This Is The Last I'll Say About It

‘Tis the season for crankiness, apparently. This past weekend I wrote a post where I intentionally dropped the last name of the subject with the initials MJ, starting with Michael. I did that because I hoped to avoid the crazies who are out googling every piece of info they can read about the deceased. Why? Because I know I have a biased opinion on the subject and I really didn’t want to outrage any of his zombie followers.

So I wrote that post while standing up high on my soapbox and getting all preachy about how hard it can be for survivors of childhood sexual abuse. In particular, I was thinking how hard it would be when the abuser is a famous person who bought his way into the lives of those kids and then bought his way back out of them. And finally, I was thinking about what it must be like for a child to turn on the TV and see crowds of people gathering around and building a shrine to Michael, when that child is likely struggling just to get out of bed in the morning as a result of his horrible choices. Seriously, it’s a long road back for these kids and I wish them love and luck.

And then? I climbed down from my soapbox and deleted most of it in an attempt to remove emotion and stick to the facts as I see them, albeit not necessarily as they were legally presented and/or supported during his trial. I tried to be fair to the fact that the man had his own extremely difficult history with which he contended on a daily basis, and I tried to nod in the direction of his well-deserved fame for being a rare musical talent. I thought I did that pretty well.

Then I got a couple of emails – not blog comments – but emails. Here is an excerpt from each of them:

I hope you realized that Michael was never convicted of the crimes that you accuse him of. I thought we had a justice system that said ‘innocent until proven guilty’ around here, but maybe your not from here. Your probably one of the uppity bitches that go around in a lynchmob with other uppity bitches. I’m sick and tired of people bringing up all this shit to slander his good name now.

The man is dead and you could of left him that way. My mama always told me not to speak ill of the dead and maybe you should’ve listened to yours.

I do realize that he was not convicted of his alleged crimes. I also realize that he paid out huge dollars to keep it that way. I realize that kids who come forward and make these allegations are rarely lying and I realize that if he did nothing except for the things he admitted to doing, he was STILL way out of line. If he were a school janitor, he’d most likely have gone to jail. Now what are the chances that he admitted to everything he did?

Lastly, in my own defense, I will say that I can be a bit bitchy when the need arises, but I don’t have a posse of uppity bitches and I don’t travel around in a lynch mob. I welcome comments from readers, and I don’t require anyone to agree with me, although I admit that I like it better. However, I do appreciate it when those comments are left by people who behave respectfully and who can appreciate my right to express my opinion on my blog. Even if I had posted the original version of what I wrote, complete with suds from my soapbox and emotion from my heart, I still would have been well within my rights. It is still MY BLOG.

And now? I am done with this topic. It’s had enough air time as it is, and I’m a little tired of it.