BBC Radio 2 drops Michael Jackson songs from the airwaves after new string of child sex abuse [tr]

UK Daily Mail ^ | March 3, 2019 | Harry Howard

[C19fan]

Michael Jackson's music appears to have been dropped from BBC Radio 2's playlists following new child sex abuse claims. The decision is reported to have been made last week ahead of Channel 4 News's documentary about the star's alleged crimes, Leaving Neverland, which will be broadcast this week. In the programme, the Sunday Times reports that James Safechuck, 40, and Wade Robson, 36, claim they were sexually assaulted and raped while children by the pop star after being groomed over a number of years.

[ek_hornbeck]

If Jackson were still alive, I'd be in favor of every cent earned from the sale of his records going to his victims and in favor of him being convicted in a court of law and spending the rest of his days behind bars (and given the treatment that prison inmates generally dole out to pedophiles). Now that he's long dead, what is the point of all this?

I don't care for Jackson's music or performance style and I've always found his persona repulsive even before the pedophilia revelations, but I'm against banning any form of artistic expression on the grounds that its creator is/was a bad person. Are we supposed to ban Caravaggio's paintings from our art galleries because he was a murderer?

[miss marmelstein]

Of course you’re right. This is the problem with some on the right - they are fine with censorship as long as it’s the right type of person being censored or disappeared. I’m not a particular fan of Jackson’s either but it is outrageous that the BBC would do this.

Hoard your music now!

[mware]

Watched the show last night and I so wanted to reach into the television and throttle both of the mothers for endangering their boys. Can’t imagine anyone handing their 7 yo to a man they had just met while they spent a week at Yellowstone.

[ek_hornbeck]

Of course you’re right. This is the problem with some on the right - they are fine with censorship as long as it’s the right type of person being censored or disappeared. I’m not a particular fan of Jackson’s either but it is outrageous that the BBC would do this

It's quite likely that Lewis Carroll and Robert Baden Powell were pedophiles - their obsessions with young girls and boys, respectively, was obviously unhealthy and abnormal (the degree to which they acted on those impulses is debatable). That doesn't mean that Alice in Wonderland isn't a fun book for children of all ages, or that the Boy Scouts wasn't an institution that did much social good until its recent takeover by the PC police. I have absolutely no use for Jackson or his music, but if his music is banned because of his deviant behavior, who's next on the chopping block?

Hoard your music now

A couple of years ago there was a thread where people on this site applauded the ban on public performances of Wagner's music in Israel and implied that it should be banned in other countries (including the US) as well. Basically the same kind of idiocy at work.

[Skooz]

Yeah, I agree.

For one thing, these are accusations, not proof.

But, more importantly, it’s disconcerting to see this Stalinesque trend of making people “non-persons” who are simply erased from history.

[Skooz]

No, Anita became a non-person decades ago.

[miss marmelstein]

Just to remind everyone: there is no evidence that Lewis Carroll was a “child molester.” Some of his photographic subjects lived well into the 20th century - as did the adopted sons of JM Barrie - and all denied that these men were perverts.

Carroll’s photographs are brilliant and striking. The 19th century did not coddle children as is done in the 21st. But they did romanticize them.