I see that Michael Jackson is in the news once again. Somebody asked me what I thought about all this. Here's my take on MJ.

Pedophiles are vermin who typically fear being with somebody intelligent and strong who can form opinions and make decisions, usually because they themselves don't have the competence or self-esteem to deal with such people (or came from mentally abusive relationships themselves), and so they prey on the naive. It's not a fetish, it's an issue of power. I consider those who go after foreign "mail-order brides" to be in the same department. (Another reason why artificial human companions could make the world a better place, but I digress.) But MJ never struck me as fitting this description. He rather seems naive himself.

I get the impression that MJ just doesn't find anything sexual in what he does. In other words, I think he really doesn't see the difference between playing a video game with a little boy, and taking a bath with him. Not that this justifies whatever he's doing. Kids have been taught to go along with what adults command, and nobody should ever misinterpret that as consent. He's just, well, whacky. As are virtually all childhood celebrities. Is he ever around real adults? His only adult friends seem to be other childhood celebrities, or star-struck folks who wouldn't dare criticize him about anything. So maybe the guy just never grew up. This is a guy who could afford to have his own personal newspaper edited (read: filtered) and printed every day, and control the rest of his surrounding reality in similar ways. I'm all for total environments, but not at the price of insanity and outright self-deceit ("I only got surgery on my nose, nothing else" - MJ).

It's also worth keeping in mind that 1) child molestation is one of those things today where you're automatically guilty by accusation, 2) celebrity conspiracies never seem to die (there are still so many convinced that Richard Gere had something to do with a gerbil, no matter how ridiculous the stories), and 3) there are bound to be some attention-starved parasites after MJ's money. I've read some articles on this current trial of his, and this whole issue with the "discovered" adult porno mag seems silly. I don't know or even care enough about it to get into it.