For all the Michael Jackson haters...

Drives me nuts that people will bash someone in death. Yes, he was screwed up. Yes, he did questionable things. No, it was never proven. Yes, it's shamefully unfair to take away from him the milestone legacy he imparted on the music industry.

His career successes and his personal downfalls are oceans apart. The man created the bar for generations of pop music icons to raise, refine, and further evolve. He defined a style and genre that after 3 decades, continues to impact and inspire music lovers and makers all over the world.

For people to simply toss him off as a freak of nature and be rid of him because they chose to believe the embellishments and sensationalized dramatics the mainstream media chose to employ to exploit his shortcomings and hence skew our perception of him (however true or untrue they may actually be), without at least acknowledging and celebrating his rightful place in music history, is disrespectful and unjust.

We all seem to forget that nothing was proven. He never was a convicted child molester. He was never a convicted sexual abuser. The evidence was never there. Yeah, he slept in the same bed with little kids in his big ol' happy land ranch and that's totally fucked up, but there was never a shred of evidence to prove that he inappropriately touched anyone. Money hungry parents who saw an easy way to siphon millions from Jackson took advantage of his odd behavior and went spewing venom at the very man they entrusted their children to for a night.

I'm not condoning the behavior, and again, I think it's totally fucked up. But let's not forget the one thing that Jackson never got to have: his own childhood. The one that his power hungry and abusive father stole away from him so he could make his millions on exploiting his entire family. So, in some kind of disgusting and maladjusted way, he sought to reclaim that childhood he never really had as an adult and made some pretty poor decisions in the process.

Sure he settled and paid out millions to the people who brought the suit up against him. But think about it. Wouldn't you if you could? Who wants to have that kind of awful spotlight on them for something that they claim they did not do? Innocent until proven guilty. What ever happened to that? I know if I could write a check and tell some scheming, greedy, and hateful people to fuck off and never ever utter my name or come near me again, I absolutely would.

Let's just please let the man rest in peace with our eternal thanks for his contribution to the art of music and forgive him his follies that sent the world into a spinning frenzy of crafty suppositions and hastily drawn conclusions.

I'm bad. You know it.