svutlov, you repeat a pernicious canard (two, actually), when you write:

When MTV first came into existence, initially it had the agenda of not playing "black" music, but because of contracts with the music industry MTV was forced to play Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" video.

First, there was no agenda to avoid "black" music. MTV had a FORMAT issue (they wanted to play mostly rock), and they had an AVAILABILITY issue (not many bands were even making videos). That said, among the few black artists who fit the format and had videos available around the time MTV came on the air (and before "Billie Jean") were Tina Turner, Donna Summer, Jon Butcher Axis, Joan Armatrading, Eddy Grant, and Musical Youth, and MTV played them.

Second, there were no contracts that forced MTV to play "Billie Jean." In fact, the program director for MTV considered it the greatest video he had ever seen, and decided to play it right away.

Michael Jackson "broke the color barrier" at MTV only in that he stretched the format, and made the programmers look more at the quality of the music and the videos than at the musical genre. "Billie Jean" wasn't exactly rock, but it was so good they didn't care. MJ was neither the first black artist played on MTV, nor even the first African-American R&B-turned-pop singer played there, but he sure made the execs take notice.

One of the reasons these myths persist is that Rick James made a big stink when his "Superfreak" was rejected, and accused MTV of racism and not wanting to play black music. (MTV claimed that the video was a bit too over-the-top and explicit, and they were worried about offending watchers. This seems like an honest explanation to me.) Interestingly, Rick James found that many black artists supported him in principle, but that few of them backed him publicly. He never found a good explanation for this, but it seems clear to me: most black artists had not been REJECTED by MTV in 1982, they just hadn't made any videos. So why start accusing MTV of racism unless they had a dog in the fight?

Another reason why these canards persist is that the media and people like Al Sharpton are desperate to make MJ a significant figure for Civil Rights. They need to find a way to make him a "heroic black first," and they do so by claiming he was the first black artist on MTV when he was nothing of the kind.

Thanks for considering my point of view.

Michael Jackson should have done real damage control after the accusations. The best thing to do would have been to follow Hugh Grant's example and publically explain himself, with real humility and honesty -- even if no legal lines were crossed. When President Clinton confessed to the blow-jobs, he took back control of the situation. He was then free to get back to work. Jackson could have done something like this, but instead he piled on the make-up and costumes, and just kept retreating (with notable exceptions, like his pubic statement regarding the detectives taking photographs of his penis).

I agree completely. His failure to forthrightly defend himself is perhaps the part of the case that most inclines toward incriminating him. It did the most to account for why I initially took for granted that he was guilty.

After fellow megamillionaire pop music star Elton John heard about Michael Jackson's payoff to avoid the civil suit, he stated that he would have fought the charges all the way to the bitter end.

But at this point, you have to consider who we're talking about. This wasn't Elton John, Hugh Grant, or Bill Clinton. Those are all pretty much textbook examples of obviously very self-possessed people at ease with themselves.

Michael Jackson, on the other hand, seems to have only possessed that sort of assurance when involved in rehearsing or performing his stage act. Other than that, a more unrealized personality is tought to imagine. He's more like a textbook example of someone with a terrible difficulty in loving or validating their own baseline identity.

Consider how much of his persona was more or less constructed for him, from the outset of his career. Especially by the 1980s, when he was enmantled by his publicists and the mass media who followed their lead, as the clean-cut- yet sexy- heartthrob, the prodigy talent who could dance like a demon and sing sweet love ballads to enthrall young girls everywhere, and still be a nice guy. A perfect image, for a world-renowned pop music star.

Except that underneath it all, the guy was, assuming his innocence, terribly insecure, shy, and not sexual at all. Someone in the Vanity Fair article mentioned that he would be totally lost in a "mixed gathering" i.e., males and females...heck, outside of strictly professional or business relationships where the ground rules were already established and familiar to him, the guy was apparently painfully ill at ease with anyone at all over the age of 13.

That isn't the sort of personality type who's able to hold his own under cross-examination- either at a press conference, on a talk show- or, especially, under adversarial questioning by an attorney for a plaintiff, or a criminal prosecutor. I'd say Jackson represented a near-archetypal example of the sort of person who's too emotionally high-strung and anxious to be reliably polygraphed, because the simple circumstances of being hooked up to a machine and questioned pegs their internal stress meter- even if they have nothing to hide.

So, yeah- he definitely should have taken steps to forthrightly clear his name. But it's quite possible that he wasn't psychologically capable of rising to the challenges attendant to that, despite being innocent of the charges hurled at him.

I can imagine the sorts of questions that a plaintiff's attorney would have put to Jackson, about his innermost feelings and his private life. He would have made it his business to pry, and to attempt to catch Jackson in lies- beginning with the most general sort of inquiry, like "are you sexually attracted to women?" "How many women have you had sexual relationships with, in your life?" And the questioning would have degenerated from there.

Meanwhile, Jackson would be torn between how his publicly constructed self was supposed to answer, and the more probable truth of his experience- his innocence and proclivity to asexuality.

Such a status is one that the general run of young adults in this society are conditioned to feel deep shame about, if it so happens that their experience fits that template- no?

Especially if the person in question is supposedly a sex symbol...

So I can understand how Michael Jackson would have been terribly reluctant to put himself in that position.

If Michael Jackson had been shrewder, maybe he would have joined a religious sect that offers celibacy to its monks and acolytes. But I don't detect a lot of calculation of his part. To the contrary, all of that facial deconstructive surgery indicates someone in the grip of a terribly controlling obsession.

Likewise, the prevailing narrative depicts Jackson as a pedophile who built his kiddie amusement parks with the principal goal of enabling covert seduction. But if his innermost sexual person was actually all about being a male pederast, and he was that much of a calculator- why couldn't he manage to find a more discreet way to satisfy his urges?

Instead, he acted in a way that seemed calculated to arouse suspicions about his personal conduct. Ironically, perhaps the most important evidence against those suspicions is the testimonies of quite a few of his juvenile companions, that their relationships had been completely innocent and above board.

What, did Jackson buy the silence of all of those kids with shopping sprees, or the occasional $10,000 gift? He handed those out left and right, to adults as well as children. Like Elvis Presley.

Conversely- consider the fact that no one has yet emerged to accuse Michael Jackson of abusing them sexually, without being associated with some sort of big-money extortion, or extortion attempt. The plaintiff in the criminal trial claimed that they had no interest in money, but then the credibility of he and his mother were demolished during the trial- which in turn leads one to wonder to what their ulterior motives might have been.