I was never into Michael Jackson’s music…until not long before he died. I was into other kinds of music. I’m just realizing now that songs I heard in the background somewhere like “I’ll be there” were sung by him. I always assumed that was sung by a woman.

Over the last year my girlfriend spurred me into looking at his music.

You say, “when all the world seemed enthralled with a man whose performances were marked by gestures I found obscene”. Get over it. Have you never gone to a rock concert? Have you never seen a Broadway show? Even Liza Minelli made “obscene gestures” in the show “Chicago”. Do you know that ages ago when a very young Elvis Presley first appeared on the Ed Sullivan show the network decided they couldn’t show him on television below the waist because he moved his hips and the network was afraid of receiving hate mail if they did? How stupid was that? To his credit Ed Sullivan apologized on the show for the way Elvis was regarded.

As for allegations of child abuse…when I didn’t really pay attention to Jackson or any pop music I was aware of the allegations and just assumed they were true. Now I feel much differently. First of all he was acquitted of all charges for which he went to trial. He later paid a couple of parents off to keep I believe 2 other cases from going to trial and people take that at face value as an admission of guilt. For one thing, that trial was probably the the most painful thing he had to go through. When faced with a choice of going through that again, with all the press, all the time, and all the uncertainty, I think anyone with as much money as he had would prefer the option of paying a bribe that for him probably amounted to not much more than a few days’ pay. But there is something more telling in those payoffs. While talking about this subject a friend of mine who has two young boys told me, “If a pedophile abused either of my boys there is not enough money in the world that would keep me from killing him”. He went on to say that he would never trust a parent who took a payoff over his or her child seeing justice. In any case Michael Jackson, like anyone else is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Sure, money can postpone justice in this country but if Madoff with all of his money is spending the remainder of his life in jail I think Michael Jackson would have if he had really committed the crimes he was rumored to have committed.

Have you ever been falsely accused of anything? I once was. A girl I knew gave me the telephone number of a girl she knew because I was looking for an apartment and the girl she knew was looking for a roommate. In the short time before I went to see her apartment I found another one that I wouldn’t have to share and decided to take it. I none the less went to see her apartment just in case things fell through. She was a very attractive girl, a professional modern dancer in NYC. She flirted with me and before I left she told me to call her once I got settled in. I called her. Another woman answered and told me that she would give her the message. After not hearing back from her several day later I called her again. I thought that maybe the woman forgot to give her the message. The girl had seriously come on to me and I thought she would have returned my call. This time I got an answering machine and left a message.

A few nights later after midnight my phone rang. It was her. She accused me of asking her friend who had answered the phone what she was wearing. I was like “what?”. She asked, “Do you always ask girls you don’t know what they are wearing over the phone?” I told her I didn’t do that and said it must’ve been someone else but she said her friend recognized my voice on the answering machine. I kept insisting to no avail it wasn’t me who did that. Then at some point I heard a couple of females laughing in the background. I asked her who that was and “what’s going on here”. Her answer was to never call her again. I assured her I wouldn’t and told her never to call me again.

I hung up the phone and was freaked out because on the one hand it all seemed fishy but I believed this girl thought I had really done what she accused me of. I really freaked out when I thought that she probably told my friend who had initially put me in touch with this girl. It was well after midnight and I couldn’t call her. I had trouble sleeping that night and the morning couldn’t come quickly enough. I couldn’t wait to call my friend in case she had heard something. Not only had my friend not heard anything but she told me the following: “Don’t worry about it. This girl has a drinking problem and she also has issues with men. The 2 women visiting her are lesbians. They probably thought they’d have a good laugh at your expense”.

Great, just because of that phone call and the false accusation it brought with it I was terrified and in a state of disbelief. Because of that I can, or maybe can’t, imagine what it would be like to be told by some blackmailer that you are going to be accused of pedophilia.

Did you ever see the Jackson’s video “Black or White”? No wonder young people with open hearts loved him. In that video alone he sent a powerful message of our shared humanity throughout the world.

Of course there are unsung heroes and it’s great that you can appreciate them but that doesn’t make the sung heroes bad people. Don’t forget…Jesus Christ was put to death for criminal offenses and yet he remains one of the sung heroes, or should we believe he was a criminal?