Dude hung around with small boys. Alone. Even if he was innocent your just asking for speculation to run wild. The people around him complete failed him how nobody thought to say "hang on Mike maybe this is a little inappropriate" is beyond me. Or maybe as an adult he should have thought that himself.
Yeah, this is what I don’t get. I’m a great admirer of MJ‘s work, he was a major part of my youth, but what in God’s name was this man thinking?
To behave in such a way with children demonstrates a degree of naïveté that frankly beggars belief considering the position of affluence and influence he held. Everyone attempts to paint MJ as this little innocent child himself, remarkably talented but immensely unwise to the ways of the world, but he was no dummy. He must’ve realized he was placing himself in a very compromised position by allowing such degrees of proximity and relational intimacy with minors, a degree of relationship that, IMO, is entirely inappropriate for an adult and child to hold. That shit was textbook grooming behavior.
That he did indicates to me he was making a very calculated risk assessment and proceeding regardless, knowing that he could utilize his power, influence, legacy, resources and nigh deification by so many to absolve him to be granted far past the point of the benefit of the doubt if he were suspect. No one can convince me that he was so naive as the results his actions garnered him came at all a shock. He knew what he was doing, and he still took that risk, attempting to use the sacrifices his brutal upbringing incurred upon his development as a cover to justify behavior conducive to exploitative and abusive ends.
And
IF MJ was somehow proven beyond all doubt innocent of these accusations, I would feel compelled to apologize to absolutely
no one, MJ least of all, nor in the least feel bad for suspecting him of the most abhorrent and vile of actions one can commit. Not only do I think that’s a reasonable stance to take, I find it a suspicion imperative in the protection of our most vulnerable population from predators. That scrutiny and suspicion is what you get for being fucking stupid and breathtakingly imprudent in your discretions. There are certain aspects of being an adult that are incompatible with holding relations to the degree of intimacy that MJ pursued and exemplified with these minors.…..namely, that most adults are sexually active and children are not (or at least shouldn’t be, especially with adults). That is potential that requires societal boundaries and preclusions to safeguard, boundaries and preclusions that MJ flagrantly ignored and trespassed upon. Regardless of guilt, by simple virtue of optics and common sense, it’s laughably absurd to believe those that find him suspect in his behavior to be idiots or so far off their rocker. There is every valid justification to eyeball this man, and if people think it’s fine for a child to sleep in the same bed as an adult because,
“sharing one’s bed is an ultimate act of love” or some such nonsense and don’t feel even a bit uneasy about that, I can only hope they are not parents.
What MJ did with minors was
NOT proper, not socially acceptable, shouldn’t be encouraged or rationalized in any manner, and even if he was innocent, IMO he still deserved the authority’s full scrutiny, to be held to the courts’ discretion and evidentiary standards, the public’s stigmatization, and the hit to his repute simply as precautionary measures to protect our young, as the cost of gliving him a pass on all of those does nothing but place them in potential jeopardy with an outcome far too grave, and is not the side to come anywhere close to erring on.