Michael Jackson and Farrah died today

**cheri1122** · 07-01-2009, 04:29 PM

Flattop: I responded in public because I have nothing to hide - if you wish to supply examples of my 'targeting' you, please feel free, but start another thread, ok?
To reply to your question [though you ignored mine: what string?] your response to Pilgrim's post indicates that you believe there would be reason for your son to defend himself.
I repeat: the question was irrelevant, but your reply spoke volumes about what you believe. Incidentally, whether or not you like the music is also extremely irrelevant - the question up for debate is do we believe in innocent until PROVEN guilty, or not?

**OntarioVanMan** · 07-01-2009, 04:53 PM

Ya know in his time The King..Elvis was considered disgusting and crude by his moves...

I was just watching MJ's videos on a tribute show...man what a performer and good looking guy in his younger years! His videos and creative mind was in the forefront of music videos and choreography.

**Pilgrim** · 07-01-2009, 05:47 PM

Originally Posted by Turtle

Actually, that's a classic loaded question worthy of Mr Bat Guano (may he rest in peace). Leave off the last word and it becomes a valid question in relation to the issue, but at is stands, it changes the conditions of circumstances, assumes things not in question, and becomes an exercise in the hypothetical, not to mention a pretty blatant deflection towards whoever answers the question, since a "no" would supposedly prove your point, making you out to be superior, and a "yes" would allow you to deride the answerer, again, making you out to be superior.

In any case, the question, and the answer, is a rather weak attempt to draw a corollary between the answer and your already concluded conclusion, and is a classic illusory corollary, since to reach the conclusion you have come to, one must conclude that any 45 year old man who would have a child on a sleepover must be a pedophile under any and all circumstances, period.

You view Michael Jackson in terms of black and white (no pun intended, well, maybe a little) in that he was a 45 year old man, period. And he had little boys over for sleepovers, period. Ergo, period.

There was nothing about the guy that was normal, yet you want to make him out to be a very normal pedophile. Really?

With all due respect to Mr. Guano, the above response (not answer, mind you) to the question is a study in Bovine Scatology. The last word of the question is essential, because without it the factor of possible pedophilic activity is removed. It also reflects the situation being discussed - Jacko sleeping with young boys WITHOUT a chaperone. Call it loaded if you wish, but the fact is the question requires an answer from the respondant that will define his/her position in no uncertain terms. If the answer is yes, then it's obvious that one giving that answer truly believes that Jacko was a harmless weirdo - fine, believe that if you so choose. If the answer is no, then maybe the respondant believes there is reasonable doubt as to whether or not Jackson was harmless. Granted, that would be an awkward position to take if one had been preaching the normality of young boys sleeping with unrelated grown men.

Your assumption that I "want to make him out to be a very normal pedophile" couldn't be farther off base. I've stated from the outset that I've always thought he was a wacko whose behavior was unlike that of any performer the world has ever seen. However, the fact that he was a highly successful showman shouldn't give him carte blanche to operate with impunity outside the norms of society.

**Turtle** · 07-01-2009, 06:36 PM

But the last word also assumes that they were always unchaperoned, and that's not the case. Most often the parents, or at least one parent, also spent the night there, as well.

"Granted, that would be an awkward position to take if one had been preaching the normality of young boys sleeping with unrelated grown men."

Again, you're trying to take a very un-normal Michael Jackson and put him into the normalcy of "unrelated grown men," when he wasn't a grown man in any sense other than the calendar. You base everything off that, and you're right, it's not normal for 45 year old men to have sleepovers with young boys, and you assume that anyone who does must therefor be a pedophile. But Jackson wasn't normal, which you admit, yet you still insist that he operate within the norms of society, and if he doesn't, he is therefor a pedophile. That's a humongous jump, especially when you take into account the evidence against him. Not the unsubstantiated accusations and blind faith, but the actual evidence.

People can come up with all kinds of reasoning as to why he is a pedophile, but in every case it's always based on assumption. Always. Facts, real or imagined, that are not in evidence, are assumed, and they are assumed to be true without any testing of the validity. You end up with a conclusion that is based on a mountain of unsubstantiated rumor and assumptions. If even one of those is proven to be wrong, it all falls apart.

**Pilgrim** · 07-01-2009, 09:07 PM

Granted, there's a lot of assumptions going on here with a few facts mixed in. We can assume that if there happened to be a parent on site at Neverland during one of these "sleep overs" they were paying attention to what was going on in Jackson's bedroom. What of they weren't paying attention - or what if they didn't care what happened? That scenario is not out of the realm of possibility considering the cases of irresponsible parents reported in the press every day. There were actually several accusations of inappropriate behavior by Jackson, and he had paid a settlement of about $2 million to one other family (that we know about) several years before his trial. Easy money if you ask me, and he kept setting himself up as vulnerable in these situations by repeatedly bringing these kids in. Glaring examples of his lack of impulse control and continuing to ignore the advice of his handlers.

One other factor that hasn't been mentioned in this discussion is the library of kiddie porn and stock of alcholic beverages discovered in Jacko's bedroom when the sheriff's dept. raided Neverland Ranch in November of 2003. More circumstancial evidence - but the entire picture is not a pretty one. When it comes down to the core issue, only the people directly involved with these events really know what happened - and they ain't talkin'.

Getting back to the main point, IMHO there's enough circumstantial evidence for one to conclude that anyone who allowed their son to spend the night with MJ was placing their kid at considerable risk. Even if they weren't sexually abused by him, the kids were under the influence of a really strange guy at an impressionable age.

**aristotle** · 07-01-2009, 10:32 PM

Payoffs and hush money torpedo a strong prosecution. The prosecutor, when presented with all available evidence against Michael Jackson, concluded there was sufficient cause to bring molestation charges to court. This decision wasn't made lightly. Along the process of pleadings, motions to dismiss, and the trial itself, the defense team wins some critical points of contention by having key evidence favorable to the prosecution tossed out as inadmissible. All this is done at the discretion of a judge, and on such maneuvers a case can be won or lost.

As for presumed "innocent until proven guilty" that is a legal right given to the accused at trial. The jury is instructed to presume the accused is innocent until proven guilty. The general public is not required to presume anything at all. That's you and me, folks. Unless you're on the jury, you are not required to presume innocence. And it certainly doesn't apply to the prosecution, who surely believe the defendant is guilty as charged.

Jackson was never convicted. He had the better lawyers. I strongly believe Jackson harmed children. It is my OPINION.

Celebrity worship has carried the day again. A pyrrhic victory for sentimentality.

**OntarioVanMan** · 07-01-2009, 10:38 PM

Originally Posted by aristotle

Payoffs and hush money torpedo a strong prosecution. The prosecutor, when presented with all available evidence against Michael Jackson, concluded there was sufficient cause to bring molestation charges to court. This decision wasn't made lightly. Along the process of pleadings, motions to dismiss, and the trial itself, the defense team wins some critical points of contention by having key evidence favorable to the prosecution tossed out as inadmissible. All this is done at the discretion of a judge, and on such maneuvers a case can be won or lost.

As for presumed "innocent until proven guilty" that is a legal right given to the accused at trial. The jury is instructed to presume the accused is innocent until proven guilty. The general public is not required to presume anything at all. That's you and me, folks. Unless you're on the jury, you are not required to presume innocence. And it certainly doesn't apply to the prosecution, who surely believe the defendant is guilty as charged.

Jackson was never convicted. He had the better lawyers. I strongly believe Jackson harmed children. It is my OPINION.

Celebrity worship has carried the day again. A pyrrhic victory for sentimentality.

No Celebrity worship on my part....I just think that he was a talented person and the system didn't charge him with anything...it is the systems fault he got away with something IF something did happen. And thats my opinion.

**aristotle** · 07-01-2009, 10:55 PM

Originally Posted by OntarioVanMan

No Celebrity worship on my part....I just think that he was a talented person and the system didn't charge him with anything...it is the systems fault he got away with something IF something did happen. And thats my opinion.

OVM...Michael Jackson was charged. Remember the trial? The prosecution failed to prove its case.

You are getting to the crux of my argument, and that is the judicial system has inherent flaws. Our system beats Sharia law, but only in matters of degree. Sometimes an innocent person is wrongly convicted. Sometimes the guilty go free. It's a crapshoot in the courtroom. The legal team which bests sways and manipulates the judge and jury usually wins.

That Michael Jackson walked away unconvicted doesn't mean he didn't commit crimes. It means it couldn't be proved in court.

**OntarioVanMan** · 07-01-2009, 11:08 PM

Sorry..thats what I meant to type...wasn't convicted of any wrong doing.....
Kind of like OJ...who bought his not guilty verdict!

Fate or maybe Devine intervention has a way of leveling the playing field, does it not...MJ dies @ an early age and OJ is in prison for another crime he couldn't wiggle out of....

**Turtle** · 07-02-2009, 12:04 AM

Originally Posted by Pilgrim

Granted, there's a lot of assumptions going on here with a few facts mixed in. We can assume that if there happened to be a parent on site at Neverland during one of these "sleep overs" they were paying attention to what was going on in Jackson's bedroom. What of they weren't paying attention - or what if they didn't care what happened? That scenario is not out of the realm of possibility considering the cases of irresponsible parents reported in the press every day.

Absolutely. But whether the parents were paying attention or not, or were paying attention and didn't care, that doesn't mean anything. But, let's say the parents, in every case, weren't paying attention at all. What can we conclude from that? Well, we can conclude the parents weren't paying attention. Beyond that, I'm not sure. I can speculate, tho. Maybe they were playing Scrabble.

There were actually several accusations of inappropriate behavior by Jackson, and he had paid a settlement of about $2 million to one other family (that we know about) several years before his trial.

I'm not sure what constitutes "several", but it shouldn't be surprising. One person floats an accusation out there, others jump on the Easy Money Bandwagon.

Easy money if you ask me, and he kept setting himself up as vulnerable in these situations by repeatedly bringing these kids in. Glaring examples of his lack of impulse control and continuing to ignore the advice of his handlers.

Two more assumptions. More than that, really. A "lack of impulse control" not only assumes he was bringing kids in on impulse, but that he knew it was bad to do so and therefore should have controlled the impulse to have them there. In his mind he may have seen nothing wrong with what he was doing, and there might have been, in fact, nothing wrong going on. It also assumes he was acting contrary to the adivce of his handlers. One, his handlers may have been inept and failed to give the proper advice. Two, his handlers may have known full well that nothing bad was going on, so saw no need to give him the advice you suggest. Three, his handlers may have known all along about everything and were well paid to enable him to the lifestyle. The third one is unlikely, though, considering he overwhelming lack of evidence to the contrary.

One other factor that hasn't been mentioned in this discussion is the library of kiddie porn and stock of alcholic beverages discovered in Jacko's bedroom when the sheriff's dept. raided Neverland Ranch in November of 2003.

<GASP!> OMG! Alcohol in the bedroom of a 45 year old man?!?! I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you!

If the sheriff's department found child pornography in his house, you would think they would have noted that in the nine-page inventory of siezed evidentiary items. But they didn't. They noted everything else, though, and in great detail. There was no library of kiddie porn. They cataloged some regular porn, tho, and all of it legal. They also found two coffee table art books that contained pictures of nude boys and women. One book, "The Chop Suey Club" contained nude photographs of boys, and is a book by the famed fashion photographer Bruce Weber. The other book, the famous 1964 work of Georges St Martin and Ronald Nelson entitled "The Boy: A photographic Essay", features pictures of the boys who took part in the 1963 film adaptation of the Lord of the Flies, and if you can find it in a rare book store it'll run you anywhere from $200 to $1000. The first book was inscribed as being a gift from a fan, the second book was inscribed by Michael Jackson as being a gift to someone else. The inscription read, "Look at the true spirit of happiness and joy in these boys' faces. This is the spirit of boyhood, a life I never had and will always dream of. This is the life I want for my children."

There were no other pictures of nude children, and his computer was also clean.

More circumstancial evidence - but the entire picture is not a pretty one.

Yeah, especially when the circumstantial evidence contains things like non-existent kiddie porn.

When it comes down to the core issue, only the people directly involved with these events really know what happened - and they ain't talkin'.

Sure they know something, tho. Let's waterboard 'em. That'll make 'em talk. Or, perish the thought, that they're not talking becuase there's nothing to talk about? No, that can't be it. Let's waterboard 'em.

Getting back to the main point, IMHO there's enough circumstantial evidence for one to conclude that anyone who allowed their son to spend the night with MJ was placing their kid at considerable risk. Even if they weren't sexually abused by him, the kids were under the influence of a really strange guy at an impressionable age.

Considerable risk of what? The possible worst fears that someone may have? I don't know, but I would imagine that there were a number of parents who decided not to let their kids stay over. Others obviously satisfied their own questions enough to allow it. I'll give you the "really strange guy at an impressionable age" thing, tho. That's for sure. I would't want kids hanging around with anyone who is that far out there for very long. There's a point where a fun visit to the amusement park with a Bozo-esque character for a nice memory becomes just creepy.

**Turtle** · 07-02-2009, 12:24 AM

Originally Posted by aristotle

Payoffs and hush money torpedo a strong prosecution. The prosecutor, when presented with all available evidence against Michael Jackson, concluded there was sufficient cause to bring molestation charges to court. This decision wasn't made lightly.

Yeah, 'cause prosecutors are all fine upstanding citizens and would never go about manufacturing a case against someone, especially someone really, really famous, cause it's not about winning, it's about getting to the truth, right. After two months, 85 witnesses and 500 pieces of evidence, they still couldn't convince a jury who deliberated for 10 days.

Along the process of pleadings, motions to dismiss, and the trial itself, the defense team wins some critical points of contention by having key evidence favorable to the prosecution tossed out as inadmissible. All this is done at the discretion of a judge, and on such maneuvers a case can be won or lost.

Two months, 85 witnesses and 500 pieces of evidence.

As for presumed "innocent until proven guilty" that is a legal right given to the accused at trial. The jury is instructed to presume the accused is innocent until proven guilty.

And there's a very good reason for that.

The general public is not required to presume anything at all. That's you and me, folks. Unless you're on the jury, you are not required to presume innocence.[/quote]You're not required to, but it's certainly the decent thing to do.

And it certainly doesn't apply to the prosecution, who surely believe the defendant is guilty as charged.

SOmetimes they do, sometimes, they don't, mostly they just want to win. There have been countless cases where proseutors continued prosecuting even after they knew the defendant didn't do it, simply because they either wanted the convistion really badly, or they knew they could get one regardless.

Jackson was never convicted. He had the better lawyers. I strongly believe Jackson harmed children. It is my OPINION.

You may be right, and at least some of the jurrors agree with you. One even said so straight up. "I feel that Michael Jackson probably has molested boys," juror Raymond Hultman said. "I cannot believe that ... this man could sleep in the same bedroom for 365 straight days and not do something more than just watch television and eat popcorn. I mean, that doesn't make sense to me. But that doesn't make him guilty of the charges that were presented in this case and that's where we had to make our decision."

Celebrity worship has carried the day again. A pyrrhic victory for sentimentality.

That's actually kind of insulting, to me, the jury, and likely countless others. You can't convict someone in a courtroom based on what you believe, and you shouldn't do it out of court, either, and for the same reasons.

**DougTravels** · 07-02-2009, 12:39 AM

I want Turtle on my debate team- Good job!

Maybe it was kitty porn

**aristotle** · 07-02-2009, 12:52 AM

Turtle... you and I went round and round over prosecutorial misconduct concerning Johnny Sutton's mishandling of the US Border Patrol agents, Ramos and Compean. I still maintain Sutton should face trial for malicious prosecution. Sutton's overzealous pursuit of the border agents was malicious. While Sutton was malicious, the prosecutor in the Michael Jackson case was merely inadequate to the task.

**DougTravels** · 07-02-2009, 01:05 AM

Or maybe he was innocent?

**Turtle** · 07-02-2009, 01:18 AM

Originally Posted by OntarioVanMan

Sorry..thats what I meant to type...wasn't convicted of any wrong doing.....
Kind of like OJ...who bought his not guilty verdict!

I did. It just so happened that my job at that time afforded me the luxury <snort> of watching every single stinkin' day of that trial, every one of them. And like a fool, I sat there and watched. Well, it was interesting, though. While there is little doubt in my mind that OJ did what he was accused of, if I were on that jury I would have likewise voted not guilty in a slam dunk.

There was a mountain of evidence against OJ, but the prosecution tied it all together with a timeline that was simply not believable. You can set aside some part of the prosecutions case, like the timeline, in favor of the rest of the case of ovewhelming evidence, and you should do that, actually, except for the fact that every time during the trial where you could do that, the prosecution came right back to it as being critical to this or that piece of evidence. So the non-believability of this "critical" timeline foundation made everything they sat upon it less credible.

They continued to pound away at the timeline, ended the case on it, and then once they realized they screwed the pooch, tried to backpeddle on it in the closing arguments, which isn't admissible as evidence, anyway, but then contradicted themselves at the end of their argument and came back to the timeline as being critical for him having the opportunity. In order for OJ to do what all they said he did in the time allotted, it would have to be preplanned in excruciating detail, to the second, and would have had to account for too many randon things that would have needed to be locked down and accounted for.

The other thing the prosecution hammered on was that OJ had time to take a shower to rinse off all the blood that they say he would have been drenched in, but they failed to produce the drain pipes that they removed from his house to show evidence of blood in the drains and plumbing. When the defense brought that subject up, it was discovered that no blood was discovered in any of the drains in his house. Whoops. Yet the prosecution timeline had him taking a shower for that very purpose, and if he had, there would have been evidence of blood in the drains.

The prosecution actually tried to keep the drains out of the trial, arguing to Judge Ito that since they found no evidence of anything in the pipes, there wasn't any evidence to present. They jury didn't see that, but TV viewers did. If the jury had heard that pathetic argument, they likely could have reached a not guilty verdict without even having left the courtroom to deliberate.

The prosecution screwed up. In most any criminal trial, you have to show both motive and opportunity. They were weak on the motive (jealousy and a history of rage) because there was no direct proof, so they hit hard on the opportunity, which turned out to be utterly unbelievable. They'd have been much better off showing the known times of certain events without explaining it, and then just touching on the motive that everyone already knew or suspected, and then let the mountain of physical evidence speak for itself. If they'd done that, it would have been a slam dunk in the other direction.