HEE-HEE! Shamone!

Michael Jackson on stage with guitarist Jennifer Batten, 1988

Michael Jackson: It’s Time For Outlets to Take Responsibility in Covering the Rock Star
By Charles Thomson
The Huffington Post, March 2, 2010

Last week Michael Jackson’s guitarist discredited widely reported allegations about the star’s behaviour on the road. So why is the media refusing to publish her comments? British writer Charles Thomson explores media bias against black music’s biggest star.

Aging glam-rocker Gene Simmons made international headlines last month when he claimed to know that Michael Jackson had molested children. In an interview with Classic Rock, Simmons alleged that Jackson was on tape ordering alcohol for children and that during the star’s 2005 trial a travel agent had testified to importing Brazilian boys for Jackson’s amusement. He also claimed that a musician friend had quit a Jackson tour after seeing ‘boys coming out of the hotel rooms.’

What followed was a classic example of copy and paste journalism. Within hours the story had been duplicated by hundreds of blogs, forums and news websites from Australia to India to the USA. None of them had fact-checked the story before they re-hosted it. Jackson was never on tape ordering alcohol for children. There was never any testimony during his trial about young Brazilian boys. Both of these claims were easily disproven by trial transcripts.

As a relative Jackson expert, I was also unaware of any musician ever leaving one of the singer’s tours midway through. So when I sat down a fortnight ago for an interview with Jackson’s long serving tour guitarist Jennifer Batten, I ran the story by her.

She told me that no musician had ever quit a Jackson tour. Two musicians had been fired but both were let go before the show hit the road, so they couldn’t possibly have witnessed anything going on inside hotels.

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Following the 1993 molestation accusations against Michael Jackson (no criminal charges were ever brought by the police or the grand juries), writer Mary A. Fischer published an incredibly well-researched article about the case in GQ magazine. Regardless of what you think you already know about the case, I urge you to read Fischer’s article. Had more people been aware of the facts surrounding the accusations made sixteen years ago, Jackson’s public image in the years following would have been very different.

Was Michael Jackson Framed? The Untold Story
By Mary A. Fisher
GQ, October 1994

Did Michael Do It?
The untold story of the events that brought down a superstar

Before O.J. Simpson, there was Michael Jackson—another beloved black celebrity seemingly brought down by allegations of scandal in his personal life. Those allegations—that Jackson had molested a 13-year-old boy—instigated a multimillion-dollar lawsuit, two grand-jury investigations and a shameless media circus. Jackson, in turn, filed charges of extortion against some of his accusers. Ultimately, the suit was settled out of court for a sum that has been estimated at $20 million; no criminal charges were brought against Jackson by the police or the grand juries. This past August, Jackson was in the news again, when Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis’s daughter, announced that she and the singer had married.

As the dust settles on one of the nation’s worst episodes of media excess, one thing is clear: The American public has never heard a defense of Michael Jackson. Until now.

It is, of course, impossible to prove a negative—that is, prove that something didn’t happen. But it is possible to take an in-depth look at the people who made the allegations against Jackson and thus gain insight into their character and motives. What emerges from such an examination, based on court documents, business records and scores of interviews, is a persuasive argument that Jackson molested no one and that he himself may have been the victim of a well-conceived plan to extract money from him.

More than that, the story that arises from this previously unexplored territory is radically different from the tale that has been promoted by tabloid and even mainstream journalists. It is a story of greed, ambition, misconceptions on the part of police and prosecutors, a lazy and sensation-seeking media and the use of a powerful, hypnotic drug. It may also be a story about how a case was simply invented.

Neither Michael Jackson nor his current defense attorneys agreed to be interviewed for this article. Had they decided to fight the civil charges and go to trial, what follows might have served as the core of Jackson’s defense—as well as the basis to further the extortion charges against his own accusers, which could well have exonerated the singer.

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