Not Guilty
And so Michael Jackson, just like any celebrity we ever see in a big criminal trial, has been found not guilty.
When the verdict came out to the people lined outside the courthouse, I saw tons of people hugging, and cheering, and jumping up and down. I must say, I don't understand this kind of loyalty to a person who is not your family member, friend, or anyone that these people have ever known personally.
I did not have a particular rooting interest in one verdict or another. In fact, the trial's outcome had no bearing on how my life is lived--and the same thing can be said for all these people who come out to support him. Will Michael Jackson invite you over and let you hang out with him? Will he share his life with any of these people? The answer is a resounding, "Hell, no." The whole thing is ridiculous--people cheering for a person they have never met, never hung out with. They actually act like had the verdict gone another way, that they'd have to sell their house or slash their wrists--because Michael Jackson means so much to them.
And I for one am one of those fickle types. What has he done lately? Guy makes some of the most recognizable pop music of the 80s and (less importantly) the early 90s, and vanishes. He comes up for air every now and then, looking different from what we remember, to address some heinous charge or do an interview. How do people still have this guy in their conscious, really? I understand icons, whether it be Elvis or Kurt Cobain, have their always-loyal fans, but if you ever ran into a celebrity on the street, the likelihood is that they'd scurry past just like any stranger--that doesn't make them bad people, it just makes them human, and therefore, there isn't any special reason you should care what happens to them.
posted by Chris @ 6/13/2005 04:25:00 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Great write-up, and it expresses an opinion that many of us share but no one ever seems to hear; it's the opinion of not really giving a damn one way or the other. Since he was found innocent, I do hope he was; I don't like to think about a guilty person on the streets, but in the long run, like Chris, I have no invested interest in the situation. Just because he's a celebrity shouldn't move me one way or the other, and guess what, it doesn't.
It's one thing to have pornography in your bedroom and share that bedroom with little boys. It's another thing altogether to molest those boys.
I can be fair and impartial enough to admit that.
But the jury seemed to take the plaintiff's family history into account (judging by the interviews I saw, where they talked of distrusting her and her past con jobs) in their verdict. And to do that, without taking into account Jackson's own history of paying off accusers who cry "molestation" seems a little like hipocracy. That's why I hate the legal system. It's not ever about the facts. It's about whose lawyer can sway the jury better with words and charm and finger-pointing.
It shouldn't be like that. The jurors, in the interview I saw, should have been saying: "There wasn't enough evidence to convict." Instead, they were saying, "The mother of the boy snapped her fingers at me....don't snap at me lady," and "she kept staring at us and it made me uncomfortable."
Guilty or innocent was not decided. What was decided was that the accuser's mother came off as more of a sleaze-ball than Jackson...period.
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