One Dull Soapbox, but....

OK, I'm not the first person who will be commenting on this today, as it's all over the headlines: butI'm not sure the King of Pop deserves to roam free, or even that he deserves to bring up his own children. I firmly believe if he were a poor piece of white trash fighting 10 counts of child molestation that he'd be found guilty and locked up like a vicious, rabid animal.

The Michael Jackson verdict alone is proof of America's blurred moral conscience. The reasoning goes something like this: child sexual abuse is awful, but slightly more palatable when committed by a billionaire. How can the jury convict someone who's given so much to our troubled world? They really couldn't, without feeling terribly guilty about it.

Since when does having a few platinum records and a hellvua lot of money entitle someone to live by a different code of rules? When did our collective sense of right and wrong begin to fray? Several children have been permanently hurt here-- their self-esteem crushed, their identities eroded. It will be difficult for them to have healthy intimate relationships, to trust people
and to trust themselves.

A jury had no problem convicting Martha Stewart and sending her to the slammer. In a fit of greed, she'd kept private some important information and made some money off it. She's probably paid an amount equalto or more than what she stole in fees and court costs. And we're going to toss Michael Jackson back into the world without a second thought of punishing him?

What kind of society creates, enables, and allows a code of class-based moral duality? Would Michael Jackson care about what happened to YOU if you were arrested for a DUI or for drug trafficking, or breaking and entering, or manslaughter? Would he camp outside the courthouse waving posters affirming your innocence? No. He'd be lying in his tanning bed in Neverland with a pet snake crawling next to his leg, or riding around on his ferris wheel daydreaming and licking an ice cream cone. And like any other very rich person who can buy themselves into or out of any situtation, he'd think your sentence was well-deserved: you do the crime, you do the time.... unless you're just like him.