u/pluriknight

Always double standards for a successful person of color vs a white person. Mainstream medias bias is disgusting.

'Gary Glitter – whose legal name is Paul Gadd – was first convicted with possession of child pornography in the late 1990s, and sentenced to four months in prison.

He is currently serving a 16-year prison sentence for these historical crimes, and is awaiting trial after being charged with four more historical sexual offences earlier this year, for which he has pleaded not guilty.

The former pop singer was briefly released from prison on license in 2023, but was recalled to prison the following month after breaking the terms of his release.

An application for parole was denied in June 2025.'

You can't make this shit up. 😭 yet mike was subjected to a media circus with the 05 where he was found not guilty on all accounts, no evidence of wrongdoing ever..

Macaulay Culkin is one of Mike's greatest and loyal friends.

This is a great read from MJ Story, I highly recommend this website and content:

'Macaulay Culkin and Michael Jackson both grew up as child stars, experiencing childhoods that looked nothing like anyone else’s. Around the time the two became friends, Culkin was becoming the most famous child actor in the world, and Jackson, who had spent his own youth in the spotlight, knew that world from up close. What formed between them was a sense of familiarity – a shared understanding of what it meant to grow up under the industry pressures and constant attention.

After the 1993 allegations, the media recast that friendship into a parallel story neither of them recognized as their own. Coverage drifted from reporting to speculation, often edging into something close to obsession. The talking heads imposed their own distortions onto the friendship itself, creating versions of events that bore little resemblance to the accounts of the people who were actually there.

Culkin was gradually framed within that media narrative as a presumed victim – the missing testimony some were convinced would eventually emerge. It echoed a broader pattern in the coverage of Jackson himself, where firsthand accounts, timelines, and sworn statements were routinely overshadowed by the most sensational and dreadful interpretations.

This piece returns to the source – what Culkin actually said about the abuse allegations, his friendship with Michael Jackson, what his family observed, and what their time with Jackson really looked like.'

Why was Michael Jackson so MASSIVE ?

It's a common question, and historical context is usually taken into account - but I didn't know the Soviets were amongst the earliest MJ haters 🤔

The ever-encroaching reach of American popular culture was often contested by the Soviet establishment, which met Jackson’s rise to global prominence with open contempt. In 1984, the New York Times reported on a Soviet newspaper’s attack on Jackson, noting that the article claimed Americans were “riveted” to him while accusing Jackson of mesmerizing the public and distracting it from politically inconvenient topics. That same year, Jackson was invited to the White House to receive an award from President Reagan. He had begun to resemble something of a dignitary. His stardom had transcended entertainment and taken on a level of genuine political consequence, acknowledged by both the Soviet and American political establishments. Michael Jackson had inadvertently become a major player in the exportation of American culture to a worldwide audience.

Pages 137-143 quoted verbatim.

Bill: Michael Jackson's reality was unlike anything I've ever experienced. That's what made this job so different. I always considered Mr. Jackson to be different. Never weird, just different. Every day with him was a different direction of thinking. Every day was different from the day before. There was always something new you'd find out, whether it was a request, something he would say. I didn't understand a lot of the things he did, a lot of the choices he made, but I also could never begin to understand the life he'd lived, which had led him to be that way. That's what made it so impossible to judge a lot of his actions, one way or another.

There was this one time we went to a magic shop. He was a big magic buff. We went and saw nearly every magician who played on the Strip. He had a bunch of those take-home magic kits, too, for doing tricks with coins and cards and stuff. Around May or June maybe, he wanted to go to the magic shop at the New York-New York casino. So we started planning that detail.

The morning we were supposed to go, he called down and asked me to go pick up some gauze. I asked him how much. He said, "Get as much as you can." I was worried that somebody was hurt. I went out, picked up a couple of bags of medical gauze from the drugstore, and I brought it to him. About half an hour later, he called down again and said, "Bill, I'm ready."

Javon got the cars ready to roll. I was out in the driveway, waiting for Mr. Jackson to come around the corner. He came around, and when I saw him, he had on a green coat with a hoodie underneath. But his hands were all wrapped up with gauze. His entire head was wrapped in the stuff too, with little slits for his eyes. He was dressed like a burn victim or something. He looked like the Mummy. At that point, I thought I'd seen everything with Michael Jackson, but this floored me. I called Javon on the two-way radio. I was whispering into the microphone, "Yo, Javon. You ain't gonna believe what the boss has on."

Javon: Bill was trying to call me, but my radio was off. I was in the security trailer, still getting ready to go. So when I stepped outside, I had no idea what was going on. I walked out and I saw what looked like this weird guy, all bandaged up and disfigured, wandering around the property. This alarm went off in my head. I thought, Intruder! and I ran. I booked it across that driveway and I grabbed this guy and I slammed him against the car, yelling, "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

Then Bill started yelling, "Javon, no! Javon! That's the boss! That's the boss!"

I realized who it was, and I backed off and I panicked. I mean, I'd shoved him hard, and he was so skinny and fragile. I was scared I'd broken his arm or something. I started gushing, "I'm so sorry, sir. I didn't recognize you at all. I'm so sorry. Please forgive me. I'm so sorry."

Bill: Javon probably apologized about a thousand times, but Mr. Jackson just started cracking up. He thought it was hilarious. I thought for sure he'd be livid; for a minute, I thought that this was going to be the last day we ever worked for the man. But Mr. Jackson thought it was great, that his disguise had actually fooled someone. He just climbed in the car, laughing and saying, "Did you guys really not know who I was?"

Javon: We got in the car and drove out to the casino, like it was any old regular trip, with him dressed up in this mummy costume in the back. We took the back entrance into the casino, but the magic store was still a few hundred feet from where we entered, and the place was packed with people. Soon as we walked in, they started turning and noticing me and Bill wearing these black suits, following this guy who's dressed like a mummy. You could hear the whispers, people going, "Who's that? What's going on?"

It was obviously drawing more attention than it was avoiding. If you looked at him even for a minute it wasn't hard to figure out who he was. He'd gone to all this trouble, wrapping up his face and his hands, but he was wearing the white socks and the hiked-up pants with the slip-on loafers. That's his signature look. Everybody knows that. Plus he just had a way about him - the way he moved, the way he walked, the way he'd pick something up off a shelf - that was unmistakably Michael Jackson. Everyone on the planet knows how Michael Jackson moves.

Bill: At one point, as we were walking through the casino, this lady walked up to him, middle-aged woman. She walked right up to him and stood next to him in this mummy getup. Then she sort of gave him this look and said, "I know who you are."

Mr. Jackson said, "Hmmm?" He did it in his high-pitched tone, acting like he didn't know what she was talking about. "Hmmm?"

She said, "I know who you are. You're not fooling anyone."

Then she just walked off and let him be.

We finally made it to the magic store, and Mr Jackson was browsing. The store manager walked up to him two or three times and asked him if he could help him with anything, and he'd just shake his head no. Didn't really say anything. They had a lot of these kits and magic tricks. Mr Jackson was picking things up, looking at them, putting them back down. I was watching the store manager's eyes, and I knew exactly what I would have been thinking if it had been my store. I watched this guy pick up the phone, quietly say something, and then hang up real quick. About five minutes later, two police officers walked in and they went over to the manager. They talked for a minute and then he pointed at Mr. Jackson. I was just shaking my head, thinking, No, no, no. Please no. This isn't happening.

One of the officers came up and addressed Mr. Jackson. He said, "Excuse me, sir? Do you have an ID?"

"Hmmm?"

"Do you have an ID?"

The second time he said it, he kind of grabbed Mr. Jackson's arm, like he wasn't messing around. I stepped up and politely tried to get between them and explain the situation. I told them that I was personal security for this man, a high-profile dignitary, and he was in this disguise in order to remain anonymous. "This man is very famous," I said. "And it would really be best for everyone if we could keep his identity a secret and quietly exit the store."

The cop said, "Famous? Who the hell is he?"

By now a crowd was starting to form. The manager had come over. The other police officer was stepping in behind me. I was reluctant to identify Mr. Jackson, but I felt the only was we were going to get out of there was to be straight with these officers and get them on our side. So I leaned in to the guy and I whispered, "It's Michael Jackson."

"Who?"

"Michael Jackson."

"Get the fuck outta here."

I said, "Look, we'll just leave."

Then this cop turned to his partner and he said - and he said it real loud and arrogant, like I was some jerk - "Hey, this guy says he's doing a security detail and that guy in the bandages over there is Michael Jackson."

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the first camera flash pop. Shit. Then I hear this murmur of voices start to ripple through the crowd: "Michael Jackson?" "Michael Jackson?" "Michael Jackson?!"

I grabbed him and said, "Mr. Jackson, this way." I ushered him quickly toward the back of the store, moving his body through the aisles, left, right, as fast as I could hustle him. I looked around, found the door to the stockroom, and rushed him in there. The manager followed us back and I asked him, "Is there another way out of here?" He pointed me to a back door that led to a little service hallway and out to the parking lot. I radioed Javon and told him to get the truck and meet us outside.

You could hear the crowd outside. It was intense. I was really worked up, agitated. Like an idiot, the store manager had even gone back out and confirmed that it was Michael Jackson. Now he was all excited about it. Now he was like, "Hey, Michael Jackson is in my store!" It was turning into a mob scene. We could hear people screaming, "Mi-chael! Mi-chael! Mi-chael!" The two officers were stuck out front doing crowd control, dealing with what they'd started.

I stayed in the back with Mr. Jackson. I was on full alert. My pulse racing. Looking this way and that. Watching the door, listening to this crowd, trying to figure out what was going to happen next. Was there going to be more trouble with the police? The paparazzi? Meanwhile, Mr. Jackson was just chilling, like this was any other day. The crazed mob of people screaming his name outside the door? Like it wasn't even happening. He was just wandering through the stockroom shelves, casual as you please, checking out these little magic tricks. Dude was still shopping. He pulled this one thing down and brought it over to me and said, "Bill, can you find out how much these are?"

I wanted to say to him, "Really? We've got a couple hundred people breathing down on us, and you want me to stop and do a price check on some Houdini tricks?"

But he just shrugged the whole thing off. "This is what happens all the time," he said. "They should have left us alone. People should mind their own business."

Finally, Javon radioed me to say that he'd pulled the car around. The two cops came back into the storeroom to escort us out. Just as we started to leave, one of the officers came over to me and he leaned in and said, "Hey, one more thing."

"Yes?"

"Do you think maybe he'd mind signing an autograph?"

I turned to Mr. Jackson. "Sir, the officers would like to know if you could sign an autograph."

"Oh, sure," he said. "Just give me a pen."

The officers gave him their report pads and he signed each one and then we left. We just bounced. He didn't even buy anything.

It was times like that we'd be left scratching out heads. But it wasn't our place to say anything.

Featured in Counterpunch June 29, 2009.

This is just after Michael passed away (RIP).

Its goes into some of the racism in the media, from the past and how it continues to affect things "the O. J. trial saved CNN!" (They arent wrong!) and Michael Jackson in recent years:

"When the bulletin that Michael Jackson had died flashed across the screen, I was prepared for TV at it’s worst and I wasn’t disappointed. The man wasn’t cold before the familiar adjectives were rolled out. “Weird, bizarre, eccentric,” the traditional language used to disparage artists by the bourgeoisie. Dan Abrams, who made his reputation by convicting O. J. Simpson before the opening arguments of his criminal trial, made a snarky comment about Jackson’s weirdness. "

And:

"CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin, another O. J. alumni, and a man who said that blacks shouldn’t be “patted on the head” or “patronized” for believing in O. J. Simpson’s innocence, had made some ugly comments about Jackson. (A star who has had at least a dozen facelifts called into the “Larry King Show” to comment about MJ’s altering his appearance)."

They discuss the 05 trial:

"Also weird was MSBC’s Savanah Guthries’ air-headed depiction of the trial. She said that the evidence against Jackson in the trial was “devastating.” So devastating that some legal experts said that Jackson should never have been brought to trial and that the aim of the trial was to seek a pound of flesh from Jackson for being uppity and for putting the name of Thomas W. Sneddon Jr., a vindictive District Attorney, into a song. In my opinion it was the prosecution of Jackson by this District Attorney, who, among other things, violated Jackson’s fourth amendment rights, and made disparaging remarks about the star during a press conference, and the side-show pro prosecution media coverage that killed Jackson."

The whole article is really interesting, direct and has some hard truths. It even ends with the lyrics of DS from the HIStory album, which is about Tom sneddon from mjs experience in the 93 Chandler circus/case 😅✌️

What do you all think, how does this write up from 09 stack up now? Sadly it feels not much has changed...

"Featuring WJZ-TV's "City Line" broadcast in Baltimore, captures one of the most intense periods of cultural hyper-consumption in modern history.

The spring of 1984 was the absolute zenith of the Thriller phenomenon.

However, analyzing this local broadcast through a sociological lens strips away the glittering nostalgia.

It exposes a profound structural reality:

The American media apparatus frantically scrambling to commodify, extract from, and replicate Black cultural dominance.

​The broadcast functions as a fascinating sociological mirror.

The look-alike contest featuring young men (and a 5-year-old child) isn't merely local entertainment; it represents the mass-reproduction of a corporate-approved Black identity.

The state and the media embraced Jackson because his specific brand of superstardom was highly lucrative and perceived as politically neutralized.

Furthermore, the inclusion of author Mark Bego—a white entertainment journalist promoting his paperback Michael!—perfectly illustrates the economic hierarchy of the era.

Black artists produce the genius, Black youth perform the physical labor of keeping the culture alive on the streets, but the traditional publishing establishment swoops in to intellectualize it, package it, and extract the primary financial capital.

Additionally, the audience caller questioning if Jackson takes "female hormones" exposes the relentless public desire to pathologize and dissect Black bodies, even when they reach the pinnacle of global success. "