MJ was a great performer. I enjoyed about every song on Thriller and some of his earlier stuff. You could probably call him a genius. I don't think he actually wrote the music or lyrics. But he performed well and was a great dancer.
For whatever it's worth, my intuition tells me MJ wasn't so innocent with the children. Whether anything really did happen, we may never know. Sure, he may have been found innocent. But the court system is about who can make a better argument. Those with money have the best lawyers. And you can't tell me the jury didn't know him. Some may have been huge fans. Any plain old Joe who spends that amount of time with kids and turns his house into one big attraction for kids??? Chances are he's up to something. Except he hasn't got people to protect him, high priced lawyers, and money to pay people off. When he has kids in his bed, he's going to jail.
Maybe I'm wrong. People with that kind of wealth live in a bubble and sometimes the people who surround them don't say no to them or they don't give them good advice. So he didn't have a childhood. I missed part of mine too with meetings, field service, studies, no birthday parties, no Christmases, no Halloweens, no TV shows like Bewitched or the Addams Family. I don't live every day as a birthday party or Christmas party now to make up for it. And even when I do celebrate those things, I don't go gung-ho making up for lost years. If I want to relive my youth, I might buy a retro toy like Rock-em-sock-em robots to play with my son. Point is I don't care if he missed his childhood, he should have grown up. Even kids grow up past that stuff by the time they become teenagers. That only takes 12-13 years. How long was MJ pretending to be a kid? Gotta be nearly 3 times as long. And why involve kids? Go ride your ferris wheel all day long. I think the whole reliving his childhood was a lure.
I don't blame the JWs for MJ being wierd. He was a kid on the road. He performed in bars, strip clubs, and concert halls as a child. Imagine the people he met in those places. He had an abusive father too. I'll bet he had very little (if any) pressure from the JWs. I'll bet they were thrilled to have a celebrity at the congregation and probably let him bend the rules. I mean, it wasn't until the Thriller video that he was nudged out. But before that, he put out some very disco sounding stuff (which the Watchtower was very much against at that time). And there was sexuality in his songs too. If you were a singer who sang those songs, you'd be marked at some other congregations (if you weren't Michael Jackson that is). So I can't imagine there was a lot of guilt being layed down on him by the JWs.
As far as his legacy, who knows? Who knows what'll come out now that he's gone that might taint his reputation? If that stays as it is, with no shocking revelations, I'm not sure his music will stand up. A lot of what I remember was very dated. I admit that I haven't heard him much over the last 20 years or so. But I think back to Thriller, which will no doubt be looked upon as his greatest, and it's kind of in the same category for me as 99 Red Balloons, Thomas Dolby, or some of the other 80's music. Nostalgic, sure. Enduring? Not so much. ABC, sure. That's a classic. But his 80's pop, not so much. Just my opinion. I know others loved a lot more of his music than I did to begin with.