STOP Michael Jackson’s AUTOPSY on the Discovery channel! It is a modern time Golgotha…

Dec. 21, 2010

DEBORAH FFRENCH is making such a tremendous effort trying to stop the dissection-of-a-synthetic-cadaver show simulating MJ’s body  —  to be aired on a Discovery channel FOUR times in January 2011  — that I cannot stay aside and am making another post of it.

By The Associated Press Published: October 1, 2009 LOS ANGELES - Michael Jackson's outward appearance was marred when he died with puncture marks to his arms, surgical scars around his body and cosmetic tattoos on his lips and scalp. But internally, the pop star was in mostly fine physical shape for a 50-year-old man, according to his autopsy report obtained by The Associated Press. The Los Angeles County coroner's report shows Jackson's weight of 136 pounds was in the acceptable range for a 5-foot-9 man. His heart was strong with no sign of plaque buildup. His kidneys and most other major organs were normal. The singer did have health issues, however, including arthritis in the lower spine and some fingers, and mild plaque buildup in his leg arteries. Most serious was the condition of his lungs, which the autopsy report said were chronically inflamed and had reduced capacity that might have left him short of breath. But the lung condition was not serious enough to be a direct or contributing cause of death, according to the document. "His overall health was fine," said Dr. Zeev Kain, chairman of the anesthesiology department at the University of California, Irvine, who reviewed a copy of the autopsy report for the AP. "The results are within normal limits." WHY ARRANGE A TV SHOW THEN?

Here are the messages from Deborah calling for our need to join in and protest this outrage. I’ve also prepared a letter of my own but am not posting it here as Deborah is saying it much better than me [please inform me if all the links are working]:

Discovery Update: Autopsy Re-enactment scheduled Discovery UK January 13, 14, 16, 17, 2011.

The Estate has recently advised that their team of lawyers after discussions with UK lawyers regarding the autopsy programs, were told there were insufficient legal grounds to stop Discovery’s programs from going ahead. The situation is still being monitored. In light of the above, the global effort to accelerate emails, calls and letter writing to Discovery is now CRITICAL.

A word of caution:

Please stop talking about the Discovery shows on public sites such as TMZ, CNN, Huffington Post, Yahoo — wherever. Posting even pro-MJ / anti-Discovery comments in public achieves only one thing:

It does Discovery’s promotional work for them and give them the kind of publicity PR professionals charge thousands for.

***This is what you can do. Using one letter, and simply changing the name you address it to at the top***

1: Write a letter to:

Nicolas Bonard,
Senior Vice President
Discovery Enterprises International
Chiswick Park
Building 2
566 Chiswick High Road
London,
UK
W4 5YB 

and:

David Zaslav,
President and CEO
Discovery Communications
1 Discovery Place
Silver Spring
MD
20910

and:

Dr. Hunter who will perform the mock MJ autopsy

Michael D. Hunter, M.D.
3737 Frankford Avenue
Panama City,
Florida 32405

2: Email

david_zaslav@discovery.com

Absolute head of Discovery. President and CEO

Nicolas_Bonard@discovery-europe.com

2nd in command at SVP of Discovery Europe

Lucy_Radcliffe@discovery-europe.com

Lucy Radcliffe is the assistant to Nicolas Bonard.

mark_hollinger@discovery.com

Mark Hollinger is president of Discovery Networks International.

theforensicdoc@gmail.com

This is Doctor Hunter’s email. He will performing the mock-autopsy.

mjj@innocent.com

You can copy emails to MJJJustice project here.

3:  Calls

Mr. Bonard’s assistant Lucy Radcliffe has a direct phone line. Lucy’s Telephone number:

From US:

0 11 44 208 811 3033

Or find your International code then dial:

208 811 3033

If calling from UK call:

0208 811 3033

Finally:

Please do not use abusive language in any of your communications. Using non-emotive language, simply but firmly explain why these proposed programs on Michael Jackson are not only morally and ethically reprehensible — but are also a potential source of serious anguish and emotional distress for Mr Jackson’s surviving children and family.

Would a program of this kind even be contemplated on River Phoenix, Heath Ledger, Brittany Murphy or Elizabeth Edwards? This disgrace is happening because years of dehumanizing Michael Jackson in the media has led to the belief that this is acceptable.

It isn’t.

If ever there was a time to put aside differences and unite in strength over an issue — it is now.

For ease of speading vital information throughout the base — below is a twitlonger with all contacts for Discovery listed.

For the record, Oprah was not included on my original message. As far as I know, Ms Winfrey has nothing with the Discovery autopsy programs. Thus I believe any mention of her confuses the issue. If you see any mention of Oprah in any messages from me, they have been tampered with, and I would be grateful if they could be amended to omit any mention of Oprah.

Please retweet, FB and ask others to pass the twitlonger below on. At present, the email tally stands at under 300. We need many more than this, and we need to sustain this effort throughout December and January.

If you can, please take a little time each day to send the same emails to all the contacts at Discovery. Simply put all their names in the BCC box so they won’t know who else you’ve emailed.

If any of you know have non-English speaking fans as friends or have non-English members at your sites — please offer to help them with editing and writing of letters. You may be suprised by how many respond to your offer.

If you have a chance to talk on the radio, to neighbours, friends, those in church groups, schools, businesses — about this pressing issue — please do so. Whatever your standpoint on recent divisive issues, I humbly encourage you to put them down — and encourage others to do so also.

Michael Jackson was not, and is not, a lab rat (whether simulated or not) to be discussed like a specimen for public entertainment, while his three children and family live. This obscenity is bigger than all of us. I am asking all of us to do what it takes to raise the energy of this protest now.

If anyone has any contacts with Spike Lee or other pro-Michael public figures, please explain the context of this protest to them and our intended peaceful aim — that these mock autopsy programs are imemdiately withdrawn from Discovery UK’s schedule.

Thank you.

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/7kinks

This is being sent to speed up the process of letter /email writing or give ideas.

The mails to send these too are included at the top. Obviously remove them once added to your address books. Pls pass this email on!

Sample letter  – Pls do not forget to change subject line and remove everything above this line when you send your email:

Mr Nicholas Bonard, Mr Hollinger, Ms Lucy Radcliffe,
C/O Mr David Zaslav,
Discovery Communications/ Network

I write in regard to the planned January 2011 programmes on Discovery, that will feature the mock ‘autopsy’ of the late Michael Jackson on the 13th, 14th, 16 th and 17th.

Can you explain to me how you can justify this kind of programming knowing Mr Jackson is survived by three children? Do you imagine they are living in caves? Or that the children they now attend school with are?

Whether Mr Jackson’s children hear about this programme now or (more likely) in the future, and whether that synthetic cadaver looks like Jackson or not — that will ‘feel’ like their father on that simulated slab.

Imagine for a moment, just for a moment, that your jobs — the jobs you struggled for, pushed for and aimed for — one day, claimed you? That one day, your heart simply skipped with the stress of living at the pace you do, and you died.

Imagine those you would leave behind.

Now imagine a similar re-enactment being proposed for your autopsy, and how that would affect your own families.

Whether they watch them now or not, in time, these intended programs will profoundly distress Mr Jackson’s children and his family.

Because you can’t see those children, you imagine it doesn’t matter. But you are wrong. It matters a great deal.

The life of a televison programme, with syndication, licensing, means their ‘lives’ are long. The idea that one day three young teenagers could unwittingly, or by some other means, be confronted with the reality that their father’s life was reduced to a public ‘spectacle’ for others to watch; won’t just hurt a little — it will hurt more than any us could ever imagine.

If you cannot imagine that for your own children — how can you let that happen to someone else’s?

If the Discovery Channel and Dr. Hunter were featuring the autopsy of say, someone like… Princess Diana? Or maybe Stephen Gately? Or perhaps Elizabeth Edwards — you would pause before considering it. But not with Michael Jackson. Why is that?

Is that because Princess Diana and Tim Russert are human beings? And Michael Jackson is what… a freak show? Apparently you cannot imagine, as his eldest daughter Paris described in a recent inteview — her father making his children French toast and reading to them before they went to sleep?

Mr Jackson’s children can.

There is a reason why you feel it’s okay to cut up a likeness (or not) of Jackson and sell that around the world. It was being done ‘to’ Jackson throughout his life, why wouldn’t it continue after his death? And now, the media attempts once again to profit from that dismemberment by carving him up yet again in public and on television. How many more times will this be done? How can a channel that claims to put ethical programming front and centre of its ethos, be party to the de facto brutalization of someone’s memory, to someone’s loved one?

And how many more times will you justify this by saying: ‘If we don’t, someone else will?

Discovery have an opportunity here to stop this obscenity. Because that’s what airing these programmes would be — an obscenity. These proposed programs on Jackson are not acceptable. And as a member of a progressive media group — and more importantly as human beings –I invite all of you now, to stand a little taller, breathe a little clearer, and examine in conscience what you are doing.

This proposed mock autopsy is a step beyond what is decent and what is right, and it is one you will not be able to erase once embarked on. I urge you to think again — if not for yourselves — then for those you know will be hurt by these proposed shows.

Thousands will thank and respect you for calling a halt to this disgrace.

And I will be one of them.

Sincere Regards

YOUR NAME

Re: Lucy Radcliffe at Discovery / Someone just asked me what response I got from Lucy — here it is below:

Firstly, the phone was put down by a guy who answered.

I rang back and Lucy came to the phone.

She knew exactly what it was about.

I asked her if she’d received my email.

I told her ” before you switch off I am concerned that a line has been crossed in Discovery’s programming about what’s acceptable and what itsn’t ”

I asked if how she would feel if her her parents or someone she loved were treated as if they were a specimen for the purposes of entertainment.

Lucy replied she couldn;t express an opinion. I told here that was a standard, evasive line and was unworthy of both her — and Discovery.

I told Lucy the MJ autopsy programs had been commissioned by Discovery for profit only — nothing more. And any idea that their motivation was for jusice, truth seeking or true exploration of the issues surrounding Mr Jackson’s death — was a pretence.

Lucy told me she could offer no opinion.

I then told her in no uncertain terms that in abdicating responsibility here and hiding behind a blanket ‘no comment’ response, Discovery were demontrating contempt for their viewers.

She told me someone would ring me back.

I will be calling back tomorrow, and again the next day, and again the…..

I would like Lucy Radcliffe to hear from you and many others.

The point is this:  It doesn’t even really matter what Lucy says — what matters if that Discovery know the strength of feeling that is out there.

If you do not live in the UK, please get up earlier in order to make the call. Please pass this message onto all fan sites, twitter and other social forums.

If ever there was a time to put aside difference and unite in strength on an issue — it is now.

Please pick up the phone and send your emails and letters to Discovery throughout December and January.

Thank you.

UPDATED by vindicatemj on Dec.22, 2010

I need to tell you why I’ve added the word Golgotha to the title of the post.

I see this on-line autopsy as the epitome of human degradation and abomination only the so-called ‘human’ beings are capable of. No matter whether the cadaver is synthetic or not it will still look like a human body being dismembered on-line.

Even if they wanted it not for sensation but for a ‘serious’ discussion the very first thing they should have done was to ask the family for a permission. This simple rule is known to every person in the remotest corner of the world except the respectable channel promoting ‘civilized’ values to its viewers.

Why does this channel have the freedom to grossly violate other people’s privacy while the Mother and Children of the deceased man are denied the simple right to enjoy even some minimal respect for themselves?

It isn’t a mummy of some pharaoh we are talking about. The pharaoh lived several thousand years ago and has no offspring to watch him dismembered. Here we have a family and it is still grieving. The family has neighbors, friends and classmates who will see the show and gossip behind their backs.

Imagine the children watching this done to someone symbolizing their father? Or just hearing about it?

Imagine the mother seeing her son’s body being dissected to the cheer of the crowd? Given her age I am not sure she will be able to survive it at all….

It is a modern time Golgotha – this is what it is!

Oh God, please save them from the sight….