Heliotrope, I believe that is true of all persons. Even the ones who don’t consider themselves moral relativists.

It is easy to be a spectator and call out those who are hypocrites to their values

I agree with you that a person who sets standards for themselves will sometimes fail. No problem with that. It’s when they call out others and want punishment meted out on them when the others fail, but somehow don’t want to mete out the punishment for themselves.

Well, it happened with Elvis and Jim Morrison. Wouldn’t surprise me at all.

“Bizarre and inappropriate”–Are you talking about Pride week? Adam Lambert? John Waters movies? Wet t-shirt night at the Cock ‘n’ Bull? When did “bizarre and inappropriate” become an insult in the gay community? Most drag queens pride themselves on their bizarre inappropriateness, and we celebrate their Stonewall day as a time of liberation.

If you want bizarre and inappropriate, I think Rosie’s behavior with her foster daughter was bizarre and inappropriate. No one accused her of molestation. What about all those parents who bring their kids to Pride parades? I think Paula Poundstone has kind of a weird record with kids. So does Woody Allen. And Mark Foley. Yet they don’t get the level of vitriol Michael Jackson gets.

Yep, all bizarre stuff. However, if you combined the bizarreness of the people you mentioned here and elsewhere in this thread, Michael Jackson still comes out more bizarre.

As for the molestation, the evidence isn’t there as much for the others as it is for Jackson.

Madonna is amazing.

Comment by Kyle — June 26, 2009 @ 7:31 pm – June 26, 2009

Fag.

Michael Jackson was one messed up human being. He opted for the bizarre, which in and of itself, is a vice. I can not call him a hypocrite, because I do not know that he preached one standard and practiced another.

However, those who choose to castigate Michael Jackson for his style of life had best look to their own house first.

An honest man struggles with his honesty. The Judeo-Christian ethic recognizes that we all give in to vice. However, atonement and an earnest effort to overcome our failings is our pathway to salvation and the ethic demands it.

I have little, if anything, to say to the moral relativist. That person has drawn up his own boundaries so as to avoid huge amounts of “responsibility” to combat his vices. The fallen, after all, have nowhere to fall.

Without the Judeo-Christian ethic, we all become willing victims of our vices and pay scant attention to the virtues. It is easy to be a spectator and call out those who are hypocrites to their values, all the while enjoying the security of knowing you can not violate standards you have not set for yourself.

Michael Jackson is in short supply of actions we can point to as wonderful examples of role modeling. He was consumed by his greed, vanity, and cowardice. Those who enabled his vices were simply acting on their own vices.

Now he joins all those who pushed well beyond decorum and walked on the edges of indecency. Nothing can save him from himself. His music and dance talent may live for a long, long time, but he will never escape being a freak.

Jacob Weisberg in Slate has an interesting take on this pathetic person:

People tend to throw up hands at Michael Jackson’s multifarious bizarreness. But is it really so strange? The boy was forced to work by a cruel and physically abusive father starting at the age of 7. (If he’d been sent into a factory or coal mine, instead of onstage, we’d have more compassion for him.) As a boy, he was denied what even most abused and underprivileged children have: school, friends, and play.

http://www.slate.com/id/2120889/

Michael Jackson did not sleep in the same bed with children.

And you know that for a fact because….????? You are secretly him?

There was nothing he did that the average camp counselor does not do.

Ash: I NEVER wanna go to whatever camp you went to, as a child. I mean that. I hope none of my nieces, nephews, future great-nieces and nephews ever go there either.

If you want bizarre and inappropriate, I think Rosie’s behavior with her foster daughter was bizarre and inappropriate. No one accused her of molestation. What about all those parents who bring their kids to Pride parades? I think Paula Poundstone has kind of a weird record with kids. So does Woody Allen. And Mark Foley. Yet they don’t get the level of vitriol Michael Jackson gets.

But it’s apparently important to you to believe that Michael Jackson is a pedophile. It is important to Mormons to believe gays are pedophiles. Facts aren’t all that important to either of you. Enjoy your belief and the pleasure it gives you. I don’t feel the need to think of myself as morally superior to Michael Jackson. But I support those people, like you, who do.

And if Michael Shepherd pretended to live in a space ship, surgeried his face until he looked like one of them gray aliens, and asked his visitors to play Anal Probe with him, I would doubt his sanity. Just as I doubt Michael Jackson’s.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/12/28/60minutes/main590381.shtm

ED BRADLEY: As — as we sit here today, do you still think that it’s acceptable to share your bed with children?

MICHAEL JACKSON: Of course. Of course. Why not? If you’re gonna be a pedophile, if you’re gonna be Jack the Ripper, if you’re gonna be a murderer, it’s not a good idea. That I’m not. That’s how we were raised. And I met — I didn’t sleep in the bed with the child. Even if I did, it’s okay. I slept on the floor. I give the bed to the child.l

Michael Jackson did not sleep in the same bed with children. There was nothing he did that the average camp counselor does not do. Again, it might be odd, but, as he says, he grew up in a small house where people–including family friends–sleep in close proximity with children.

Where, ILC, is the evidence that he slept in bed with children?

If you can seriously ask that question after I provided direct quotations of Michael Jackson not only confessing he did so, but defending or practically boasting of it, clearly it is a question with no possible answer that you would ever be willing to believe.

I hate, hate, hate the gay community for their blindness to anyone’s problems other than their own. If people were saying these things about Harvey Milk, Matthew Shepard, Oscar Wilde, Rosie O’Donnell (who took baths naked with her foster children), Ellen Degeneres, Paula Poundstone, Jodie Foster, etc. etc. ETC., you all would be up in arms. You’d realize that anyone who accused someone like, say, Elton John (who had strippers dress up as Cub Scouts at one of his parties), of inappropriate behavior with underage boys, that the accuser was just after the money.

Good job, Leah. Now you know what it feels like to be on the other side of false rumors and innuendo. How does it feel to be the oppressor?

Groomed from his earliest childhood to be a public performer, he likely wasn’t equipped to do much else. He just didn’t know how to interact with his fellows in private.

I call that one big fat excuse. Many people have had much worse childhoods and guess what, they grew up to be responsible honorable adults.

I’m not buying it, there is something very wrong with this man. Aside from molesting children, he cheated and reneged on many of his business contracts as well. Always got a pass, people always making excuses for him. Maybe all of those people are responsible for enabling this man to become the monster inside as well as out.
that much body mutilation isn’t normal by any account.

But Madonna is amazing. How has her life become a “mess”? If you mean by her divorce, besides a few immediate (tabloid-reported) swipes, it was pretty non-messy. In terms of celebrities, Madonna seems a lot more down to earth than most.

Not sure I follow you there. What do reparative therapists have to do with MJ parading his children around in shrouds for the better part of their life, and naming them Ladle and Bookshelf or whatever, not to mention what ILC quoted above?

“I have slept in a bed with many children [ed: that were not his own], when you say `bed,’ you’re thinking sexual,” Jackson said. “It’s not sexual, we’re going to sleep. I tuck them in … It’s very charming, it’s very sweet.”
———–
“It’s what the whole world should do,” Jackson told interviewer Martin Bashir on the Granada television program, “Living With Michael Jackson,” according to a London Times account….
[...]
Although he claimed only “very few” boys had actually stayed in his bed, Jackson strongly defended the practice, saying: “Why can’t you share your bed? The most loving thing to do, is to share your bed with someone.”
[...]
According to Jackson, not only do children like to be touched, but the superstar told Bashir he would kill himself if he could not be close to young boys.

I always concede it’s possible that Jackson never sexually molested anyone. Possible. But even if he never did, the way he carried out his interest in children was still inappropriate. At best, he used them as props for his own therapy. That would be the best realistic interpretation. The remaining realistic interpretations go downhill from there.

All of the interviews I’ve seen of him made me think he was developmentally delayed. I don’t think he had the capacity to be a stable, independent adult. That’s what made his life such a sad mess.

The good thing is that maybe now his kids will have a chance to experience some sort of normalcy.