When “VALUES” are more important than THE TRUTH

Some fans say that the matter of Sneddon has nothing to do with Michael Jackson’s vindication and that “Michael was vindicated at the 2005 trial”.

Yes, he was, only the general public does not know about it.

My hair stands on end when I read some people’s comments on the trial – “the jury was starstruck”, “Sneddon screwed it up”, “it was only due to Mesereau’s skill that he got away with it”, etc…  There is so much prejudice in these words, so much malice, so much ignorance about the most elementary things that I am surprised that Michael’s fans are not using the unique opportunity of William Wagener’s affidavit to dispel the cloud of misconception about Jackson by finally thundering the truth.

Sneddon had NO CASE against Michael. He simply concocted it from beginning to end. The case is a plain piece of fiction, where “witnesses” were invented or nominated for the job, and tacitly coached to say the right thing and where the dates of fictional crime constantly changed depending on the documents the prosecution illegally seized from the other side.

The soap opera about alleged molestation was created like a Hollywood scenario and was avidly swallowed by the public as any blockbuster is. Every piece of dirt that came Sneddon’s way was immediately leaked to the media where both journalists and the public welcomed it with their arms open. The laws the country is so proud of were abused on every corner – however no one minded it, and do not mind it even now.

To be fair to Sneddon it wasn’t only him. The whole nation took part in the hunting game and wanted to see Jackson punished for a couple of sincere words he dared say on TV. He wasn’t very articulate and didn’t know how to explain – he simply resented the outrageous things people thought about him and said straight in his face.

He himself was also outraged that people defied all rules of acceptable behavior by asking him whether he was a virgin, whether he had sex with his wife, and whether he would allow children into his room and give his bed to them. Questions like that were answered with the same degree of defiance – “Yes I will, so what? I will sleep on the floor. And this is not what you think!”

Only few sober minds realized that real child abusers don’t need a bed for what they do, and that all this talk about a “bed” was hugely exaggerated to say the very least. He tried to explain that people should not be hypocrites and stop lying to themselves, because each of us realizes very well that no real pedophile will ever speak about such matters openly.

He hoped that people would understand that he had nothing to do with criminals. They will hide, pretend, keep silent, feign disinterest, assure others that they are like everyone else and do their best to keep up appearances and play by the rules of the game.  No one will ever know and will learn by a mere chance, some 20 years later when a flock of victims suddenly comes and grown-up people cry like babies about  the molestation which terrorizes them even from the distant past (like in the real case of S. that recently shattered everyone’s nerves).

Michael Jackson asked people not to be simplistic and not to think in black and white only. He asked them to stop being hypocrites and learn to see through the formal signs of ‘proper behavior’ into the true rottenness of people which may be very well covered by a whitewashed facade.

He also asked people to start thinking at last. He desperately wanted them to understand him and his strange childhood where there was no place for games, joy and behaving foolishly but there was only work, brutality and the need to earn money. By associating with children in his adult life he tried to live anew the childhood that he missed so much and thought that others would understand.

However for others “values” were more important.

Sneddon, Zonen and Co. arranged that trial to “stand up for proper values” and the majority of people sided with them and not Michael Jackson.

This is why the media and whole nation took so active a part in the circus created by the Prosecution and refuse to see anything bad about their actions even now. The public allowed Sneddon to break the law in full view of everyone and regretted only some blunders that looked so noticeable the way Sneddon performed them.  Apart from those blunders there was little complaint.

The general feeling was that sometimes even the law and truth have to be bent if the sanctity of “values” is at stake. There is no such injustice which will be too little for those who defy the rules of common behavior – even though they didn’t harm anyone and are innocent of any crime. So what if they are innocent? Let them go to jail anyway – they should have known better when they did not keep up the appearances!

If you come to think of it, Michael’s case is very similar to the one which has recently taken place in the place I live in. Three girls sang a song in an ‘improper’ place wearing ‘inappropriate’ clothing and insulting by their performance the religious feeling of people with ‘proper’ manners. The core of the matter was different of course, but the pretext of ‘impropriety’ was in the forefront and was presented as the crucial one. The moral damage to the ‘victims’ (those who sustained damage by listening to 40 seconds of the song) was so grave that they cannot get over it even half a year later, poor things….

Funny how history repeats itself in a totally different place and with totally different people. When you come to think of it, Michael Jackson also sang ‘improper’ or ‘inconvenient’ songs and did it at places where people were supposed to be entertained only and never listen to angry or critical kind of lyrics. And angry they were – “Leave me alone”, “Why you wanna trip on me?”, “Don Sheldon is a cold man”…

Yes, same as in the girls’ case, one of the songs was also dedicated to a high-ranking authority, the District Attorney of a county, who also decided to show the singer his place and punish him by 20 years in jail for making a daring song like that.

Funny that the system is different but the method is the same. A circus is created at the pretext of standing up for the “values” of the society.  The laws are broken in so open a manner that many wince at what they see and wish that someone less blunt and more sophisticated were doing the job. Imagine how much more exquisite and refined the picture would have been if the abuse of power had been made by Larry Feldman, for example.

The only difference between the two cases is the end-result – one defendant was fully acquitted, while the three others were sentenced for two years each. The difference in the outcome is due to the difference in the social system and the skill and dedication to the truth of Defense attorney Thomas Mesereau. But wait, had it been not for Thomas Mesereau, even the system would have not worked – because almost the whole of the nation except Mesereau and his team were clearly on the other side.

And you can even say why. It is because the “values” are much more important to them than the law, justice and the truth.