Avenatti doesn't annoy me. He's just taking advantage of the high profile free publicity so he can get more cases. And it worked--someone came straight to him with his attack dog personality and known ability to hit the airwaves. Sometimes that's who you need.

 

R. Kelly has been indicted.

 

Yes!!! Everyone is so hopeful. The exact language of the indictment isn't out yet.

That documentary should get the Oscar.

 

I hope people can finally see the real Michael Jackson. Fingers crossed....

A devastating and credible ‘Leaving Neverland’ will turn you off Michael Jackson for good

It’s remarkable what happens when you take Michael Jackson out of the latest Michael Jackson scandal. Remove the usual “King of Pop” soundtrack and all that glitters, and things get so much clearer. The details are still appalling, but what we see and hear in Dan Reed’s riveting and sharply convincing four-hour documentary, “Leaving Neverland” (airing in two parts Sunday and Monday on HBO), supplies the viewer with an unexpected measure of calm. Even the outrage feels at last like the real deal, instead of the manufactured byproduct of tabloids and TMZ.

Already the talk of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, “Leaving Neverland” is the story of two men — noted pop choreographer Wade Robson, 36, and James “Jimmy” Safechuck, 41 — who each tell us, with the resolute certainty that they lacked as younger witnesses deposed and questioned in other cases, that Jackson sexually molested them when they were boys, starting in the late 1980s and early 1990s and continuing into their teenage years.

What they are talking about is not just the creepy affection, playful roughhousing and tender hand-holding we were once told was the innocent expression of love between a man (Jackson), who sacrificed his own childhood to bring joy to millions, and the star-struck boys he was thus entitled to enjoy as special pals. What we get this time are disturbing, graphic and wholly consistent accounts of the predation, grooming and rape of two children by a man who wielded considerable psychological control over everyone in his environment — including the boys’ parents.

To a certain degree, “Leaving Neverland” is potentially more devastating than even “Surviving R. Kelly,” the Lifetime documentarythat aired in January and seemed to do what a mountain of previous reporting and victim accounts could not, resulting in Kelly’s Feb. 22 arrest and charges of 10 counts of alleged criminal sexual abuse of four victims — three of them minors — dating back to 1998.

* * * *
At the trial, seriousness competed with silliness. I was there the day Michael tested the judge’s patience by showing up more than an hour late, wearing fancy pajama bottoms. I was there the day Gavin Arvizo (as a child, he was referred to anonymously during the proceedings) gave an account that echoes much of what Robson and Safechuck so meticulously describe — down to the grooming techniques, sworn secrecy, sex acts and even the pet nicknames Michael gave to his special boys (Applehead, Doo-Doo Head).

One afternoon I got a seat directly behind Jackson and his parents. He was maybe 10 feet away. Usually there’s an ineffable spark when a celebrity that big is that close. But I couldn’t get a fix on his presence — mainly because there was no presence. Just powder, just bones in a suit. I remember writing down that he might as well be dead.

Then, sooner than anyone expected to publish one, there was the obituary. Co-writing it came as a kind of relief. Even in death, Michael was murder on East Coast print deadlines, always breaking his own news in the early evening as pages were closing and presses were running. As we threw together 2,000 words on his happy/sad life and career, I couldn’t help but think: At least I won’t have to write about him ever again.

Yet here we are — and with good reason. Turn off the music and listen to these men.

Leaving Neverland (four hours) airs in two parts Sunday and Monday at 8 p.m. on HBO.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/ente...9364b2ed137_story.html?utm_term=.d01de01d2ebf

(This is just the beginning and ending of the article.)

 

'This is a Renaissance painting'

https://www.chicagotribune.com/ente...elly-gayle-king-interview-20190306-story.html

 

That's probably his habitual way of imposing himself on others, but she isn't under his spell.

I don't think she would be scared if she saw it as just an act. She did say, though, that she thinks he actually needs help, so it wasn't "just" an act. Now THAT was big of Gayle, to me. To see the horror and also the man.