thoughts on the Michael Jackson trial (as if there aren’t enough ill-informed opinions out there about it).
Celeb trials are always fraught with danger of things going wrong, being unclear or getting sidetracked by issues of fame and celebrity rather than than law and criminality. The bigger the star, the more potential there is for it to go wrong.
We’ll never know what really happened with MJ. His behaviour was certainly bizarre, troubling and served as a red flag to any right thinking parent regarding their kids. But clearly it wasn’t ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ – the burden of proof is a very difficult thing to establish when you’re dealing with any celeb as there’s always the likelihood that the motives, feelings and behaviour of the victim is going to be affected by the fame of the accused. The main kid in this trial was clearly a troubled lad, from a pretty screwed up family, behaving in a bizarre way and totally taken in by celebrity.
The problem is that screwed up, lying, fame-obsessed, money grabbing sons of screwed up, lying, fame obsessed, money grabbing parents can still be molested. When it comes down to his word against MJ, the jury are going to try and establish who seems the most truthful. MJ’s a performer, has been all his life. The kid was just a screw up dealing with cancer, who had parents who wanted to milk it.
Will we ever know? Clearly not, unless he was guilty and does it again…