We were recently approached on Twitter by a Michael Jackson fan Tudo Pelo Michael a Brazilian fan, who had a great idea for a World-Wide campaign to celebrate Michael’s birthday this year with a wonderful gift to our beloved.
MJJJP is ever ready to shake the pom poms for any wonderful campaign, but even more so since Michael’s community is in so desperate need of a spirtiual uplifting. It’s been almost a year and a half of dealing with the lies in Leaving Neverland. All of the MJAdvocates who’e been investigating, researching and debunking the over 66 lies in the one-sided biased film by Reed. The sharing and rehashing of this evilness can really take a toll on Michael’s Global family, so we need this campaign.
The MJGlobal family needs this focus on JOY – we’ve earned it –
The campaign has a simple goal to reach ONE BILLOIN views on the Billie Jean Youtube video by Miichael’s birthday – Aug 29th 2020. Below is the link:
We humbly request everyone in Michael’s loving world wide community to use their Social Media platforms to share this video link and the goal of #1Billion4MJ
We need everyont to engage in copious amounts of clicking on Michael Jacksn’s Bille Jean You Tube video.
We actually need more than a million views per day to achieve this goal and we believe with the ❤️ that circulates for the man the world over, it can be accomplished.
We appreciate that MJVibe has already posted an article about our campaign and hope that other MJ forums, clubs and groups all over Facebook, Twitter, Instagram will do the same.
The more attention and views we can draw to Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean Video the better.
We know that this year and half has been highly stressful fot the Michael Jackson fan community in all parts of the world. We’ve been combating false stories and a media still determined to mischaracterize him and every turn.
We really need something joyful to focus our efforts on and this #1Billion4MJ is it.
Michael created his GLOBAL community without the benefit of the intenet and the instant communications of social networking of Twitter, Facetime, YouTube, Instagram, Tik tok etc. He stated repeatedly how much he loved his fans.
NOW Michael Jackson’s loving Global Family has these netwrking capabilities at our fingertips and we can demonstrate our reciprocal love for Michael with just a click of a link.
We can use our collective voices to make this Birthday Gift for Michael a reality – and if we are diligent in this task, there are three other You Tube videos just ripe for obtaining the same Billion view status. If that occurs we will be able to gift Michael Jackson another Guinness World Record.
YouTube system is able to determine which views are legitimate or intentional. Do not try to use Automatic player softwares to cheat the system. YouTube WILL NOT count the views IF:
multiple devices are using the same IP multiple tabs are open watching the same video refreshing the page BEFORE video is complete
Using the “loop” option, muted plays or multiple views of same video by a Youtube Account holder will count as only ONE view- Don’t waste your time watching the video more than 3 times consecutively.
To have your views counted successfully, while logged into your YouTube account, you MUST:
Click the video, then view it NO MORE than 3 times consecutively.
After 3 consecutive views, watch 2 other MJ videos in between and then go back and view Billie Jean 3 times again.
Repeat this process, several times a day.
OR
LOG OUT of your YouTube account and click the Billie Jean video, watch the video, refresh your page, Click, Watch, Refresh. Repeat this process several times a day.
Now is the time for the MJGlobal family to come to together in a great and sustained effort to gift Michael this wonderful gift on his birthday August 29, 2020.
“Does it get more bizarre than it’s been getting lately?” — asked journalist Maureen Orth in the opening lines of a 2003 Vanity Fair article, whose absurd jabs at Michael Jackson include accusing him of using voodoo to defeat his enemies and having a prosthetic nose tip.
Jackson, of course, neither used voodoo nor had a fake nose (the latter claim being a widespread gossip that was put to rest for good by his autopsy report). However, he had, at that point, been the victim of relentless bullying by the media for almost 20 years.
But how had Orth managed to make such ludicrous claims in a mainstream publication and get away with it? What were the set of circumstances that allowed a journalist to viciously attack the integrity of Jackson, once the most famous man in the planet, without any proof, and still be believed?
The birth of the image of “Michael Jackson, the child molester”
The attacks on Michael Jackson’s public image started decades before Orth’s article was published. As early as the 1970s, a young Jackson saw himself forced to address the never-ending rumors about his love life. Reporters wanted to know who/if he was dating; they speculated whether he was gay and even if he had a sex change.
As the years went by, the scrutiny of his personal life only grew worse. By the mid-1980s, the focus shifted from his love life to his alleged eccentricities. It was around that time that the tabloid media coined the term “Wacko Jacko”, one that Jackson hated and that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
From the mid-1980s onward, the stories spiraled out of control: he slept in an oxygen chamber, he’d bought the Elephant man’s bones, he’d bleached his skin. They were all proven lies, which had, nevertheless, found in the scandal-thirsty public a growing niche of consumers.
You see, Jackson was a complex figure, a man who was, in many ways, ahead of his time. His vision and his talents in song-writing, singing and dancing became the blueprint for generations to come; his use of his platform to promote social change made him one of the world’s biggest humanitarians.
But as larger than life as he appeared to be sometimes, he was only a man — a man who grew up under unique circumstances, that yearned to live a normal life, and who didn’t shy away from speaking publicly about his personal trials and tribulations. He owed the world nothing, yet, he spoke.
His critics weren’t having it. They were more invested in the freakish character created by the media; they longed for answers, just not the answers Jackson had gladly given them: that he’d never had a childhood, that his changing skin-tone was the product of an incurable disease. His words fell on deaf ears.
By 1993, the rumors had grown to such a proportion that they threatened to overshadow his work. Jackson and his team, realizing how successfully the media had dehumanized him, went on a PR offensive that included an interview to daytime TV host Oprah Winfrey, in which the singer spoke openly about various issues, including his vitiligo, for the first time.
During his lifetime and even in his death, Michael Jackson has been accused of voluntarily erasing his black features in an attempt at “becoming white”, and therefore gaining access to the exclusive world of the dominating elite.
His critics paint him out to be nothing short of a bigot, someone whose admiration for the standards of white America made him not only alter his own appearance but also see the world through these lenses. But is it possible that the man who wrote the diversity anthem Black or White was, in fact, a bigot?
In a previous thread (see below) we spoke about Michael’s race/ethnicity and how it was impossible for him to ever cease being black, shedding light on his internal perceptions of himself and his community. https://twitter.com/manuelabezamat/status/1186598490178240512?s=20
In this thread, which complements the other, we’ll focus on the outside world, on how Michael perceived other cultures – in summary, how he saw difference, proving that his personality and his beliefs are the opposite of what’s expected from a prejudiced and intolerant person.
Before we dig into Michael’s relationship with other cultures/ethnicities, let’s take a quick look at some concepts that will be used in this thread, and that belong to the field of Anthropology: Otherness, Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism. When interacting with people from other ethnicities/cultures we’re faced with Otherness, defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “the quality or state of being other or different”. In such situations, it becomes clear that our cultural habits and beliefs aren’t universal.
Some see these encounters as an opportunity to learn, while others respond by judging people by the social/cultural standards of their own group, believing them to be superior. These people incur in Ethnocentrism (‘ethnos’ – nation, cultural group; ‘centric’ – center).
German anthropologist Franz Boas was one of the pioneers in fighting Ethnocentrism in his field. Going against the main anthropological current, which placed each culture in an evolutionary scale, he instead vouched for them to be analyzed within their own cultural standards.
Boas’ theory, called Cultural Relativism, was a product of his intense fieldwork in the late 19th century. Living with the Inuits of Baffin Island, he concluded that learning their habits/language was essential to understanding them and denaturalizing his own cultural standards.
Polish-born anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski took the debate further. Spending years among the natives of the Trobriand Islands, he concluded that fieldwork was essential to grasp “the native’s point of view, (…) to realize his vision of his world”.
Even though Boas’ and Malinowski’s works are complex, their message is simple – it’s only by having continuous/frequent contact with Otherness that we avoid the pitfalls of Ethnocentrism and realize that we’re all ethnic beings, none better than the other.
You may ask what any of this has to do with Michael Jackson. The answer is – everything.
Michael Jackson was naturally empathic. His understanding and concern about others were summarized by an old proverb he often recited: “don’t judge a man until you’ve walked two moons in his moccasins”.
His natural empathy was only matched by his intellectual curiosity. Bob Sanger, his longtime lawyer, said that his personal library had 10,000 books and that they’d often talk about “psychology, Freud and Jung, (…) black history and sociology dealing with race issues.”
Michael also travelled from an early age for work, both inside and outside of the US. His tours allowed him to visit dozens of countries around the world – from China to Brazil, not to mention his personal trips, like the ones he took to Africa.
His sense of empathy, his intellectual curiosity and his travels, when combined, gave Michael a rare perspective, one that can be found in trained anthropologists – that humankind is comprised of a myriad of ethnicities/cultures that should be appreciated in their uniqueness.
Michael took it even further – he discovered that Otherness and diversity aren’t, as some would think, a source of weakness or conflict, but a source of strength and unity. From Otherness comes Oneness, a point of view that he expressed in his music and his humanitarian work.
In a 1979 interview to Jet Magazine, he stated: “I’m really not a prejudiced person at all (…) if you look at the many wonders inside the human bodies—the different colors of organs…and all these colors do different things in the human body – why can’t we do it as people?”
The following year, Michael and Jackie Jackson co-wrote a song called “Can You Feel It”, the third single out of the Jacksons’ album Triumph (1980). The song speaks about unity and the world coming together.
The lyrics are poignant: “All the colors of the world should be lovin’ each other wholeheartedly (…)”; “Spread the word and try to teach the man who’s hating his brother, when hate won’t do, when we’re all the same, ’cause the blood inside me is inside you.”
In late 1980, Michael had the idea of making a film out of the song. The result was “The Triumph”, a 9 min+ visual masterpiece starring the Jackson brothers in outer space, delivering a message of love to people of multiple ethnic backgrounds.
Two moments in the film stand out. First, the prelude, composed by Michael, which speaks about the “beginning”, where “men and women of every color and shape (…) would ignore the beauty in each other”, but “never lose sight of the dream of a better world, that they could unite.”
Later, people of all ethnicities are shown staring at a black hole, where a single peacock feather appears. A native-American man emerges from the crowd and an African-American boy holds his hand. Soon everyone else does the same, and the single feather turns into a full plumage.
The highly symbolic nature of this film can’t be ignored. In the peacock feather scene, the message is clear – while one feather/culture is beautiful by itself, it’s only when all feathers/cultures join together that the full beauty is unleashed. From Otherness comes Oneness.
The idea of Oneness shows up again in the 1985 charitable global hit “We are the World”, co-written by Michael and Lionel Richie. The song, which speaks about the world coming together for a good cause, managed to raise roughly $ 60 million for the famine in Ethiopia.
Captain EO, a 17+ min 3D film made for Disney that came out in 1986, had Michael play the part of an intergalactic captain on a mission to save a planet from the ruling of its evil queen, played by Anjelica Houston.
The two songs featured in the film, “We Are Here to Change the World” and “Another Part of Me” have EO bring the message of a new era, where love and unity overcome fear and hate.
In “Another Part of Me”, which later featured in Michael’s 1987 Bad album, the lyrics follow the pattern of “Can You Feel It” – “The planets are linin’ up, we’re bringin’ brighter days. They’re all in line waitin’ for you, can’t you see? You’re just another part of me.”
Even if his previous work referenced diversity, the Dangerous album (1991) and its short films took Michael’s relationship with other cultures to a new level. It was then that his message about diversity became louder and more explicit than ever.
The first track, “Jam”, sets the tone for the album by bringing up Oneness again – “Nation to nation all the world must come together, face the problems that we see then maybe somehow we can work it out”. From Otherness comes Oneness.
“Heal the World”, the timeless humanitarian song that prompted many to look more kindly upon their neighbor for the first time, is fascinating in that it combines three elements that summarize Michael’s worldview: humanitarian work, diversity and children.
The Heal the World short film illustrates this by showing children from all over the world in distress. The message is clear – the children of the world shouldn’t have to suffer.
Michael took action by creating the Heal the World Foundation in 1992. In a HTW press conference, he announced the donation of tons of supplies to war-torn Sarajevo and actions aimed at inner-city children, also speaking against prejudice and ethnic hatred.
The 1993 Super Bowl halftime show included what was possibly his most touching performance of “Heal the World”. The segment starts with the audience performing a card stunt, which creates the image of children of different ethnicities to the sound of “We Are the World”.
Then, as “Heal the World” starts playing, Michael is joined onstage by people from various cultures – many dressed in traditional garments – who sing together and hold hands as a balloon in the shape of planet Earth is inflated at center stage.
The intersection of children and diversity would provide a lifelong fascination for Michael. In a 2003 documentary, he mentioned that he considered adopting two children from each continent, and one of his most prized personal possessions was this painting below.
In all of Michael Jackson’s body of work there’s one song and accompanying short film that are considered not only the summary of his thoughts on race, Otherness and diversity, but one of the landmarks of pop culture: the unmistakable “Black or White”.
The first single out of Dangerous, “Black or White” was released in November 11, 1991, a turbulent year in terms of world history. That was the year that the Soviet Union collapsed, the Gulf war ended and the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia intensified.
In this scenario of hopelessness and change, a young black entertainer brought about a message of hope and positivity, shifting the focus from the flaws of humanity to its beauty and ingenuity.
“Black or White” stayed at number 1 in the Billboard Hot 100 for 7 weeks, also reaching the top of the charts in various other countries around the world. The B or W short film debuted simultaneously in 27 countries on November 14, to an estimated audience of 500 million people.
The B or W short film is at times symbolic and at other times explicit in its message. Michael and Vincent Patterson, his choreographer, had conceived it as a narrative in which the singer would visit different cultural settings around the world.
The film starts by showing a typical middle-class household in suburban USA. In the living room, dad watches sports on TV while mom reads a tabloid newspaper. They represent the intellectually divested/short-sighted mainstream society, which is blind in its Ethnocentrism.
In true Michael Jackson fashion – the singer saw children as the bearers of endless curiosity, while also lacking the prejudices and restraints of the adults – it’s up to their son, played by Macaulay Culkin, to open their eyes to a world filled with endless possibilities.
The power of the son’s message literally blows dad through the roof, landing him in a different reality, where people have different ways of life. He’s then introduced to a new character, Michael Jackson, who’s taking part in a dance ritual with native Africans.
From that point forward, Michael, like an anthropologist, becomes an interpreter of cultures, seamlessly travelling from one to the other while either taking part in their dance or dancing to his own rhythm.
The sequence where he goes from dancing with the African natives to dancing in a studio with the traditional Thai dancers and then “breaking free” from the studio setting to join the Native-Americans in a ritual in the desert is particularly poignant.
In the making of B or W, Michael was unhappy with John Landis’ original idea of just having him dance in front of a gray background. He understood the symbolic importance of interacting with other cultures, and that by joining them, he showed that they were different, but equal.
The scene of Michael with the Native-Americans has the natives wearing traditional garments and includes the original sounds of their chants. The power and the beauty of this culture can be felt as everyone’s surrounded by men storming in, riding horses – not a cowboy in sight.
From the desert we’re taken to an urban environment, where Michael interacts with an Indian native. What jumps out in this scene is the contrast between the “exoticness” and warmth of the woman and the soullessness of the industrial background.
Two issues arise from this scene. 1) The meaning of “exoticness”, this ethnocentric category that stigmatizes Otherness 2) The erasure of traditional cultures by our capitalist society. By joining the dancer, Michael picks the side of diversity and understanding.
Travelling to Russia, Michael joins dancers in front of Saint Basil’s Cathedral, evoking feelings of brotherhood. The scene morphs into a glass globe, which is picked up by a white baby, sitting next to a black baby on top of planet Earth, suggesting a future of racial harmony.
The next scene, the most racially-charged of them all, has Michael defiantly singing “I ain’t scared of your brother, I ain’t scared of no sheets, I ain’t scared of nobody, girl, when the going gets mean” to bigots and racists, against footage of a burning cross.
From there we’re taken to the inner city, where Michael is seen among children of different ethnicities – the new generation – singing powerful lyrics “it’s not about races, just places, faces (…) I’m not going to spend my life being a color.”
The next scene shows Michael atop the Statue of Liberty. As the camera zooms out, he’s surrounded by monuments from all over the world. It becomes clear that, while he sees the world from the viewpoint of his culture, he considers other cultures to be equal to his.
The end of the short film brings the iconic (then ground-breaking) morphing segment, where men and women of various ethnic backgrounds merge faces while singing repeatedly “it’s black, it’s white, it’s tough for you to get by.”
The Black or White short film hit the world like a ton of bricks. People of every culture were mesmerized with what they’d seen – the biggest star in the planet showing, through astonishing visual effects, that he appreciated their way of life, and that it’s okay to be different.
In the following years, the Dangerous and HIStory tours took the singer to countless cities in Europe, Asia and South America, helping cement his vocation as a spokesman for world cultures. Even those that didn’t speak English felt like they could relate to the man and his music.
Michael Jackson’s message of tolerance, diversity and racial/cultural harmony helped shape the minds of generations of people around the world, that would continue to spread his values from that point forward. The singer had reached his goal: from Otherness came Oneness. //
SOURCES:
LECOCQ, Richard (@richardjllecocq)
ALLARD, François “Michael Jackson: All the Songs – The Story Behind Every Track”
SMALLCOMBE, Mike (@mikesmallcombe1) “Making Michael: Inside the Career of Michael Jackson”
ROBERTS, Randall “Michael Jackson’s lawyer, Bob Sanger, talks to West Coast Sound about the pop star, his life and his reading habits” (LA Weekly)
KELLOGG, Carolyn “Michael Jackson, the bookworm” (Los Angeles Times)
HIRSHEY, Gerri “Michael Jackson: life as a man in the magical kingdom” (Rolling Stone) “Jackson interview seen by 14m” (BBC News)
FAILES, Ian “An oral history of morphing in Michael Jackson’s ‘Black or White’” (Cartoon Brew)
Michael Jackson official website
Oregon State University’s Anthropological Glossary
KING, Charles “ Genius at work: how Franz Boas created the field of Cultural
Anthropology” (Columbia Magazine)
“Bronislaw Malinowski – LSE pioneer of social anthropology” (LSE website)
Discover Anthropology website; the works of Franz Boas and Bronislaw Malinowski.
“Three things cannot be long hidden; the Sun, the Moon and the Truth” Buddha
On January 10th, 2020, MJJJP ran across a series of tweets from a Twitter account
“We Be illin’ “ @human_nature_99, regarding their personal experience researching and getting to know Michael Jackson. We thought others might like to see that despite Dan Reed, Wade Robson, James Safechuck, Channel4 and HBO’s intention for Leaving Neverland to “cancel” Michael Jackson, the complete opposite has occurred. The tweet statement began:
MJJJP was granted permission by “We Be illin’ ” to recontruct their whole statement on our wordpress because we completely agree that there are many people out there who have experienced the same enlightenment regarding Michael Jackson. The reality of his life juxtaposed to the false narrative presented by Leaving Neverland, coupled with the 30 yr mischaracterization presented by the media at large, requires research and an open heart to find truth.
The Twitter statement:
Apologies for the long thread, but I’m just going to put this out there because I know others may have had the same experience: I’m a little sad and embarrassed to admit that I didn’t appreciate Michael Jackson’s genius until after he passed away.
Often heard his music but for some reason, didn’t feel that compelled to actually listen to it. I wasn’t really into pop culture, so I mainly listened to classical anyway. I’ve always knew about the allegations but didn’t pay too much attention because I didn’t know all the facts.
For some reason, he became a huge topic this year and I came across a few music videos of him. I actually truly listened for the first time and thought the music and the dancing was extraordinary. At the same time, however, I also came across several negative videos, such as
the cut-out segment of Michael and Arvizo in Bashir’s documentary (which, taken out of context, seemed very strange to me) and L*aving N*verland videos. So, I kinda had an ambivalent feeling about him, like “His music’s good but he’s also kinda creepy?”
Then, dozens and dozens of MJ-related Youtube videos started popping up in my recommended – from videos about Michael’s childhood to his interactions with his fans to his humanitarian work. A lot of positive videos and as I watched them, I just saw such a GIGANTIC disconnect
in the way media portrayed him and the real, raw videos of him as a human being, as a real individual. And, just observing all the videos of him doing good work for the world. It also made me a little scared, thinking “So, could a person who gives off so much love and care
really be evil at heart?” If that’s the case, who can you really trust in this world if “good” people can actually be so evil?” Keep in mind, during this whole time, I still was VERY reluctant to like him because I didn’t want to risk giving my admiration to a possible pedo.
So, I dug into the research and as I saw more and more videos about his innocence, it just became so absolutely ridiculous to me how ALL THIS EVIDENCE can be right in front of your face and how people can still overlook it all. It almost became like insanely imbecilic to me
that people could believe that nonsense. I eventually went from 50/50 on his innocence to 60/40 to just over 1000% sure that he was innocent. I actually joined Twitter as kind of an anonymous observer but I actually made my first comment when I saw a well-known company
throw lowkey shade at him and it made me LIVID. Like, how can you guys just so willingly contribute to one of the biggest cases of injustice in history? It actually got a buncha likes and a lot of other people started calling them out as well. And, that’s basically my
first experience into being vocal on this platform. So, yeah, I wasn’t an MJ fan before, but I think my story does kinda provide a little bit of insight into how a non-MJ fan could evolve into such a staunch defender of MJ. Because one thing I’m DEAD tired of is when MJ-guilters
immediately dismiss your COLD-HARD FACTS because “You worship a pedo and you’re just a delusional fan.” No sir, I was someone who looked at the cold hard facts and arrived at my own conclusion.
Unfortunately, the full account of how “We Be Illin’ ” went from “non-fan” status; not really being aware of Michael Jackson’s life and the allegations against him to becoming a staunch supporter of his innocence was not constructed on a Twitter Thread. These were all individual tweets and this is why We asked permission to reprint this on our wordpress. Without being in a thread we’d be required to copy each url from each tweet to present them each visually, so we asked permission to present them in one long statement, for impact. The breaks in between the texts indicates the breaks between each tweet. We Be Illin has indicated to us that this was just ad-hoc, not encompassing all that they wanted to say and would like to someday edit it, to include other thoughts. We are more than willing to make that happen. 🙏🏼
The name of Blanca Francia is now firmly associated with Wade Robson. She used to be a personal maid to Michael Jackson, who later made controversial statements about him, and Robson insisted on Michael’s innocence for the first 30 years of his life, but since making his U-turn in 2013 has told most horrible things about his former friend.
So previously Francia and Robson were on the opposite sides of the barrier, and now they are allies whose case against Jackson is based on each other stories – Blanca Francia thinks she saw the shadow of Robson in Michael Jackson’s shower at Neverland, and Robson, though recalling none of it himself, goes much further and claims she saw Michael Jackson “rubbing the Plaintiff” and “the Plaintiff’s head was pressed against Michael Jackson’s stomach area.”
The above Robson’s statements come from his Motion to amend his third amended complaint filed on…
Belgium singer Christine Decroix’s recorded music with Michael and here are some of her thoughts on the King of Pop.
“Together let’s stand up and denounce the “wolves who killed the little lamb”, the people like journalist Bashir who didn’t know him and abused of his trust for their profit. As a friend I spent a great amount of time in the recording studio with him, we always had children with us and were always laughing and playing between recording sessions. He brought a lot of joy in people lives.
I grew up in Belgium raised by my dad who, as a chief of police, taught me to always be suspicious and I can tell you that I couldn’t see anything wrong with Michael except maybe that it was a man who at a young age never had the time to be a kid. He told me once that children are pure and innocent and adults always want something from him. That’s the sole reason he felt more comfortable with children, they just loved him because he was magic for the kids, and made them feel like giants.
He loathed vulgarity and would have been upset at me laughing with a dirty joke in the studio. He built a movie theatre for disabled children in his house. People are sick to think he did that to attract them as a child molester. They judge without knowing and should be ashamed because they largely contributed to his downfall and his death. Michael Jackson was hypersensitive, maybe it was the key of his talent. He suffered tremendously of all these false accusations, and the slanders that were spread. These unscrupulous persons took everything away from him including his amazing career. He did not have a childhood, his dad still beat him after he was 30. People always criticized his look but when your own father keeps telling you your nose is too big, you finally believe it and you try to fix it.
Michael was a strange guy for a lot of people because of his look. So it was both an easy and profitable target for some media wanting to bring him down. He was a genius and an amazing talent already at a young age. Nobody can judge him without knowing him.
If one of you had spent only one hour with him, you would have fallen in love with his pure heart. He could make everybody around him feel special. He was even thanking you for working with him, and had definitely not a big star attitude, he was down to earth, lived on a healthy diet, never drank alcohol. The day of my birthday party in Tokyo he took my glass of champagne away from me and replaced it by a glass of water. He was not joking he just cared for people.
He already suffered from back problems in 1987 but I never saw him taking any drugs. It’s just a disgrace to compare his death with Anna Nicole Smith. Michael Jackson told me once “Coco (nickname he gave me), don’t judge a man until you’ve walked two moons in his moccasins ” so stop judging him, love him because he loved you all and that’s what he suffered from and why he was accused of committing such an horrible crime. He didn’t do it, he was found not guilty. They tried for years but couldn’t find any proof.
Once he also told me: animals kill to eat, humans kill by pleasure. He was like a child but a smart one. I tried a few years ago to gather people who knew him to speak out but nobody wanted to do it by fear of the media. Let’s unite to denounce the true murderers of Michael. I know today that his place belongs in paradise. Let’s get together, let’s get together and honour his life and legacy, simply because he was the greatest of all time.
Christine Decroix, a forever friend of Michael Jackson
ETI breaks down why the new Michael Jackson documentary is total bullshit!
When Michael Jackson died in 2009, Wade Robson—the former choreographer whose allegations of abuse are at the center of a controversial new documentary, Leaving Neverland—wrote in tribute to his friend:
“Michael Jackson changed the world and, more personally, my life forever. He is the reason I dance, the reason I make music, and one of the main reasons I believe in the pure goodness of humankind. He has been a close friend of mine for 20 years. His music, his movement, his personal words of inspiration and encouragement and his unconditional love will live inside of me forever. I will miss him immeasurably, but I know that he is now at peace and enchanting the heavens with a melody and a moonwalk.”
READ the following article written by: Joe Vogel and reposted from: Click Here
Robson was twenty-seven years old at the time. Four years earlier, he testified at Jackson’s 2005 trial (as an adult) that nothing sexual ever happened between them. Prior to the trial Robson hadn’t seen Jackson for years and was under no obligation to be a witness for the defense. He faced a withering cross-examination, understanding the penalty of perjury for lying under oath. But Robson adamantly, confidently, and credibly asserted that nothing sexual ever happened.
What changed between then and now? A few things:
In 2011, Robson approached John Branca, co-executor of the Michael Jackson Estate, about directing the new Michael Jackson/Cirque du Soleil production, ONE. Robson admitted he wanted the job “badly,” but the Estate ultimately chose someone else for the position.
In 2012, Robson had a nervous breakdown, triggered, he said, by an obsessive quest for success. His career, in his own words, began to “crumble.”
That same year, with Robson’s career, finances, and marriage in peril, he began shopping a book that claimed he was sexually abused by Michael Jackson. No publisher picked it up.
In 2013, Robson filed a $1.5 billion dollar civil lawsuit/creditor’s claim, along with James Safechuck, who also spent time with Jackson in the late ‘80s. Safechuck claimed he only realized he may have been abused when Robson filed his lawsuit. That lawsuit was dismissed by a probate court in 2017.
In 2019, the Sundance Film Festival premiered a documentary based entirely on Robson and Safechuck’s allegations. While the documentary is obviously emotionally disturbing given the content, it presents no new evidence or witnesses. The film’s director, Dan Reed, acknowledged not wanting to interview other key figures because it might complicate or compromise the story he wanted to tell.
It is tempting for the media to tie Jackson into a larger cultural narrative about sexual misconduct. R. Kelly was rightfully taken down by a documentary, and many other high-profile figures have been exposed in recent years, so surely, the logic goes, Michael Jackson must be guilty as well. Yet that is a dangerous leap—particularly with America’s history of unjustly targeting and convicting black men—that fair-minded people would be wise to consider more carefully before condemning the artist. It is no accident that one of Jackson’s favorite books (and movies) was To Kill a Mockingbird, a story about a black man—Tom Robinson—destroyed by false allegations.
The media’s largely uncritical, de-contextualized takes out of Sundance seem to have forgotten: no allegations have been more publicly scrutinized than those against Michael Jackson. They elicited a two-year feeding frenzy in the mid-90s and then again in the mid-2000s, when Jackson faced an exhaustive criminal trial. His homes were ransacked in two unannounced raids by law enforcement. Nothing incriminating was found. Jackson was acquitted of all charges in 2005 by a conservative Santa Maria jury. The FBI, likewise, conducted a thorough investigation. Its 300-page file on the pop star, released under the Freedom of Information Act, found no evidence of wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, dozens of individuals who spent time with Jackson as kids continue to assert nothing sexual ever happened. This includes hundreds of sick and terminally ill children such as Bela Farkas (for whom Jackson paid for a life-saving liver transplant) and Ryan White (whom Jackson befriended and supported in his final years battling AIDS); it includes lesser-known figures like Brett Barnes and Frank Cascio; it includes celebrities like Macaulay Culkin, Sean Lennon, Emmanuel Lewis, Alfonso Ribeiro, and Corey Feldman; it includes Jackson’s nieces and nephews; and it includes his own three children.
The allegations surrounding Jackson largely faded over the past decade for a reason: unlike the Bill Cosby or R. Kelly cases, the more people looked into the Jackson allegations, the more the evidence vindicated him. The prosecution’s case in 2005 was so absurd Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi described it like this:
Ostensibly a story about bringing a child molester to justice, the Michael Jackson trial would instead be a kind of homecoming parade of insipid American types: grifters, suckers and no-talent schemers, mired in either outright unemployment… or the bogus non-careers of the information age, looking to cash in any way they can. The MC of the proceedings was District Attorney Tom Sneddon, whose metaphorical role in this American reality show was to represent the mean gray heart of the Nixonian Silent Majority – the bitter mediocrity itching to stick it to anyone who’d ever taken a vacation to Paris. The first month or so of the trial featured perhaps the most compromised collection of prosecution witnesses ever assembled in an American criminal case – almost to a man a group of convicted liars, paid gossip hawkers or worse…
In the next six weeks, virtually every piece of his case imploded in open court, and the chief drama of the trial quickly turned into a race to see if the DA could manage to put all of his witnesses on the stand without getting any of them removed from the courthouse in manacles.
What’s changed since then?
In Robson’s case, decades after the alleged incidents took place, he was barbecuing with Michael Jackson and his children. He was asking for tickets to the artist’s memorial. He was participating in tributes. “I still have my mobile phone with his number in it,” Robson wrote in 2009, “I just can’t bear the thought of deleting his messages.”
Then, suddenly, after twenty years, his story changed and with his new claims came a $1.5 billion dollar lawsuit.
A 30 minute rebuttal video has surfaced that exposes Wade Robson and his mother, Joy Robson’s 2016 deposition that is part of the six year legal battle with the MJ Estate. The video calls out why the accusers should not be believed, as their timeline of events does not jive with reality and factual timeline in the life of Michael Jackson.
As an eccentric, wealthy, African American man, Michael Jackson has always been a target for litigation. During the 1980s and 1990s, dozens of women falsely claimed he was the father of their children. He faced multiple lawsuits falsely claiming he plagiarized various songs. As recently as 2010, a woman named Billie Jean filed a frivolous $600 million paternity lawsuit against Jackson’s Estate.
As someone who has done an enormous amount of research on the artist, interviewed many people who were close to him, and been granted access to a lot of private information, my assessment is that the evidence simply does not point to Michael Jackson’s guilt. In contrast to Robson and Safechuck’s revised accounts, there is a remarkable consistency to the way people who knew the artist speak of him—whether friends, family members, collaborators, fellow artists, recording engineers, attorneys, business associates, security guards, former spouses, his own children—people who knew him in every capacity imaginable. Michael, they say, was gentle, brilliant, sensitive, sometimes naive, sometimes childish, sometimes oblivious to perceptions. But none believe he was a child molester.
The Lies of Leaving Neverland a thirty minute rebuttal exposing the inconsistencies, half-truths, manipulations and false narrative of Leavning Neverland – Watch this and you won’t look at Wade Robson and James Safechuck, the same way —
Isabelle Petitjean (musicologue, auteur d’une thèse sur Michael Jackson), Léna Lutaud (Figaro), Richard Lecoq (spécialiste de Michael Jackson) décryptent l’image de l’artiste, écornée par les accusations de pédophilie, 10 ans après sa mort.
Isabelle Petitjean (musicologist, author of a thesis on Michael Jackson), Lena Lutaud (Figaro), Richard Lecoq (Michael Jackson Specialist) Discuss the image of the artist, chipped by accusations of pedophilia, 10 years after his death.
Do you still enjoy listening to MJ ? that was the question asked on twitter today What’s the answer ? 73 % yes 27% no – Yes people still enjoy listening to MJ
We also have questions and how do people react to the comments of our guests ? They are sad, the word legend keeps coming back, and it’s always quite sad to talk about him again, mainly the fans are sad. Someone called Philippe notices that MJ was fabricated like a product internationnally, he wonders what’s left of his companies ? His companies ?
RL : MJ is a planetarian star, the artist who reached everybody worldwide, he toured everywhere in countries where few other went. Today we realize his legacy is managed the way it is but his image is still present, we saw it recently in Japan with an incredible campaign. I just come back from Asia and you have to search for his records because there’s none left, when they have some in stock it goes straight away.
Journalist : yes MJ’s music is still trending as well as his records sales, it has not been impacted as feared since the allegations. I now ask you Isabelle, do you think that in 10-20 years’ time what will be left of MJ is his career, his legacy and the allegations out ?
IP : surely ! I would only like to come back on the idea of the fabricated artist ! Michael Jackson is NOT a fabricated artist, he is not a product contrary to what is being said, he is a self made artist, he had the potential, he is an artist we could not do without him, and that is what bothered most, he was independent, he had the capacity and the creative genius and someone who stayed as much as possible independent. One could not take him off. A child who grew and his genius too thanks to Motown and else but he is NOT a puppet thrown in a marketing department. Actually today artists, before having a musical repertoire, they are sent to the picture department to create an image which matches a certain audience. Michael Jackson never went through that he managed his own image including his music. So I wanted to make it clear because as far as a product, it bothers my ears. And as far as what will be said about him in 10-20 years, I think that all the parasites we have now, all these people very much interested, because once again, we still are very much dealing with polemics, whether social polemics, linked to racial image or row image or single parent family that is advocated on one side and criticized when it’s him on the other side, when all passions and money extortions will be over, I think that at last we’ll be able to find out exactly what lies under the dusty iceberg and talk about his art, like a Mozart or Beethoven who also had a hectic life and about which nobody cares today. There’s so much more to say and I have the feeling that it might be a bit by laziness that we favor easy information, if one can call that information, in any case spectacular things which impact immediately the audience etc. and I think we should work more at saying interesting things because as for myself who did a thesis on him of 1200 words and haven’t finished yet, who wrote books, believe me there are much more instructive things that rhyme with work, that rhyme with respect, that rhyme with idealism with values that society advocates and for that Michael Jackson should be praised rather than being dragged in the gutters where he does not belong.
Léna Lutaud : I don’t agree at all with the extortion bit because now we don’t know what are asking the 2 accusers and if they don’t ask for money then you can’t say extortion.
RL Yes they do
LL No they don’t they asked for money in the previous suit but now we don’t know.
RL : they appealed and were dismissed
LL : no it’s not an appeal it is a new suit against the companies
RL : you don’t have the right information
IP : with a bank account in the Cayman island to cash in if ..
RL : you don’t have the right information because they seek millions.. to fight for Michael Jackson does not pay much but to sue him yes it motivates for millions of dollars. Regarding the « fabricated » part, indeed MJ starts his career at Motown where he learns the precept, being in a family environment type but little by little he will have his own vision and make it his own way.
Another question : who could succeed to Michael Jackson ?
RL : I was thinking to the WE on a vocal point of view
Journalist : His inspiration comes from MJ
RL : I say that lightly but today we are still wondering who will be the new MJ, you don’t say who will be the new Freddy Mercury, who will be the new SINATRA, the new Marylin so it shows clearly the impact he had, he is an artist who synthesized many talents in one person and who was a multi media artist before all, with Jackson we see MTV opening up, MTV is the video clip business, very different business from the music world, Thriller allowed to launch some careers like for SHADE, Cyndi Lauper or else in the 80s so this is it, who today can do that ?
IP : there was Mozart and then Beethoven, there was not Mozart 2 I mean there will not be another Michael Jackson
Journalist : I think we can’t blame Michael Jackson of being unique and remain unique forever
IP : of course all artists are unique and surely there will be new geniuses and great artists, Michael Jackson is an independent, he has his childhood, he grew up in a special era of civil rights, he is afro american in a racialized industry, you cannot copy paste, so I don’t know if that question has lucrative or business aims or if it’s really nostalgia, in both cases we can understand, there is and there will be other artists but one has to stop looking for another Michael Jackson.
RL : he is also a great humanitarian
Journalist : yes indeed since the beginning of his career he did a lot for charities, for the welfare especially for children worldwide Another question from someone called Michael, not Michael Jackson who wants to know where he is buried, of course we don’t know but he would like to know why it’s such a secret. Journalist : I’ll let you answer Léna cause maybe you are aware of where the tomb is there were leaks this morning on Europe 1 radio.
Léna : yes indeed, last time I went to LA I went to the cemetery and I asked the security and truely it was total secret, you can understand the family you don’t want to have I can imagine like Johnny Halliday in St Barth, maybe after your father or your son was exposed all his life to the media maybe he can rest in peace.
Journalist : maybe we can give more details but not reveal all, people can search on Europe 1 website
IP : It’s in LA at Forest Lawn I went there, we know exactly where he is, in the big chapel on top of the mausoleum but this chapel is closed, first it was opened but it was damaged but there’s no mystery regarding the location where he was buried, of course there are stories, the Estate also contributes to maintain this mysterious side of Michael Jackson, they create real-fake stories, in reality things are much simpler than that but it’s part of the game. You can see where he is buried, I think there are about 10 000 or 15000 roses delivered today and even each year, no real mystery Journalist : the tomb is of white marble, is 5 meters long, 3 meters wide and 2 meters high
IP : he is in the resurection chapel or saint family i can’t remember Another question : we hear often, KING, ICON, LEGEND does any artist today follow hi spath ?
Journalist : we mentionned that already maybe let’s speak about how the family manages the legacy of Michael Jackson, I want to ask you Lena I saw after Michael Jackson passed, his family wanted to find in a young audience a financial windmill to perpetuate his legacy, did they manage ?
Léna : of course, first there was the wonderful movie THIS IS IT everybody bought the DVD, and now in schools you can see that children love Michael Jackson, it is a visual universe, new generations of fans, younger generations but when I spoke to FG, owner of MJ site, he was not very happy with some of the stuff the Estate put out, he did not recognize his voice, he felt that on some videos the quality was not good enough and that the songs did not match with the Halloween theme, so he is not happy at all from an artistic point of view.
Journalist : we coming to the end of this interview, what would you like to remain of Michael Jackson forever, what the public should remember of him, whether you are a fan or not?
IP : well, not to forget that he is a human being, and beyond this huge career he had, beyond this charismatic dimension he brought and the message he spread that was erased by some entertainment, I think that Michael’s legacy goes far beyond music and dance and I hope we’ll still be here but the next generations will be the ones who will unveil him.
RL : yes I agree, there will be a before and an after MJ in music history and if I can add, he managed to live 50 years, that was not easy.
June 25, 2009. I heard the news that Michael Jackson had died as I was driving from the San Fernando Valley to Downtown Los Angeles for work. I was hired to be one of the stunt people to work in a scene on Iron Man Two. At that point, I had been a stunt woman for 27 years. As I drove, I tried to make sense of what I had heard yet I couldn’t make sense of it. Michael Jackson dead? I had been a fan since I was ten years old and his music was the soundtrack to my life.
The scene called for myself and two other stunt women to run away from the giant robots that were chasing the pedestrians. The director yelled “action”. As we were running away, one of the…
There were no barriers Michael would not have been able to cross… His music appealed to people on all continents, from all cultural backgrounds–speaking many different languages.
Michael changed the minds, the hearts and the lives of people. Not on a superficial level–he was able to make that change by touching people with his music and performance. You can see people discovering and experiencing deep emotions while listening to him and watching him performing on stage. In fact, he communicated with them. With his art, Michael was crossing the barrier of language and space.
Humans also communicate by art. Neolithic cave paintings going back 30,000 years show a desire to express ourselves, to depict our world, to make statements as to how we perceive our world–and these paintings still talk to us across the millennia. Another means for our ancestors to express themselves was music. The oldest musical instrument known, a flute, dates back about 35,000 years. With his art, Michael was crossing the barrier of time.
But Michael did not just imagine crossing the barriers of time and space, but also boundaries between good and evil, light and dark. In Captain EO, he overcomes the terrifying Supreme Leader with his music and performance–the key to unlock her inner beauty:
“Why have you come here?” –
“To bring a gift to Your Highness, to someone as beautiful as you.” –
“You think me beautiful?” –
“Very beautiful within, Your Highness, but without a key to unlock it. And that is my gift to you.”
And with this, he starts singing and dancing and finally turns the Supreme Leader into a beautiful woman and a dark, desolate and desperate place into a serene scenery.
Michael truly believed in his heart that his music crosses the barrier of evil and changes the world for the better.
So do surrender
‘Cause the power’s deep inside my soul
Sing it
Gonna change the world, sing it
(We are here to change the world)
Gonna change the world
From “Getting to Know Michael Jackson” Facebook
Gonna Change The World
MJJJusticeProject 