Yeah, that guy is HAWT. How could those little 13 year olds resist???
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TW: rape, graphically described.
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Holy fuck, that guyâs 67? If he were 87 heâd look like shit for his age.
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Surprise surprise. Ryan Adams is a rapist and a douche.
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Gee, Charles Manson wasnât a perfect man either. . . .
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One downâŠ
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IEver since I read Maureen Orrâs series for Vanity Fair, I havenât been able to listen to Michael Jacksonâsmushc, and I donât know how anyone else does either. He was a sadistic fucker. Glad the documentary reveals who he truly is and hopefully wakes some people up.
Opinion
The King of Pop â and Perversion
By Maureen Dowd
Opinion Columnist
- Feb. 16, 2019
Image
Michael Jackson after his acquittal in 2005 on charges of molesting a boy.CreditPool photo by Kevork Djansezian
When Dan Reed ordered up a score for his documentary, he asked the composer to evoke the image of a shimmering sprite leading two boys deeper and deeper into an enchanted forest. The boys donât notice that the trees grow menacing. And suddenly, the sprite turns into a monster.
As âLeaving Neverlandâ shows, Michael Jackson spent his life shape-shifting from best pal, father figure and beneficent idol into cruel, manipulative rapist.
It was apparent for decades that Jacksonâs cotton-candy lair was sulfurous. But as with other monsters â Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, R. Kelly, Woody Allen, Jeffrey Epsteinand Bryan Singer â many turned a blind eye.
Celebrity supersedes criminality. How can you see clearly when youâre looking into the sun? How can an icon be a con?
It was easier to ignore a landscape designed as a spider web for child sexual abuse than to give up the soundtrack of our lives, the catchy songs that coursed through memories of weddings, bar mitzvahs and other good times.
âWith Michael Jackson, you can see how grotesquely his fame, and our worship of fame, distorts and excuses and enables evil â to the point mothers fail to protect their children and literally throw them in harmâs way,â says Maureen Orth, who did groundbreaking stories in the â90s for Vanity Fair about both Jackson and Allen.
Indeed, the most harrowing part of the new documentary about the shredded lives of two of Jacksonâs victims is the complicity of their mothers. Jackson spent as much time grooming the mothers as the sons, to the point where the women saw nothing wrong in letting their children share a bed with a grown man. (The documentary, which left the audience stunned at Sundance last month, premieres on HBO next month.)
Reed is a Brit who made several documentaries about terrorism. He says he became practiced at leading victims gently back to their traumas, so they could use their minds as cameras to bring key moments to life, letting their faces and voices tell the stories.
And that is how the tragedies of James Safechuck and Wade Robson unfold, through the pain in their eyes and the confusion in their voices and the moments where they tear up or swallow hard.
Safechuck, who works as a computer programmer, was raised in Simi Valley. He met Jackson when he was a 9-year-old child actor in 1987, starring with the singer in a Pepsi commercial. Jackson promised to make the boy the next Spielberg.
Robson, a dance teacher who did choreography for Britney Spears and âN Sync, grew up on the other side of the world in Brisbane. He spent all his time dressing and dancing like Jackson. He won a dance contest in 1987 and got to meet Jackson, who was on tour in Australia, and dance onstage. Then, he was ensnared in the warped fantasy, a 7-year-old being initiated into sex at Neverland by the 31-year-old Jackson.
The mothers, Stephanie Safechuck and Joy Robson, knew that Jackson was ensorcelling their sons, even as he lured the mothers out of the frame with luxurious enticements. But they were stage mothers and fans, so they chose to believe Michael was a kind, lonely little boy at heart, not a heartless pedophile, and they did not dig deeper when their sons said nothing bad was going on.
âHe flies you first class, you have a limo waiting for you at the airport, amazing, you know, itâs a life of the rich and famous,â Mrs. Safechuck gushes in the film, adding: âI got to meet Sean Connery. That was big for me. It was like, âOh my God, Sean Connery!ââ She also loved Neverland: âHe had a beautiful wine cellar, really good wines, champagne, that was just something I enjoyed â it was a fairy tale every night.â After all, as she says, he was a genius and they were âjust nobodies.â Jackson bought them a house after James testified on the singerâs behalf in a trial involving another boy.
It somehow made sense to Jamesâs mother when she was told that she couldnât be near the hotel rooms her son and Michael shared in Europe because the nicer suites she would prefer were farther away.
As Wade Robson puts it, âWhat youâd think would be standard kind of instincts and judgment seemed to go out the window.â
His mother left Australia and his father and moved to L.A. with Wade and her daughter to be closer to Michael; the father later committed suicide. After Wade finally told a therapist and his wife and family what had happened, he was alienated from his mother for a time. Like James, Wade â who lied in court twice to protect the man he loved â had symptoms of trauma that intensified with the birth of his son. Jamesâs hands shake as he shows a diamond ring that Jackson gave him for a private mock wedding. Wade had a nervous breakdown and stopped dancing for a time.
âI had one jobâ and messed it up, Mrs. Safechuck says. âMy son had to suffer for me to have this life.â
Even with this shocking documentary, the Michael Jackson estate is still demonizing the victims and planning to bring a musical about Jacksonâs life to Broadway in 2020.
Reed says he is âagnosticâ about it: âAm I going to campaign to have Michaelâs name removed from classrooms and his statues removed from shopping malls? No. Is this the right time to celebrate Michael as a legitimate good person you might want to emulate? Possibly not.â
And that is whatâs known as British understatement.
Correction: February 16, 2019
An earlier version of this column misstated the year Wade Robson met Michael Jackson. It was 1987, not 1990. It also misstated the age of James Safechuck when he starred in a Pepsi commerical with Mr. Jackson. He was 9 years old, not 10.
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But everybody knew that.
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There are few arguments so creepy as the ones that start popping up any time Jacksonâs relationships with the many young boys he kept around him is brought up or any of the claims of abuse⊠thereâs like almost a bizarre cult that has formed around defending him. It was watching the shit go down with Michael Jackson that really woke me up to the fact that there is actually a large and surprisingly powerful contingent of people who are willing to fight tooth and nail to make sure they and/or others can fuck your children.
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Your post made me realize that, in a way, we might have these victims telling their stories to thank for the #metoo movement. And all the former children victimized by the Catholic church.
When people speak up about their abuse and assault as children, it leads the way for adult victims to do so as well.
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Everybody did know that, but wow, the Jackson fans are still legion, still trying to claim the stories are the result of racism and envy and misunderstanding his beautiful soul, and not, you know, lived experience.
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I think there were a lot of allegations but then they would go away, and he was so popular, his music the soundtrack to so many peopleâs lives. I think it was easy for people to ignore it.
When I read the Vanity Fair pieces, (I got her name wrong, the journalist is Maureen Orth), she included side by side photos of the kids he raped. He had a TYPE. There is no way that random people after his money would all look like that.
Hereâs the link here but the photos arenât in the piece.
The pieces are disturbing to the degree that his private life - a drug addict with a private mob doing his dirty business - was so different from his public persona. I never really got into this whole child who never grew up shtick but a lot of people fell for it.
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Literally the worst people Iâve ever met could very aptly be described as children who never grew up.
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But he was so weird! Why did people like him so much? Never understood the appeal.
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People heard about how much abuse he suffered as a kid and gave him a pass for being weird. When the first rumors of âinappropriate relations with childrenâ came out it stunk of a smear to some people.
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I read an interview once with a man who was working for him at the time he was wearing the black surgical mask in public. He said theyâd spent the day in a hotel room in Germany, getting work done, and Jackson was acting like anyone else who was involved in business.
Then they went out for dinner, and paparazzi and fans were waiting in the hotel lobby. Just as they were about to be visible in the lobby, Jackson pulled out the mask and put it on. Upping seeing the questioning look on the other manâs face, he said âRazzle-dazzle 'emâ and then went into his âWeird Michael Jackson in Publicâ schtick.
Jackson apparently just thought of it, like much of the other âweirdâ stuff, as publicity fodder, not understanding it was having more of an impact than mere notoriety. Either way, it was a total act.
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I think this is relevant to this discussion on Jackson and his popularityâŠ
He talks about Kanye, too, but it relates it to the enduring popularity of MJ. Like much else involving race in American, itâs not so simple and straight forward.
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I had Thriller. I was 12 when that came out. But he was already a bit creepy by the time he released Bad and I had given up on him by that point.
Exactly.
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