By Beauty Damned

Move Along, Nothing to See Here

In news that's already old, but still remotely interesting to me...

Michael Jackson was acquitted. As someone who completely ignored the OJ trial, it won't come as a surprise that I also completely ignored this one. I took note when it began and when it ended, but I haven't gotten involved in the details as it all unfolded. I knew that all we could do was wait and see. I've always felt that in some sense, Michael Jackson may have done things that most people would consider wrong, whether that was the extreme of molestation or just a bizarre attempt to relive his childhood, I don't know if we'll ever be certain. But that is neither here nor there now and it was very hard to picture a jury convicting him. Try as I might to see Jackson behind bars, it's always impossible to imagine someone that famous and loved by millions being put away no matter how guilty you think they might be. A couple of things caught my attention in the case of the State of California v. Jackson, and those were:

Tom Sneddon had waaay too much of a hardon for Jackson; A condition that was parodied hilariously on one South Park episode, where Jackson moves to South Park and the white cops in town try their damndest to frame him and throw him in jail, as their very sense of self worth in life is derived from the act of throwing black men in jail for crimes they did not commit. In that particular parody Jackson is portrayed as a very strange man who likes to play children's games in his world of make-believe and is so distracted by his own desperate attempts to live out a lost childhood that he completely neglects to recognize his role as a father to his son, "Blankie." His behavior is frightening, and some things just don't seem right, but ultimately Jackson may just be a weird guy with too much money, childhood trauma to work out, and a very unconventional way of trying to commune with kids. Of course, he could also be a child molestor, but we'll never be sure from this.

Tom Sneddon's determination to nail Jackson to the wall made him seem like he had a personal vendetta that might be clouding his ability to judge whether or not Jackson was worth pursuing with the case that the DA had. A case which apparently fell far short of producing enough evidence to convict Jackson. Like OJ Simpson, Michael Jackson has already been judged harshly by the public, and it will be hard for people to let go of the notion that he is guilty, though in OJ's case I'm more sure that he killed Nicole and Ron than I am about Jackson molesting little kids.

The other problem with Sneddon's case was the fact that, despite past allegations of sexual abuse, the parents of the child in this case still allowed their child to go have sleepovers with a man who had already been accused. It seems so odd. I have heard that the kids who testified seemed very coached (who knows?), I have heard that their mother was a schemer (does filing a lawsuit in the past automatically make you a schemer?), I have heard that Jackson's defense team did everything in their power to smear the plaintiffs (that's not so unusual), and I feel the same way that I feel after most highly publicized trials: indifference. I couldn't possibly care any less. You think you do, and then you realize that you really don't. Though I do sincerely hope for the sake of those kids that Michael Jackson is not a child molester, and only time will tell I suppose, but once the jury has made up their minds, there's not a lot more to say and people just have to move on. Find some other car wreck to ogle.

So...that happened.

Posted by Maria at June 14, 2005 07:36 PM