This is what Peter King, Congressman from Long Island, has just committed by criticising Michael Jackson, publicly, the day before his funeral.
The sad part is that I agree with him, but he has lost his political future by being brutally honest about what he felt about Michael.
He should have listened to the old adage: If you can’t say anything nice then it is better to remain silent.
Funny how a Law&Order conservative doesn’t believe in the Criminal Justice System of the US. Which acquitted Jackson.
Yeah, have “may have been a good singer…did some dancin’”.
Omar - I realise that you are in the armed services - but if you weren’t, this creep would be the first to beat the crap out of you as some kind of “philosophy fag”.
I have probably bought more dinners and drinks for members of the armed forces that I didn’t personally know than you have. I personally arranged a benefit for firefighters in the restaurant that I help manage. I hand out my business card to cops to use to get preferred seating on busy nights there - on the deck by the river with no wait. I do what I can.
I like to shoot guns, I’ve been registered as a Republican more than anything else (and never as a Democrat), I don’t believe in Global Warming and I think the biggest fiscal reform we need is to fire all the social workers.
But this guy is just a cretan.
MJ was one of the great artistic geniuses of our time, and he has been convicted of no crime. I think we can let him rest, and just change the channel.
Would you put one of your children, if you had any, to share the bed of Michael Jackson? O.J. was aquitted too. One kid? Then yes I could then believe that it was all a misunderstanding. But two, maybe more? Now you’re talking a trend. The man defended sleeping in the same bed with young boys, NONE of them his own biological kids. Man holds baby out of a window like a sack of potatoes and now Usher praises him as a role model even as a father!!!? What happens when Britney dies- we also hold her as America’s role model for just about anything that she could have possibly done?
The guy is a republican, and I am not. That is enough for him to choke me. But it is funny how sometimes you agree with someone with whom you otherwise could not agree on anything else besides.
With whom have I agreed?
My guess is that MJ was reliving his childhood. By all outward appearances, that’s what he was doing. We’ll never know the facts, but there is no evidence that he molested anyone. There is a difference between assessing risk for your kid and a politician mouthing off about a dead man he doesn’t know.
Hello Faust:
—…but there is no evidence that he molested anyone. There is a difference between assessing risk for your kid and a politician mouthing off about a dead man he doesn’t know.
O- He was not convicted. That doesn’t mean that there was no evidence, but that the evidence could not eliminate reasonable doubt. Assessing risk and mouthing off about a dead man (which in any case did not sound that much different from what was said while “Jacko” was alive- I wonder if the nickname will ever be used again -) is seen by me as “keeping it real”.
I love the honesty. Political suicide, but I like the honesty. I prefer that honesty than the outburst of eulogies taking over the artistic community. Usher even praised as a father! That after the man dangled a baby from a window!!! Those praises sound fake to me, or at least without merit based on the biography of the man. I am not saying that I knew personally Michael Jackson, but you are what you do and Michael sure did a lot. For example, I was recording a special on Michael, for my wife who is still in Italy, and they played the video “Black or White”, where the lyrics say: “I am not going to spend my life beating the color”, YET that is EXACTLY WHAT HE DID.
I think, like you, that Michael was damaged during his childhood and money just took away any limits to the gangrene that followed that infection. He was perhaps trying to escape his self or perhaps perfecting the performer in him; hard to tell.
There was a lot of evidence that he was taken advantage of by the parents of those kids, that he had a severe lack of common sense and that he was outright loonytunes. I don’t know of any evidence that he molested anyone. Maybe I haven’t been paying attention.
It didn’t turn out to be political suicide when he was funneling money and guns to the IRA. It’s not political suicide that he still supports the Iraq war, and the now-unpopular Patriot Act. If you look at his political background, he’s pretty much a hater. But he wins by big margins. He’s not taking anything like a risk, here. He was elected by being a hater.
Wow. Indicted by the lyrics of a pop song. He must be a child molester, then.
Dude, he was all fucked up, from here to Tuesday. I just don’t see why that’s a reason to admire some fat redneck asshole trying to get some airtime by saying the same kind of shit he has always said.
Just one man’s opinion.
Nobody is suggesting that Jackson should have gone to jail. If the system found him not-guilty, so be it. That doesn’t mean he’s innocent. The court of public opinion needn’t follow the strict rules of the government’s judicial system, because the court of public opinion hasn’t been given the power to throw people in jail or even take away their lives.
It’s King’s opinion that Michael Jackson probably molested children and most people, if they were being honest with themselves and not caught up in all the garbage hype, would probably agree. That being the case, I see no reason to celebrate the man.
It is possible to promote the justice system without believing it is the supreme arbiter. In fact, it’s the acceptance that we can’t easily know what is just that creates the need for a system in the first place.
Also, Michael Jackson was not an artistic genius. He was a pop-singer. Pop music is called pop because it’s simple and appeals to masses. Bach was a musical genius. Michael Jackson was a street-show.
King is not speaking as a private citizen. That makes a difference. If he’s saying that Jackson molested children, he is in effect saying that he should have gone to jail. He’s a legislator. He may have the private opinion that child molesters should not be punished, but no one could reasonably think that he holds this opinion, nor that he should, as an elected official. Let him introduce a bill freeing the convicted child molesters if that is the case.
Let’s not get cute about this, Knox. There is nothing cute about this guy. His is not “public opinion” - it’s a statement by an elected official, who is clearly grandstanding.
There is nothing about pop music as a genre that precludes genius. He was much more than a singer. Some consider Handel a genius. All he ever wrote was pop music. Neil Young has surely been popular. As was Jimi Hendrix. Also very popular. Also George and Ira Gershwin. John Philip Sousa.
You may pick geniuses as you like. But genres are only categories. Music is music.