Hopefully some of you have already seen the ‘Filthy Rich’ Netflix series about pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and had a chance to think it over.
The documentary requires a comparison with Dan Reed’s ‘Leaving Neverland’ of course, but there is so big a difference in the standards of research for the two films that it is not even worth it.
One is a sloppy propaganda piece, while the other is a serious study of a horrible case and a horrible phenomenon. And how can you compare the two rogues spilling their fantasies about Michael Jackson without any proof, with the testimonies of Epstein’s victims supported by the documents, police and even the FBI 53-page indictment? The two cases are totally incomparable and are actually poles apart.
But if you do compare there are at least two factors that are drawing attention.
One is that the genuine victims in ‘Filthy Rich’ look unwilling to discuss the sexual crimes committed against them and are visibly reluctant to describe them in graphic detail. There are no juicy details in their accounts and when it is necessary to give some, the victims stop short, clearly hesitate and are still unable to utter it. Only one woman out of many in ‘Filthy Rich’ mentioned a sex toy used by Epstein but said it in so low a voice that it was barely heard, though this was one of his main tools of abusing minors.
Remember Robson & Safechuck who gleefully described in ‘Leaving Neverland’ the various ways they were allegedly abused by MJ as well as their occasional smiles and twinkling of the eye during descriptions?
What a dead give-away that they are lying! Their desire to tell it in so much graphic detail in order to look convincing shows that for their own selves their stories are cold and devoid of any emotion, and all their descriptions are just words not resonating with any feelings.
Real feeling is what you see in Epstein’s victims though they do try to look unemotional and calm.
Another thing that strikes you as a very big difference is that Epstein’s victims never changed their stories. What they initially said they repeated later, and what they repeated later they had been saying from the very beginning. And though initially most of them were unwilling to talk, when interviewed by the police all of them admitted that they were molested by Epstein. According to the police two of the girls claimed that they ‘loved’ Epstein and hoped to marry him, but the fact of molestation was not disputed even by them.
The only ones who still deny everything are Epstein’s accomplices – Ghislaine Maxwell and several other monstrous females who turned the sexual abuse of girls into their daily routine. By now they have changed their names and are unavailable for comment, but hopefully one day they will see their day of reckoning.
If we didn’t know Robson to be a liar he could easily qualify for the role of an accomplice and it would be an interesting turn to the matter, because if we are to believe his current story it means that when defending Michael Jackson at the 2005 trial he perjured himself and obstructed justice that way. But if he told the truth then, it means that now he is lying to extort the MJ Estate for money (initially a billion reduced to hundreds of millions by today). So whichever way you look at him the only place where Robson really belongs is prison, and not a TV show.
The ‘Filthy Rich’ documentary shows how to tell a victim from an accomplice. Accomplices deny everything whatever it takes, while victims don’t deny and just keep silence, sometimes for years – but only until a certain moment in time when they are given a chance to finally speak up.
The fact that men and women who were sexually abused as children are usually unwilling to talk is no big news. It is a common phenomenon originating in their feelings of shame and guilt, the fear and intimidation accompanying the molestation, the trauma of reliving it again and their often justified belief that no one will listen.
The Miami Herald that published an expose of Epstein’s crimes in November 2018 provided the impressive ratio of 80 abused victims identified by the journalists in 2001-2006 and scattered around the country and abroad. About 60 of them were located, but only 8 women agreed to be interviewed and 4 were willing to speak on camera:
The Herald identified about 80 women who say they were molested or otherwise sexually abused by Epstein from 2001 to 2006. About 60 of them were located — now scattered around the country and abroad. Eight of them agreed to be interviewed, on or off the record. Four of them were willing to speak on video. The women are now mothers, wives, nurses, bartenders, Realtors, hairdressers and teachers. One is a Hollywood actress. Several have grappled with trauma, depression and addiction. Some have served time in prison. A few did not survive. One young woman was found dead last year in a rundown motel in West Palm Beach. She overdosed on heroin and left behind a young son.
So the overwhelming majority of them would not talk and this is indeed characteristic of victims who were sexually abused as children.
But what is totally uncharacteristic of genuine victims is to grow up into adult people and go to a courtroom to defend their abuser when he is tried there on molestation charges. And do so under oath. And some time later change their minds and decide that it is better to accuse him after all.
Epstein’s victims kept a long silence because they were scared to death, didn’t want to go through all that scarring again, and had every reason to believe that justice would not prevail – some of them had already approached law enforcement, but it brought them nowhere.
But IF their chances to put their molester behind bars had been real, they would have undoubtedly testified against him. Even the two girls who were allegedly ‘in love’ and hoped for a marriage would have told the truth and said that when they were underage they were lured into sex.
Thus it is utterly impossible to imagine Epstein’s victims to testify in his defense, deny everything and say that they were never touched, and then – upon leaving the courtroom – smile on camera and make a V-sign.
And years later accuse him of molestation in the same vehement way they defended him before.
But this is exactly what Wade Robson did.
Why did he? The answer is simple – he is not genuine. Robson had his every chance in court and used it to defend Jackson, so here you will have to choose between Robson being an accomplice or Michael Jackson being innocent because Robson the victim is simply not an option.
He is an actor who has simply adjusted himself to the role of a victim. It doesn’t really fit but he is trying hard and learned the right words. He is also sure that there will be an armada of claque to applaud his performance and write positive reviews about his garbage. And he also rightfully believes that the media will do their utmost to force the smelly substance down the viewers’ throats and the public will swallow it without giving it a thought.
But if the people gave the product a second look they would be aghast at what is being offered to them under the guise of MJ’s ‘victims’.
The first obvious difference is that those who were really abused have a trove of factual evidence to support their case while fake victims just say it with no proof whatsoever, and it is only the graphic content which makes people faint at what they hear.
Robson & Safechuck, for example, make factual mistakes in their every statement, contradict what they said a couple of months earlier, refute their own testimonies and the timeline presented by their families and produce several editions of complaints each time inconsistent with their previous version. Their stories are long, winding and intricate, so that their followers are able to grasp only the main idea, while the accounts of genuine victims are usually simple and plain – actually so simple and plain that it is even horrible.
All Epstein’s underage girls, for example, came from troubled homes and often lacked money for basic things like shoes which they had to wear tight for years. And then at school they heard that a certain strange old man was giving 200-300 dollars just for a 30-min massage. The only condition was that the girls were to be in their underwear, but this didn’t sound that bad to them for so big a sum.
However when they were groped or even raped and if they felt ‘uncomfortable’ after it using Epstein’s terminology, they were offered to simply bring another girl and get their $200 anyway. And many of them did.
One girl, for example, brought 40 to 60 more victims and sometimes came to his mansion three times a day as Epstein requested sex as regularly as breakfast, dinner and supper. Now she is one of Epstein’s most ardent accusers despite or probably due to her involvement in the victimization of others.
We can imagine how difficult it was for these girls to admit that they were turned into Epstein’s accomplices and made money at other victims’ expense. Their guilt and fear are real and this is why it took these young women really much fortitude to come forward – first their innocence was taken away from them, then they were manipulated by this monster, then they were betrayed by the prosecutors who were supposed to protect them and then they had to struggle with their own crushing guilt.
This banality of evil is what actually makes it so sad and so much unlike Robson & Safechuck’s spectacular tales specially designed to shock, confuse and cloud the minds of the gullible public.
- … Robson, for example, had to seek a way to explain why he defended Michael Jackson at the 2005 trial, so in ‘Leaving Neverland’ he is telling a long story that he decided to speak in MJ’s defense at a dinner on the eve of his testimony when he saw Michael’s children, ‘felt sorry for them’, etcetera. However the dinner was after his court testimony and not before, and when Taj Jackson, who also attended the dinner, noted it after watching the film, the episode was simply cut out and the propaganda piece still went ahead as if nothing happened.
- … the film gives Robson almost half an hour to graphically describe the way he was allegedly molested when ‘he was left alone by his parents after their first weekend at Neverland’. But his mother testified on three different occasions that after that first weekend all of them left the ranch including the small boy, and a studious research of the documents proves that not a single Neverland employee saw the boy left alone there. Do Robson and Dan Reed mind this little inconsistency? Certainly not. The false half-hour description is still there.
- … Robson claims that his alleged molestation at the ranch was multiple and continued for a long time. But if you look up his mother’s testimony at the 2005 trial she says that during the 14 years they were in the US, her son stayed with Michael at his ranch on four occasions only, and they hardly saw him at all as he was almost always away. And she even sounded annoyed and displeased with this fact. So where were those multiple occasions?
- ….and if you listen to Safechuck he says that ‘they had sex’ (the expression never used by genuine victims) under nearly every bush at Neverland. Never mind that right at that time hundreds of workers were renovating the ranch and were putting rails all over it for a circular railroad and none of them saw the alleged activities. And most Neverland employees could hardly even remember who Safechuck was.
- …. actually the train station was one of those sex scenes described by Safechuck in vivid detail. However the train station was non-existent at that time, in the literal meaning of the word as it was built only several years later. Does it matter to Dan Reed? Certainly not. He shrugs it off saying that Safechuck misremembered the time of the event, but the problem is that by the moment the train station was built Safechuck had stopped seeing MJ.
The list of similar pits and falls in Robson’s and Safechuck’s stories can go on forever. If Epstein’s victims had given that kind of testimony about their molester, there can’t be any doubt that their case would have been immediately thrown out with serious repercussions for the accusers – however when it comes to accusing Michael Jackson it is perfectly okay to tell even the craziest lies.
Telling lies about Michael Jackson, even most absurd ones, has always been okay because from the very beginning it was the basic rule of the Game.
The rule is that anyone can claim anything about Michael Jackson and the media will make extreme noise about it to smear MJ and deflect attention from real predators, and in the resulting smoke and mirrors their crimes will go unnoticed despite any amount of evidence against them and hundreds of their victims.
And no one even had to agree about the rules of the game – it was sort of a given, accepted by all those involved with a knowing wink and smile, like ‘let’s show this self-proclaimed messiah his place‘.
As regards the evidence against Michael Jackson it was never there, in contrast to Epstein who had a ton against him, though all of it was effectively put down the drain by the media, the seven-strong team of his lawyers and even the prosecutors who went as far as signing a sweetheart deal with his lawyers on the terms dictated to prosecution by Epstein himself.
But the deal came much later as at the beginning no one even talked about Epstein. The earliest (unverified) reports about his abuse of young girls were revealed only recently in 2019 and take us back to 1985. His first confirmed case is dated 1996 when Epstein’s employee Maria Farmer and her 15-year old sister Annie were sexually abused at different places and apart from each other. The sisters approached the police, the FBI and the media, but what did their story matter when everyone was busy with Michael Jackson and the frenzy campaign against him was at its peak? No one even paid attention.
In 2003 after Martin Bashir’s notorious film Michael Jackson’s name was in every paper and the media was trashing him on a daily basis, while Jeffrey Epstein was still untouchable and his name, business and social life were shrouded in complete secrecy. The Vanity Fair decided to fill the void and publish a lengthy business profile of the billionaire, however the research of their journalist Vicky Ward suddenly went in a different direction when she uncovered the complaint of the two Farmer sisters and had an interview with them.
Epstein certainly learned of the interview and told Ms. Ward that she needn’t touch on this matter adding that he knew all doctors in the vicinity – a seemingly innocent remark if it weren’t for Vicky Ward’s then pregnancy with twins.
Ghislaine Maxwell called Maria Farmer and flatly threatened her saying that she would ruin her career. She told her to be careful and watch her back:
“She told me I needed to watch my back, that ‘I know you like to go running on the West Side Highway, and that’s not going to be a safe place for you anymore, because there are a lot of ways to die on the West Side Highway,’” Farmer recalls. These calls continued for years, prompting her to go into hiding in the North Carolina hills and change her name.
Before the Vanity Fair 2003 publication a severed head of a cat was also placed in the yard of the editor-in-chief Graydon Carter as well as a bullet on his doorstep. As a result the girls’ interviews were cut from the article at the last minute and Mr. Carter’s recent explanation why it happened was that “Ward did not have three sources to verify the claims, and that the reporting did not meet the magazine’s legal threshold.”
Well, the reports of Maureen Orth of the Vanity Fair did not have three sources to verify the claims against Michael Jackson either, but it was never an obstacle for publishing non-stop dirt about him. The Vanity Fair witch hunt of Michael Jackson began with Orth’s articles in 1994 and was resumed with double force in 2003 and funnily, this was exactly the time when the same magazine silenced the molestation complaints about Jeffrey Epstein.
In March 2005 when the media, prosecution and public were even more busy with poor Jackson (he was on trial in the crazy Arvizo case), the parents of a girl abused by Epstein reported it to the police and shared with them the conversations they overheard between their daughter and other schoolgirls about the strange activities in Epstein’s mansion.
This time an investigation followed where every new girl gave three or four more names and the case quickly snowballed to at least 36 confirmed cases. However no one except the police knew of the investigation as every effort was made not to leak information to the press. All cameras were on Michael Jackson of course – the media’s favorite victim.
On June 13th 2005 Michael Jackson was fully acquitted in the court of law, but found guilty in the court of public opinion. Why so? Because the public was completely unaware of the real state of affairs, and being heavily misinformed by the media was shocked to hear the not guilty verdict. Almost no one believed that Michael was innocent – the media told them that the jurors were star-struck and made a mistake.
But there was no mistake. The case against Michael Jackson was simply non-existent.
The Arvizo case was hopeless from the very start, so the prosecution had to scratch every corner for other victims but found none and in the absence of victims proper brought some third parties – hear-say witnesses covering the 12-year period since 1993, however they too utterly shamed themselves in court.
The only ‘victim’ the prosecution could get was Jason Francia, a maid’s son who in 1994 under much pressure from the police complained of three cases of tickling during a tickling contest he had with MJ and said he was in therapy for five years after that. The jurors could hardly stifle a laugh when they were listening.
By time the prosecution rested its case it had already fallen apart and technically there was no need for the defense to lay out its case, however several of Michael’s friends were ready to speak up – Brett Barnes, Macaulay Culkin and Wade Robson (who was not subpoenaed and testified of his own free will in contradiction to what he claims now), and the testimony of these former young Michael’s friends, now adult people, only added more clarity to the fact that Michael Jackson was innocent.
The trial was long and costly for taxpayers, but it was still worth it for the interested parties. The media ratings were boosted, Michael’s reputation was damaged and real sex offenders stayed in the shade as due to the hiss, cry and smoke around MJ not a soul learned about the horrid activities of Jeffrey Epstein (or any other predator) though for several months the police investigation of Epstein’s crimes was running parallel to MJ’s trial.
I honestly tried to find media reports about Epstein’s investigation in 2005 and 2006 but didn’t find any except the occasional report about his finances. There are simply none. You can check three hundred references below the Wiki article about Epstein, and you will see that despite Epstein’s multiple victims and overwhelming evidence uncovered by the police not a single media outlet was reporting the investigation at that time.
The first news began to leak only closer to 2008 when Epstein was finally sentenced to a short term in jail for two cases of ‘soliciting prostitution’ (the minors were called ‘prostitutes’), but the real depth of the inferno opened up only ten years later.
A few news drops also trickled in 2015 when one of Epstein’s victims claimed that Epstein offered her for sex to his friends, one of whom was Prince Andrew with whom she had a photograph and was then sexually abused, but the girl was almost immediately silenced.
Three more years passed and in November 2018 the Miami Herald published a groundbreaking report about Epstein which was so well-researched and so well-documented that it forced the prosecution to resume their investigation. However the real outpour of information came only in 2019, and most of it was after Epstein’s detention and alleged suicide.
After decades of silence the Miami Herald series by Julie K. Brown was a revelation and a thunderbolt out of a clear blue sky. It suddenly turned out that Epstein’s abuse of girls had been going on for years and his victims were as young as 13, 14 and 15 years old. There was also some evidence of a gift made to him on his birthday when he was presented with 12-year-old triplets who were flown to him from France and flown back the next day.
Epstein’s crimes were far from being a ‘he said, she said’ case. They were confirmed by the written memos from his enablers who left hundreds of open or coded messages like ‘at 4pm, 2×8 years old, doesn’t speak English’, scattered all over his home and seized by the police.
Numerous airport employees testified that they saw young girls accompanying Epstein to his private island, some of whom looked like 11 or 12 years old, and this is why his jet was nicknamed ‘Lolita express’. The logs of Epstein’s pilots contained the names of important visitors and the number of their visits to his island. As Epstein needed as many as three masseuses a day, his recruiters brought him more than 200 girls to his Palm Beach island alone, not to mention similar activities in his other homes.
When the police made their first search of Epstein’s house in October 2005 most of his computer hard drives, surveillance cameras and videos had been removed leaving loose and dangling wires – which made it clear that he had been warned in advance about the police raid. However they did manage to uncover the nude photos of some of his accusers.
The walls of his house were lined with photos of naked women and girls (one was a 6-year old). The bathroom had soaps in the shape of penises and vaginas and the dresser drawer was filled with sex toys described by the victims.
The sex toys were regularly picked and washed by his housekeeper Alfredo Rodriguez who said that ‘he felt there was a lot more going on than just massages’ given the cleanup operation that typically awaited him afterwards.
There were also manuals on sex slavery and porn videotapes with ‘name of girl+name of visitor’ labels carefully assembled and stored, possibly for the blackmail of these people.
The testimonies of the victims and eye-witnesses were verified by the police and FBI many times over, and in 2008 were finally laid out in the FBI 53-page indictment, at a stage when their investigation was about to go international.
However it was suddenly brought to a halt when the lead federal prosecutors in the case quietly signed a ‘sweetheart’ deal with Epstein’s lawyers and after meeting most of his demands too.
As we already know Epstein’s child victims were downgraded to prostitutes and Epstein was charged with only two cases of soliciting prostitution. He agreed to serve a 18 months sentence in a private wing of the county jail and be registered as a sex-offender (though not in all states). His madame Ghislaine Maxwell, other agents and undisclosed clients were guaranteed immunity from prosecution. The FBI investigation was closed (one of the FBI agents who pledged to take the case to court was seen crying on hearing the news). The deal was to be kept secret from Epstein’s victims and their lawyers, and all of them indeed thought that the investigation was still going on until it was too late to change anything.
Email after email the prosecutors treated Epstein’s demands with exceptional consideration:
“On an ‘avoid the press’ note … I can file the charge in district court in Miami which will hopefully cut the press coverage significantly. Do you want to check that out?’’ the lead federal prosecutor was writing to Epstein’s lawyer in a September 2007 email.
Epstein’s jail term was a joke as he was allowed to leave the jail 6 days a week, stay in his office 12 hours a day and come back only for sleep. This right was granted to him despite the rule that sex offenders don’t qualify for work release. Very soon he would be regarded by the jail staff not as an inmate but a ‘client’ because he hired the deputy sheriffs as his paid guards who accompanied him to his office and stayed outside while his visitors would come and go.
Out of 18 months Epstein served 13 and was freed 5 months earlier on condition that he would stay under house arrest for a year – the rule which he certainly broke every single day as he was seen freely walking about town. Epstein never once checked in with the New York Police Department in the eight years since he was told to do so every 90 days, as he was supposed to be a registered sex offender.
And now imagine that throughout the whole period the media didn’t report any of the above news and continued to trash Michael Jackson presenting him as the only and worst predator ever.
The public learned all these horrid details about Epstein only in 2019. Why?
Because Epstein had power and all the right connections and this is why his crimes were covered up and his victims silenced, while Michael Jackson the innocent man was thrust forward for the crowd to get distracted and practice some lynching.
The media hysteria around Michael Jackson was outrageous in its zeal and scope, the spin unheard of, the claims ridiculous and each of his moves was turned into a misdeed blown out of every proportion.
And while the public was entertained by the fake news about Michael Jackson real crime was swept under the carpet and the juiciest part of it is that the things committed by real offenders were attributed to MJ, thus adding much fun to the big game played by the powerful.
Remember those mantras about ‘vulnerable teenage boys’ and ‘Nobody Is Going to Believe You’?
Oh, all of it was coming from real-life stories and was actually true, only was said about the wrong person.
The rules of the game are more than clear now – in order to deflect attention from the powerful and guilty, their guilt was to be placed on the innocent and helpless.
Otherwise you cannot explain the top secrecy and total lack of publicity for the criminal activities of Jeffrey Epstein, Jimmy Savile, Harvey Weinstein and many others, while the smear campaign of Michael Jackson was going virtually non-stop and spanned several decades.
Remember Harvey Weinstein relying on his PR team and a certain A.Benza, a gossip columnist known for trashing Michael Jackson, to dig up dirt on MJ when Weinstein still hoped to get away with his crimes? Using a spin against Jackson to stop negative press about themselves was their usual modus operandi and a well-tested method to divert attention from themselves.
Collecting a monthly retainer, Mr. Benza said, he reported items on Roger Clemens, Michael Jackson and others and sent them to Mr. Weinstein’s communications team, though he didn’t know whether they were used to trade away stories about the producer. Mr. Weinstein’s spokeswoman said the payments to Mr. Benza were for public relations work during Miramax’s dispute with Disney.
After 10 months, Mr. Weinstein said, “I think the coast is clear; I think we beat this thing,” according to Mr. Benza, who recently had a brief stint as a writer for American Media and also runs his own gossip podcast, “Fame Is a Bitch.”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/05/us/harvey-weinstein-complicity.html
They name other names besides MJ, but in reality only Michael Jackson was their fall guy.
Being a genius and a natural magnet he was irresistible to millions, but at the same time also exceptionally vulnerable. In his childlike innocence he couldn’t imagine the dirt people were capable of thinking when they saw his friendship with youngsters. It is rare to find that kind of genius, mega success and appeal to people in combination with so much trust, naivety and helplessness, but Michael Jackson managed to be one.
To see how naïve and helpless he was, here is his plea to the media during the Bad tour in 1987 when he was already in so much despair with all that ‘Wacko Jacko” stuff that he pleaded the media to have mercy on him.
Like the old Indian proverb says
Do not judge a man until you’ve walked 2 moons in his moccasins.
Most people don’t know me, that is why they write such (crossed out) things in which most is not true.
I cry very, very often because it hurts and I worry about the children, all my children all over the world, I live for them.
If a man could say nothing against a character but what he can prove, history could not be written.
Animals strike, not from malice, but because they want to live, it is the same with those who criticize, they desire our blood, not our pain. But still I must achieve. I must seek truth in all things. I must endure for the power I was sent forth, for the world, for the children.
But have mercy, for I’ve been bleeding a long time now.
MJ
But mercy never came and the media response was predictable: “Mad, Sad’, “I’M NOT MAD SAYS JACKO’S DAFT LETTER”, “Jacko pens a bizarre plea I’M NOT WACKO” , “Why Michael Jackson should stick to singing” and the like.
Instead of restraining themselves the media took advantage of Michael’s helplessness and first ridiculed him for everything under the sun and then upheld false accusations against him which were inevitable in the atmosphere of so much mud-slinging and everyone getting away with it.
The only obstacle to the final lynching was that there were no victims and no evidence of any wrongdoing.
In order to explain why despite the decades of investigation MJ was still free, the media kept rubbing in the idea that he was ‘too powerful’ and this is why he managed to ‘escape justice’.
Powerful Michael Jackson was, but not the way they mean it. He was an exceptionally pure guy and his genius and purity gave him the unique power to appeal to human hearts without him even trying. But what he didn’t have was the power to silence voices, suppress evidence, make sweetheart deals with the prosecution and manipulate the media.
None of it Michael Jackson had and this is why he was easy prey and a ‘sitting duck’ as the late Donna Summer called him.
If Michael Jackson had indeed been that powerful he would have never been accused, let alone tried. And if his power had been worldly, the media would have fallen over themselves to be respectful and afraid to say a word of criticism let alone mock him in the despicable way they did.
For those who forgot how despicable it was here is a reminder from the New York Times and their Jon Pareles, who in 1995 scorned Michael for his anger (as if it wasn’t justified) and claimed that he could no longer ‘manipulate the media’ (which Michael never did and never could).
Michael Jackson Is Angry, Understand?
By Jon Pareles
June 18, 1995
MICHAEL JACKSON IS BACK, AND HE’S furious. On his new double album, “HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I,” his rage keeps ripping through the sweet, uplifting facade he has clung to throughout his career.
He’s not pretending to be normal any more. In his new songs, he is paranoid and cagey, messianic and petty, vindictive and maudlin. Comparing himself to John F. Kennedy and Jesus Christ, he’s a megalomaniac who feels like a victim.
In the first of the new songs, “Scream,” Jackson jeopardizes his commercial safety zone, the G-rated kiddie audience, by using profanity. In the second, “They Don’t Care About Us,” he gives the lie to his entire catalogue of brotherhood anthems with a burst of anti-Semitism: “Jew me, sue me, everybody do me/ Kick me, kike me, don’t you black or white me.” While he does manage to calm down for an occasional ballad or love song, he can’t stop lashing out at tormentors named and unnamed, chief among them the news media that he could no longer manipulate.
“Stop pressurin’ me,” Jackson yelps in “Scream,” adding, “Tired of you tellin’ the story your way.” In “This Time Around,” he mutters, “They thought they really had control of me.” In “D.S.,” he accuses somebody named Dom Sheldon of being tied to the C.I.A. and the Ku Klux Klan. And in “Money,” he whispers, “You’ll do anything for money.” With his paranoia, his anti-Semitic lyrics and his endless supply of uniforms, Jackson may be ready to join a militia. [ ]
The CD booklet insists that Jackson is popular, beloved, important, good. It includes endorsements from Stephen Spielberg and from Elizabeth Taylor, and it lists every award that he has ever won. He’s photographed with Presidents from Carter to Clinton and, of course, surrounded by adoring children.
The booklet also includes a baby picture of Jackson with his genitalia revealed — celebrity child porn? — and an illustration he drew to go with a new ballad, “Childhood.” The drawing is of a boy huddled in a corner with a microphone, looking scared. A child’s letter to President Clinton asks him to end war and pollution and to “stop reporters from bothering Michael Jackson,” clearly a matter of equal importance.
It adds up to a fine-tuned contradiction: Jackson the megastar, the world leader by association, is also Jackson the powerless, suffering child. With all the photographs and testimonials, the booklet has no room to print the most hostile lyrics.
But they’re the core of the album. Fearfulness used to be part of Jackson’s appeal; the vulnerability of his singing voice and his shy offstage demeanor somehow balanced his mastery of music, dance and hype. He was immeasurably famous, but he was obviously paying a price for it; he was a freak who needed sympathy.
On “HIStory Continues,” fear has turned to aggression. Most of the time, Jackson sounds as if he’s singing through clenched teeth, spitting out words in defiance of any and all persecutors.
In the song called “HIStory,” [ ] Jackson tries to put a brave face on things. Harsh, clipped whispers spit out an individual’s travails, a rising march asks, “How many children have to die?” and then a gospel chorus and children’s voices preach, “Let’s harmonize all around the world.” But the song seems more obsessed with dying soldiers and “victims slaughtered in vain across the land” than with hope. The other social-conscience selection, “Earth Song,” is a complaint to God about problems that range from war to endangered whales.
Most often, Jackson is on the defensive, and he has decided the best defense is a two-pronged counterattack. On the “Dangerous” album, he whined, “Why you wanna trip on me?” Now, he snarls accusations of his own. First, there’s the Watergate defense: it’s not him, it’s the news media that are out to get him. In “Tabloid Junkie,” he comes close to rapping: “Speculate to break the one you hate/ Circulate the lie you confiscate.” He sings, “With your pen you torture me/ You’d crucify the Lord,” and then, with harmony vocals akin to “Billie Jean,” he tries to put across a catchy message: “Just because you read it in a magazine/ Or see it on a TV screen/ Don’t make it factual.”
Jackson usually keeps his animosity general. The two-faced, money-grubbing people who besiege him stay unspecified — “Somebody’s out to get me” — and he insists he’ll tough it out: “I’m standin’ though you’re kickin’ me.” [ ] When he’s not slinging the word kike, he calls himself “a victim of police brutality” and a “victim of hate” and insists that “if Roosevelt was livin’, he wouldn’t let this be.” A listener might wonder just who “us” is supposed to be.
The article is not provided here in full not to add more fire to what is already there – Michael was a peacemaker and was against any violence. However thanks to the pillar of journalism reminding us of its torrents of venom towards Jackson, now his lyrics sound even more justified and relevant to us. “Us” meaning the general public or at least us, the truth seekers.
If only the media ever spoke that way to Jeffrey Epstein! Or at least made a tiny report about his exploits!
The media called Michael ‘Wacko Jacko’ for innocent things like having a pet chimp and the incidental photo in a hyperbaric chamber at a burn center – but what about Epstein, whose entrance hall in his nine-storey mansion was decorated with rows of framed eyeballs imported from England and made for injured soldiers there? Or the stuffed black poodle, standing atop his grand piano with a piece of dog feces beside it? Or a huge portrait of Bill Clinton on his wall reclining in an armchair and portrayed in a blue dress and red high-heeled shoes?
Wasn’t this décor reason enough to call Epstein weird and bizarre? But why then did the media wag their tails when they saw the real wacko?
Or look at the trail of ruined young lives left by Epstein and compare it with MJ’s so-called victims. First of all, they were not hundreds like Epstein’s but only five, and even those five were sham and imitation copies of someone else’s originals.
Jordan Chandler was a fake because his 1993 description of Michael’s private parts was all wrong and this is the reason why he regularly refused to testify against MJ. And since there was no guilt, the matter of the settlement and who paid it – MJ personally or his insurance company – is irrelevant.
The maid’s son Jason Francia is a fake victim too. His testimony about three cases of tickling was highly exaggerated and was actually bought for good money in a deal arranged by no other but Tom Sneddon, the Santa Barbara District Attorney and his people in return for the Francias’ testimony (see here for details, please).
Gavin Arvizo is not even a case – his timeline was so absurd that his alleged molestation fell on the period after Martin Bashir’s 2003 film, which means that MJ suddenly decided to molest Gavin when the whole world’s attention was already focused on Neverland and the Department of Family & Children Services was opening its investigation. Michael Jackson was naturally acquitted on every single charge and if he hadn’t all of us should have escaped by a hot air balloon to the Amazon jungles not to see the travesty of justice.
And Robson & Safechuck’s case is just a big show or rather a circus, complete with disappearance acts and clowns’ buffoonery. Their non-existent train-station and never-home-alone-at-Neverland stories are the classics of the genre – the illusion acts made against the background of their earlier testimony about Michael’s innocence. And it won’t hurt to mention that their current performance costs hundreds of millions while their previous testimony was free of charge.
Compare these five imitation victims with the insane amount of evidence against real sex offenders like Epstein, Savile, Wienstein and still-to-be-investigated Bryan Singer whose accusers are already coming in packs, and you will see that they and Michael Jackson are poles apart.
I will never tire of repeating that the glaring contrast in the way MJ was treated by the media and prosecution is the best proof that Michael Jackson was innocent and the opposite of real sex predators.
To me personally the biggest shock in this ugly story is not even the abuse of power by the authorities – living where I live I know of even worse cases than that. But it is the so-called free media and the reprehensible way they break their duty and sear their conscience is what is so disgusting.
Their double standards and hypocrisy, their cowardice in exposing true crime and readiness to go on a witch-hunt for the innocent, their zeal in promoting lies and silencing the truth – all of it is a disaster, a sheer disaster to anyone who had any illusions.
After Michael Jackson’s death there was some hope that the media would repent or at least stop their slander, but they continue to drag Michael’s name through the mud and now liken him to real monsters like Epstein and Savile, all the time pretending that by going after Jackson they ‘fought pedophilia’ and defended children’s rights.
But they never did and their pretense is a horrible insult to the truth. The media actually ignored the genuine victims of child sexual abuse, like Corey Feldman and Corey Haim molested in Hollywood, and multiple victims of Savile and Epstein who committed their crimes in plain sight but were still respected, admired, honored and whatnot.
Corey Feldman was openly laughed at and resented by the media (Barbara Walters: “You’re damaging an entire industry!”), and as to Epstein and Jimmy Savile the media simply ‘didn’t know’.
The poor things didn’t know. But it was impossible not to know considering that everyone around Epstein (and Savile) was aware of what was going on – his employees, the airport staff who took care of his flights to the private island, the guests entertained at his home, his lawyers one of whom was even Epstein’s client as he had sex with one of his underage girls, according to her account.
The media knew all of it but preferred to look the other way (in Michael Jackson’s direction, to be more exact). As to the real problem they turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to it, preferring to go after an easy, helpless, innocent and safe-to-kill prey.
It is fifteen years since Michael Jackson was acquitted and found an innocent man, but lies about him continue to be spread in the same despicable way as before.
Here is a small example.
Remember the housekeeper who testified about the sex toys in Epstein’s bathroom? He was the one who also provided a little black book of Epstein’s contacts and insisted that it was the key to unraveling his crimes. The man never had a chance to testify – he was sentenced to 18 months in prison for trying to sell the little book for $50,000 to the girls’ lawyer and died during incarceration.
This little black book is mentioned in Wiki as Epstein’s Holy Grail which contained the personal phone numbers of some of the world’s most influential people. Of course the fact that Epstein knew these people does not necessarily mean that they knew what he was up to. But it was still a shock to see the Wiki article name Michael Jackson among Epstein’s contacts.
This made me look up the original and I found that all of it is not exactly the way it is described in the Wiki entry (* this point was updated to remove an inaccuracy).
It turned out that the name of “Michael Jackson” actually stood for the office telephone number of a certain Samuel Gen, the New York attorney later disbarred for a grave misdemeanor, who was friends with a certain James Meiskin who in his turn advised Michael Jackson on matters of investment (see this article for details). This round-about-way of ‘knowing’ a person cannot in any way compare with Epstein’s book having direct, personal and home numbers of lots of other people – Barbara Walters, for example, or a certain Mick Jagger who is listed next to “Michael Jackson” but is not mentioned in the Wiki article.
Now do those who focused on Michael Jackson of all people and deliberately inserted his name into the life story of a sex predator know that they are stretching the truth?
Certainly they do.
And what do you think – will other readers look into it and see that the connection between MJ and Epstein is far too distant to even matter?
Certainly they won’t.
So see how easy it is to make ugly myths about Michael Jackson? Easy, effortless and sure, and those who engage in it can always say that they ‘made a mistake’.
But I no longer believe in their mistakes and hope that you don’t either.
These people know perfectly well what they are doing. And if you are sick and tired of all this manipulation the way I am sick and tired of it too, the first thing to do is refuse to be manipulated.
Just check yourself each time the old mantra is repeated about the ‘guilt’ of Michael Jackson and do your research. And tell others to do the same.
And only after that express an opinion. And let your opinion be informed. And let it be your opinion and not the old lie imposed on you long ago and mindlessly repeated just out of habit or in order to crack another joke.
And though no one forces you to think well about Jackson after the research, something tells me that you will.
As to the media I wonder if they understand that if they hadn’t run down Michael Jackson into the ground, he could have been the nation’s savior now. Michael Jackson the peacekeeper could protect the country from riots and unrest. Michael Jackson the magnet could appeal to millions and they would be listening.
He could indeed harmonize all around the world and instead of making ruin people could join their hands and work together for a better future.
Redeem Michael Jackson the peacemaker, redeem Michael Jackson the innocent and he will probably be still able to help.
Jon Pareles of the NY Times, Understand?