genetic skin disorders.
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Also, all the people that do know him during his life continue to defend him.
When you dig into the charges it’s pretty clear how baseless they are. Not a scrap of evidence anywhere. You’d imagine there would be some indication somewhere right. That article that even boingboing ran earlier about finding evidence pointed to a hustler mag and a best selling photography book. A hustler mag is even more indication of a heterosexual proclivity to adults, not children.
But hey, he looks so weird right and what’s with the all the plastic surgery? I mean you wouldn’t do any of those things after your head gets torched and you get diagnosed with the skin disorder (both proven true by his autopsy).
MJ was victimized by an enemy that can never be defeated, the believable lie.
