Hi Baby Snooks

So you think that anyone who gets murdered is automatically a saint, she did nothing in her life which was wrong? 

I read somewhere that a month or so  before Sharon Tate was murdered she and Roman paid a man to be whipped - as an entertainment. I think their lifestyle and attitudes were very strange. Maybe immoral and decadent are better descriptions.

I think he should face the music back in California for the rape he admitted to. And also pay the money he promised to the victim. Very lousy of him not to. 

I looked several times, too, Robin and I could not find a tear either. There is a rumour that someone behind the scenes noticed Paris saying she did NOT want to say anything, but was persuaded to.

It looks like the Jacksons were trying to show how beloved Paris is as they comforted her, and how much she loved her Daddy. As other people on this thread have commented, all children (up to a certain age) love their parents, even if they are abused. I know this is true from my own observations and comments from people who are foster carers. There was one little girl whose parents did not feed her properly - sometimes all she had was dry Corn Flakes all week - and so she was taken into care, for that and other reasons. That little girl could not wait to go home to be with her family again.

I am not saying that MJ was anything but a loving father and it seems that his children are all very well behaved and pleasant. As other people have mentioned however, he must have felt very possessive about them, and insecure enough to be scared (possibly) that their affections could be given to their mother as well. I do not think all Debbie thought was "money" with regard to her children. What she got was a divorce settlement. She was not a surrogate, as surrogates do not get parental rights and visits.

 MJ scuppered the visits - the agreement was initially 8 hours every 45 days - by taking the children on tour or on holidays when visits were due, cancelling any visits if the children were "ill". Debbie Rowe had to make any visiting arrangements through one of MJ’s lawyers, she could not have any make up time for missed visits and when they did occur they were in a room full of MJ’s minders watching every move. Would any parent in such a situation find it humiliating?

John Niven has:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/michael-jackson-bad-and…

in an article called "Michael Jackson: Bad! And very dangerous" 

[Sorry, still cannot get the link button to work, so you will have to copy and paste the above link into your browser address field. Must need a PhD in IT to get that link tool working, and I note that some other people on this site have got it working…] 

A Amadee: perhaps you should look into this matter more - you might get a few facts into your mind. Firstly, Debbie did not turn her back on her children, she tried to have access but Michael made it extremely difficult for her - humiliating her by insisting that it be in a room full of his watching minders. Also, I do not think that it is money she is after; she has asked for a stay of the custody arrangements so she can decide whether she will make a claim for custody. During this time she will most likely ask her children whether they would like to live with her. 

If you look at my latest post you will have a link to some photos showing she was a loving mother.

Neither you nor I can decide what reasons made her decide to have the family arrangements made with Michael, but I do know that 1. he made access extremely difficult; 2. he told his children that "they did not have a mother".

Finally, she was his wife and as such in the case of divorce she was **entitled** to receive money from him. I think what she said about surrogacy, etc. was to make Michael look better, and she cared for him a lot. She was, after all, his friend for more than a decade before they married.

There’s nothing wrong with naming each of your children after you. In Michael’s case it is just another indication of his self-obsession. My children. Mine. Mine. Mine. Note that none of Debbie’s names appear in the children’s names - she has been written out again.

Some photos of Debbie with her children (also click on the link at the top of the url to see even more photos, showing Debbie as a happy, relaxed mother - and her children are happy and relaxed with her. Compare the less relaxed looks they have when they are alone with Michael):

 http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/showbiz/michael_jackson/390944/The-astonishing-Michael-Jackson-family-pictures-that-could-blow-custody-battle-apart.html

[Sorry, cannot get link tool to work, so you will have to copy and paste it into your browser address field] 

Not sure what you mean. Can you be more explicit? 

However, I’d like to mention, dahlings, that I cannot think of any other performer who has named ALL his kids after himself as MJ has: Michael Jr I, Paris Michael, Michael Jr II. 

Here is an interesting comment from Howard Jacobson in the London The Independent:

If we want a huge emotion, the company of a hugely famous person is indispensable. The death of Michael Jackson meets our requirements perfectly in that we don’t only get a famous corpse, we get famous people mourning it. The latest word is that the funeral will be held next Tuesday, and broadcast live on television. This is good planning because we wouldn’t have wanted it to clash with Wimbledon. Imagine being Katharine Brown and not knowing whether to be in a floral frock for the final of the men’s singles on the Centre Court or veiled in black for Michael Jackson’s funeral cortège in Los Angeles. This way there’s just time to cheer the one, jump on a plane, and sob your heart out at the other.

It is barely even worth saying that the outpouring of grief for Michael Jackson is disproportionate to his gifts. Stuff the gifts, we want to mourn a god. The King of Pop. Not a great name as names of divinities go. Sounds like an ad for Schweppes. But then he wasn’t a great man, in fact scarcely a man at all. That is not meant as a moral judgement. I have nothing to say about Michael Jackson’s assaults upon his own body or his reported assaults upon other people’s. Other children’s, yes I know. We are all scoundrels in our own way. And as has been said until we’re sick of hearing it, his was not an upbringing best calculated to yield a happy or a balanced individual. Though what it did yield was precisely what those who loved him wanted – infantilism set to simple tunes.

Some decent, humane sorrowing over that – a life gone nowhere, for all the fame; a life lived in desperate confusion – would not be inappropriate. And a little soul-searching, as well, on the part of those who must idolise before they know they are alive. This, too, has been gone over and over all week – the hellish compact between a star and those who worship him. We destroy those we inordinately admire. That’s the cliché. I would put it differently. Those we inordinately admire destroy us.

It has been said that Michael Jackson changed the lives of millions of his fans. But I have yet to read an account of what he changed them to. Yes, he gave them songs to sing. Few of them remarkable. And he gave them a dance to dance. I can see with my own eyes that he moved unusually. So let’s say he taught others to move unusually too. Perhaps we can say he liberated them into a bodily vitality they hadn’t known before. That’s not nothing, if it’s true. But if it is true, you wonder where all that bequeathed vitality has gone to. After you’ve done your moonwalk, then what?

If we’re simply talking giving pleasure then why aren’t we planning a state funeral for Mollie Sugden who also died the other day? She played Mrs Slocombe in Are You Being Served? and contributed, or at least her pussy did, to the nation’s stock of innocent entertainment. What is more, she was capable of irony. But maybe there’s your answer. You can’t be a god and have a sense of the ridiculous. 

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/howard-jacobson/howard-jacobson-were-in-search-of-a-new-messiah-ndash-whether-its-murray-or-jackson-1731281.html 

OK, leave the kids out of it - but let’s not get blinded by the limelight.

You can see Michael’s neediness in his stage performance: The music backup is hidden, there is just him alone on the stage performing before cheering 1000s. Look at me! Look at me!

That’s how his children had to see him too. (sorry, Liz, had to say this even though it is blindingly obvious, after you have switched off the limelights.) 

Michael Jackson may have had a cruel father, but Michael was very cruel to Debbie Rowe, who imho debased herself by her comments in order to make Michael look better. She was his wife, and what she received upon her divorce from him was far, far less than the US$25 million paid out to one of his accusers. Shouldn’t she have had at least half of his earnings over 3 years?

He brought his children up to see him as the only parent ("We have no mother") made her access to them really difficult, in a room crowded with his minders. (I wonder what he told his children about Debbie?)

And as a performer, I do not think he was all *that* great. Sure he could sing in a squeaky voice, he had rhythm, he could slide backwards, he could grab and wiggle his crotch. So can lots of other people. 

I have just heard that Debbie Rowe will be contesting custody of her two children. The whole matter of raising them seems to a really confusing and strange (maybe weird) situation. There is some doubt that Michael Jackson is the biological father (should there not be some adoption process if he isn’t the biological father??), but even without the DNA tests Debbie is obviously their mother. Her daughter has her very distinctive mouth. 

A week ago I read another article in the Australian press that she said she was just someone who " offered him my womb - it was a gift. It was something I did to keep him happy.

"I was just the vessel. It wasn’t Michael’s sperm. I got paid for it, and I’ve moved on. I know I will never see my children again.

"I was never a good mother, I never felt any attachment to them. It was a better feeling giving them to him than it was keeping them as my own."

Debbie says Michael split from her soon after the painful birth of Paris, which left her unable to have any more children"…

I wish Debbie and her children well, whether she wins custody or not. 

Claire: she may well be telling the truth on this occasion (though I doubt it, given the indications from elsewhere and her behaviour when asked) but that still does not stop her from being a conniving person in instances mentioned in my post and Huckabee’s poem about her.

OTOH being accused of something you did not do or say is a terrible situation for anyone, including Nancy. Innocent people have committed suicide in such circumstances. I recall a teacher accused of being a paedophile and after his death the accusation was found to be totally groundless.

Nancy just seeks personal/political advantage in just about everything. She trashed Hillary in the primaries while pretending to be neutral (or was supposed to be). She is in favor of free choice in abortion, which is against the Catholic religion she is supposed to be following. I bet if the anti-abortionists became the majority in both the population and the media, she’d be out there opposing abortion. 

I enjoyed Huckabee’s poem very much. 

And that quote of Nancy trying to find her way through those (supposedly) messed up pages when being asked about water boarding is hilarious. Her mind was definitely messed up, trying to find the best way out of the situation. Not necessarily the truthful way, the best-for-Nancy-way.

She is still lost in that mess. Ha.