What do most Americans think of Michael Jackson these days?

14 comments

1. The Jackson family is from Indiana. [In fact you can still visit the old Jackson home in Gary](https://goo.gl/maps/iFVFmzvUAiNgtY3w8).

   I think with some of the reporting done in the last few years it has changed how the public perceives Jackson. Weird Al has even stopped performing his Jackson parodies. At the same time, a lot of people got a lot of joy out of his music. To many he was undeniably talented and one of the greatest performers of his generation.

   >or someone who didn’t want to be Black.

   What?

2. [removed]

3. It’s a shame when someone’s life time of greatness is sullied by bad behavior i.e. Michael Jackson, Bill Cosby, etc… it definitely makes you see them in a different light however it’s still difficult to ignore the entertainment they gave millions all over the world. I’ll still never change the station when an MJ song comes on and I still love the Cosby Show, but I’ll never spend money in them.

4. He made some great music.

5. An extremely talented and amazing individual with a very troubled and complex life.

6. We think he was a creep but can’t deny that his music was good and it’s still played all the time

   The skin lightening thing was talked about a lot in the 90s but became just a footnote after the child sex accusations became public

   [mindy kailing](https://images.app.goo.gl/VisWdwmhrW9WWN8q9) and [sammy soda](https://images.app.goo.gl/sARZocwWrMV7f7ZT7) have also done skin bleaching, sadly

7. He was a pedophile, my thought reasoning…why would he settle out of court for millions if he was innocent.

   Damn good musician and showman otherwise.

8. Michael Jackson is probably the one person that the biggest % of americans ignore and forgive what he did because he meant so much to people, which is saying a lot because Americans will fight to the death to defend any random famous person accused of anything

   but also I’m not sure anyone really cares anymore

9. I think he was an incredibly talented musician who was tortured by some shit that was done to him in childhood, as a young adult made so much goddamn money (both for himself and for a menagerie of industry bigwigs) that he had to protected at all costs. I think he had what most people would consider inappropriate interactions with kids, because he craved his own stolen childhood, but that those interactions were both legal and non-sexual. I think the efforts money-men to staunch any hint of scandal perpetuated the idea that he was up to no good with those kids, and hence you have a JFK-style conspiracy to hide a crime that didn’t actually happen, because powerful people thought it might have happened, and therefore exerted their influence to convince everyone it didn’t happen, but sometimes **nothing actually happened**.

10. I think he was an incredibly talented and incredibly sick individual.

11. He was a pedophile who made good music.

12. Generally him as a really good music artist and he was a really weird adult because he never had a childhood. Theres been a lot of media and interviews post-mortem which basically vindicated Michael Jackson. Essentially him being an adult was the first time he had freedom and he strived to compensate for what he couldn’t experience or get as a child. Because he was a child artist and his dad’s abuse.

    Most don’t care or thinks he’s a pedophile anymore. Still make jokes about it and generally accept that he crossed boundaries as an adult but again moreso cause of his fucked up childhood than being a pedophile.

13. > However, everywhere in the USA, it seems like people view MJ as either a guy who was a child molestor

    Yeah, this was especially the case in the last decade of his life. Jackson being seen as a pedophile overshadowed his musical career, and among the several number 1 hut songs he had, only one of them (“You Are Not Alone”) cane out after the first child molestation accusations started coming in the early 90s. Some of his publicity stunts, such as hanging his youngest son Blanket over that balcony in Berlin, didn’t help his image either. However, after he died, people suddenly remembered his music and humanitarian efforts again, which was pretty sad. Being seen as a bad person when alive, but only respected again after you die.

14. He’s a great counter to people trying to cancel some celebrity:

    Should Michael Jackson music be banned from radio and streaming?