Tonight we’re discussing the Michael Jackson 2005 trial with Pear Jr, a journalist who was there daily and saw a side not reported in most mainstream media.

As always, please stay on topic, no ad hominem attacks and please forgive my lousy typing.

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Welcome Pearl Jr, thank you for being with us. Tell us a bit about TRUTalk, your television program.

Hi Lisa, Pearl is here!

Hey Pearl, so glad you’re here. Along wht TRUTalk, and two MJ docs,you have produced a Barack Obama documentary

Well, we created a TV show that discussed social issues. I was the host and the producer. We had purchased airtime 5 nights per week in the metropolitan Los Angeles area.

Yes, we had no idea that our talk show would qualify as official media for the Michael Jackson trial and Barack Obama’s campaign for President. It has been some ride.

It must have been exciting to be covering the Jackson trial, and eye opening to see how the media selectively reported events. What were some of the things you noticed?

Welcome Pearl, thanks so much for being here.

How much of the media spectacle do you think came from the story being in the nexux of entertainment and news? And do you think Michael Jackson’s long term codependent relationship with the tabloids made it difficult to extract from that spot?

The first day was really exciting because we thought we’d go up to the Jackson trial and do one show from the sidewalk, but when we arrived, the media manager asked us who we were with, and I told him about our show and we qualified.

This first thing that came to mind, was OMG, we’re in. All the big wig media personalities were there and I was only in awe for the first few hours and then Davillian, the accuser’s sister took the stand and said “I didn’t know I was molested until my mother told me” That was when I knew something was seriously wrong.

I took my show very seriously! On the way home, I noticed that the news on the radio was different than I thought was important. It seems to be too sensationalized!

So Davillene was claiming abuse at an earlier time her life, unrelated to Jackson…so the mom had a history of promoting this, it seemed?

I quickly discovered a bias against Michael!

In our modern, fragmented culture there are so many different, conflicting sources for so many different, conflicting ways to think and feel about the world around us that folks like Michael Jackson becoming lightening rods allowing us to pin down our own particular “truth” regarding issues ranging from race and gender to sexuality and celebrity.

We don’t express opinions about him so much as about ourselves.

But one element that is all pervasive in these meta-narratives about fame, fortune and all the rest of us is this: Money.

Once money is at stake, really, who can you believe?

The girl, who was 18, I believe was talking in code! She made that comment a few times, trying to tell everyone listening, her mother put them up to this. No one in the media seemed to care. I reported that fact on my TV show, but I was a little bug in an ocean of big fish!

That’s for sure! Money, or shall I say, GREED, is the root of 99 percent of evil. As an insider, watching the happenings, I was completely appaulled at the level of dishonest coming from the media.

After all, I was a car salesperson with integrity and now I have to be journalist with integrity.

Do you think the family, the Arvisos were hoping for a settlement like Jordan Chandler, the kid from the 1993 incident?

Being a celebrity, seems to be a horrible career for the people at the top. Yea, fame and fortune are false Gods!

For sure! At one point, before the trial and the media digging for information, MJ’s people offered them a house, but they wanted money. Janet Arvizo’s boyfriend at that time, refused and was negotiating for much much more. It was purely a case of extortion.

Due to laws set in place by DA Sneddon, no more hush hush money, but a legal trial first and then a civil case. The Arvizo’s contacted lawyers before the police.

The Arvisos the family that accused Jackson, what was their background…from your documentary I learned that they had health insurance which covered Gavin’s treatment, yet it seems in the mainstream media they were pretty broke, they seems ot sort of be hustling celebrities, including George Lopez. Can you give us some background on them.

The reported $20 million pay off to Jordie Chandler was paid by insurance, according to Attorney Brian Oxman, who was with the Jackson’s during the 1993 case. When a big celeb, like MJ, was on tour, they insure for everything!

For sure, the Arvizo’s were grifters and the celebrities were their playground

Geraldine Hughes wrote a book about the Chandler case, can you tell us a bit about her book and the part she played in that case?

Also in your documentary you talk about Aphrodite Jones who did a complete reversal after seeing how the media handled the case…

The Arvizo’s were getting money from anyone they could. Chris Tucker, his child’s mother, several people of MJ staff, Fritz Coleman (local news man), and this poor female comedian gave her $20,000

Geraldine Hughes was a secretary for the Chandler lawyers–the father. He wanted MJ to invest in a movie (Robin Hood Men In Tights), and when MJ refused, they threatened to get the money out of him any way he could. So he hired a nasty attorney and they were to work on a plan.

Since MJ loved kids and hung around kids–it fit like a glove and was so easy to convince people.

Do you think Jackson’s relationship with the tabloids–both good abd, his pranking them on the elephant man bones and the oxygen chamber, as well as his high profile–helped shape how the case was reported in mainstream media? There was a lot of hearsay and rumors, checkbook journalism in the case…Housekeepers getting paid, you mention one was paid almost as much by a journalist as she made in year with Jackson (also I kinda hope he paid his staff more, as an aside!)

What angle was the family working..they had insurance for his health care?

Did Miss Huges loose her job for talking with Anthony Pellicano about the railroading of Jackson, the false charges?

Aphrodite and I had a meeting (she requested to see our first documentary, Behind the Scenes at the Michael Jackson Trial) and she had a reversal of opinion due to the facts and opening her eyes–maybe feeling guilty!

Geraldine was quiet for seven years, so she had already changed jobs. That attorney (Klein, I think) was very mean and hard to work with and for.

The Arvizo’s had no shame or class! They’d use whatever necessary to cheat and gain.

Tell us a bit about Tom Mesereau, he was a great attorney

Well, a housekeeper doesn’t make more than $20,000 a year and that was the Diane Dimond pay off to the Francia family!

I think a lot of people who don’t believe much of what our establishment media reports suspected that this family was shaking down Jackson. They start out with their narrative and they never let the facts get in the way of it. PATHETIC!

The tickling innocent allegedly happened in 1987.

The claims were really outlandish. The first night MJ had them over, they said MJ put on a website called pu**y.com, but if MJ was a gay pedophile, why bring up the woman’s parts?? Also, when they searched MJ’s computer, no such site was ever accessed from MJ’s computer. MJ didn’t use the computer to visit any type of porn sites whatsoever

I got to know Tom pretty good after the trial. The media was not allowed to talk to MJ, after the gag order was put in place. I’d just smile big for Tom when he had a great day and there were lots of great days for the defense.

Tom is a great man with a great heart. He fully believes in justice for all, despite race, income, or gender

I was stunned when Mrs Arviso claimed Jackson ws going to take them away in a hot air balloon…what were some of the other things that made an impact on the jury?

Also, you brought up manufactured evidence, that Gavin’s fingerprints were found on a girlie mag which hadn’t been published at the time of the alleged molestation…I was like WHAT?

She was mentally unstable and full of manipulations and sad stories that were unbelieveable, like he son broke his wrist when playing baseball because his glove was so worn out. They slept in the barn and only ate cereal with water. They had to walk for 3 hours to the hospital. It was just too unbelieveable, when she had their father, with a job, and she worked, and they were not first generation Latinos. The kids had grandparents, etc. Janet was a game player of the worse kind.

What is The Whole Truth about Michael Jackson here? You don’t know. I don’t know. They don;t know.

Indeed, isn’t this why we invented God?

We can’t know, but He does. And since He is omniscient there is nothing Michael could have done that escaped His ubiquitous eye. And since He is omnipotent whatever sins Michael committed will be punished.

That’s just a fairy tale of course but who among us wishes that it were not? All of us, perhaps?

Divine justice. Once that is gone it’s your word against mine against whatever we insist the evidence shows.

And it almost always shows whatever we want it to.

Pearl, what do you think of Matt Taibbi’s coverage of the 2005 trial? Especially of passages like this:

It is hard not to escape the impression that Sneddon hates Jackson. He clearly has not forgotten the debacle of 1993, when Jackson and the family of thirteen-year-old Jordan Chandler reached a $15.3 million settlement before Sneddon could bring Jackson to trial on molestation charges.

His key witnesses, meanwhile — the accuser and his family, whom we’ll call the Riveras — are an astounding bunch. Any sane prosecutor would drown himself before building a case around witnesses like these, but they were all Sneddon had. A single mom and her three kids, an older daughter and two boys. They’re poor but not ghetto poor — just poor like eighty percent of America is poor, making their way through life with a shabby cocktail of nowhere jobs, disability, Zoloft, Jesus, diets and, one guesses, a vast collection of self-help books.

This family has been burdened first by an abusive father, then by a horrible cancer that struck the older boy; by the age of ten, he had a sixteen-pound tumor in his stomach. Through a series of charitable foundations and recovery programs, the boy’s terrible predicament put the family in touch with a number of celebrities: George Lopez, Chris Tucker, Jay Leno and Michael Jackson. The Jackson fiasco did not really begin until the boy, hereafter referred to as Freddy, had miraculously recovered and the family returned to its mean pre-crisis existence, armed only with a suddenly impressive Rolodex.

[...]

At one point during the trial, the jury is shown a picture of a frighteningly lifelike mannequin of a small black girl with braided hair. Recovered during one of the two searches of Neverland ordered by Sneddon, this mannequin apparently was fashioned in the image of a little cousin of Jackson’s. The accuser’s brother testifies that on their first night at Neverland, Jackson jumped on the mannequin and simulated sex with it. “He was, uh, having intercourse with it,” says Pudge.

Sneddon then leaves the picture of the mannequin onscreen for a few long moments. It looks exactly like a real girl. Nobody in the courtroom can take their eyes off the thing. My own heart skips a beat; I half-expect the picture to start steaming from the ears and speaking in tongues.

In scenes from the Bashir documentary shown to the jury, Jackson is depicted as the father of three utterly Caucasian “real” children who never see their mother. He insists he’s had only one small nose job; he says with a straight face that he is Peter Pan and that he will never die. And he thinks everybody understands when he says that sleeping in beds with kids is OK because there should be “more love in the world.” And it gets even more disturbing. He talks about the nicknames he gave the kids: “Blow Hole” for Pudge and “Doo Doo” or “Apple Head” for Freddy. Pudge testifies that Jackson called another boy who came to the ranch “Baby Rubber.”

If you buy this part of the story, and it’s pretty close to impossible not to, it doesn’t require a great leap of logic to connect the remaining dots. It is a short step from Doo Doo and Apple Head to a late-night hand down your underpants. This is the kind of thing that is running through the collective mind of the courtroom at the trial’s first decisive moment: when Freddy takes the stand.

And later, from his June 2005 RS piece:

His case was bullshit. California vs. Jackson turned out to be basically a tale of a family of low-rent grifters trying to lay a criminal-molestation charge on a rich celebrity as a prelude to a civil suit: British TV documentary reveals pop star sleeps in bed with children; pop star’s handlers scramble to do damage control; coddling of potentially troublesome family passed off first as kidnapping, and then, what the hell, as molestation.

[...]

Jackson’s slick white-haired lawyer, Mesereau, put on a defense that at the end felt like a dinner for the jury at Spago. You know: Look, there’s Chris Tucker, let’s go over and I’ll introduce you. Sneddon’s woeful performance had set up the defense as the good guys, but when the bell rang, Mesereau answered with a string of witnesses who testified that Jackson had spent hundreds, if not thousands, of nights in bed with strange children. Far ahead on points, Jackson’s first counterstrike was to boldly announce himself as a compulsive maniac, addicted to children — a musical Saturday-morning-cartoons version of something out of Seven.

This might have been a disastrous move were it not for the utter incompetence of the prosecution. By the third month of the trial, the prosecution’s strategy seemed to be to excitedly introduce the words “boy,” “suck,” “penis” and “jack off” into their cross-examinations as often as possible (Sneddon managed to elicit the trifecta phrase “sucking on the penis of a young boy!”) — and they pissed away Jackson’s own damaging admissions by continually introducing crazy new theories of molestation, real wacko witch-hunt stuff, that turned what might have been a serious trial into a low comedy of grasping provincial bureaucrats.

Here’s Ron Zonen cross-examining Wade Robson, a young man the prosecution contended had been molested by Jackson — but who testified to the contrary.

ZONEN: You’re telling us nothing happened, right?

ROBSON: That’s right.

ZONEN: All right. What you’re really telling us is that nothing happened while you were awake. Isn’t that true?

ROBSON: I’m telling you nothing ever happened.

ZONEN: Mr. Robson, when you were asleep, you wouldn’t have known what had happened, particularly at age seven, would you have?

ROBSON: I think something like that would wake me up.

One would think it would. In any case, there was never enough evidence at this trial of “something like that” to answer with any satisfaction the question of who Michael Jackson really is. Emboldened, the defense never bothered to offer an affirmative explanation of Jackson’s strange behavior.

Tom Sneddon did that one. Tom was so obsessed with MJ, he let his ego get the best of him. Tom was flying all over the world looking for kids to say they were molested, even to Australia. Wade Robeson, a well-known choreographer, even testified that MJ never touched him. The media was offering and begging people to lie for money.

When in doubt, go to trial and get as close to the truth as possible. No DNA, No Forensics, No witnesses–just opposing stories. The one that makes the most sense wins the vote from the majority!

Pearl, what was the “jesus juice”thing?

I would talk to Mike Tiabbi at times, he smoked non-filter cigarettes and I would tell him that my stepmother just died from cancer. I hope he listened. I tried to talk some sense into the media to tell the truth and sometimes, they did. Mike was decent to MJ.

The mannequin was weird. MJ was way to shy to ever do such a thing, especially in front of new children/people.

MJ would share his bed, but he would sleep on the floor in a sleeping bag. The bed was huge and his bedroom was 2 floors.

Jesus Juice was alcohol. The brother of the accuser was some type of locksmith and slick, very slick–Star Arvizo found a way into the wine cellar.

Those kids were bad!

Pearl, what was Michael situation in Bahrain, with the prince?

Oh so the kids got wine and drank it themselves?

Well, MJ’s brother Jermaine set that up. The Prince wanted to know MJ and was a huge fan. At one time, the electricity got turned off and the Prince wired Grace (the nanny) the money to pay it. MJ didn’t have a checking/bank account.

So via all that MJ wanted to leave America, because he felt so abused by everyone and he and Prince embarked on a comeback, but when the Prince’s brother was accidentally killed in an auto accident, I think MJ felt like an intruder and off MJ went to Europe!

Yes, the maid found wine in their suites. MJ had suites at Neverland and they could be so disrespectful and filthy them up and leave wine glasses all over.

Star bragged about being able to get into the wine cellar.

Sneddon also asked Macaley if MJ ever molested him. And Macauley said never, and then Sneddon said how about when you were sleeping, and Macauley said “don’t you think that would have woke me up?”

Didnt they have some sort of record deal in place at one time?

And what is your sense about Jackson’s death?

One thing most people don’t realize is that sodomy was NEVER an accusation. People just assume that it was, but never and not with any kid. I guess if the parents are going to make something up, they didn’t want that to be a part of the equation!!!!!!!!

What surprised me the most was how normal Michael Jackson was when you heard an entire truth. MJ love Disneyland and he was very naive and childlike, so being Peter Pan was probable something he thought people would endear to.

The Arvizo’s never had a record deal. Wade Robeson did and he and another kid did a remake of “Heartbreak Hotel” a rap song that I liked.

I might be writing a book abour MJ’s death. I have lots of discovery and I’m keeping notes and up to date with everything.

All I can say for sure is, “something in the milk is not clean”

The Arvizo kids did a video about Neverland and Gavin’s cancer, but no singing. they wanted to be in showbiz.

Well, they got their 15 mins of fame…at Jackson’s expense!

what do you mean by that,
it wasn’t the use of Propofol by an inattentive physician?

Pearl, had Michael lived, do you think he could have pulled off those 50 shows? He seemed so fragile…

I was the first to report there was an ambulance at MJ’s house. I wrote a story about that most tragic day. I was at the hospital all day. I was at MJ’s house the day before (outside talking with the fans) and that is when I learned that a doctor was spending the night. I actually saw Dr. Murray leave the day before and wondered who that was. I was worried, but when I saw the choreographer go into the gate, I figured MJ was fine.

I was planning on going to the Staples Center the next day to see him perform. I would hope to have been let in. MJ did that on rare occasions

Pearl’s website is michaeljacksoninsider.com where she has a blog and updates, along with being able to purchase her documentaries

Thank you Pearl for giving us some insight into Jackson’s trial and how grifters and the media helped destroy him. And we look forward ot your book n his death!

MJ as always skinny. He was strong though and tough in his perserverance. MJ once said that when he tours he goes through hell. He could have been talking about the sleep med required for sleep.

For years after the trial, MJ traveled the world, no how did he get propofol in Bahrain, Ireland, UK, Las Vegas, New York, California????? That means to me that he was not always using it!

Thanks for having me! Check out my website:

http://www.MichaelJacksonInsider.com

Hey Pups, Lisa . . .

MJ had his moment in the sun.

Thriller changed vids, hell, it BIRTHED vids.

Well, after Michael Nesmith, and Rio. *G*

Thriller changed the studio, the sound of the time, the sales and marketing, and influenced music everywhere.

It went global.

Seems to me The Beatles did that, too.

And Elvis, before them.

And Frank Sinatra, before Elivs.

But enough of MJ, his time is LONG passed, other than a historical referent for the change he once brought.

Thriller was long ago. MJ’s now gone.

Why is he still relevant to current affairs? Other than nostalgia?

His present occupation with MSM, and the public that feeds on the MSM, is way, way, way beyond his actual impact on life.

What is it that causes so many millions, or billions, to continue to obsess with him, in present time, as opposed to looking back wistfully and wondering how it could have all been different?

His shelf life should have expired a decade ago.

What keeps him alive? I’m purely clueless about this, I completely don’t understand why huge portions of the general populous of all races, economic and social strata, continue to propagate his ‘essential being’.

We’ve known him for 40 years!!!!! Simple as that!

Matt. Matt, Taibbi.

Not Mike Tiabbi . . .

For the record.

What’s cigs and cancer and death got to do with Matt’s postulations on MJ?

Which, I’ve noticed, are not answered in regards to the questions posed by PW?

That’s well glossed over Pearl.

But thanks for all time spent at Lisa’s Post, and all the info you share.

I remain somewhat confused if not horrified about the thrill of the masses with MJ.

If I had time to spend I’d try to research Marylin Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Beatles and a few others to see if MJ’s plight in life garnered what’s ongoing in the MSM and the masses.

I’d bet, I’d find that the MSM ginned up the messaging, in a VIRULENT way, to sell ad dollars.

And that the conclusion would be, MJ had his time in the sun. Deservedly so.

But was clung to by moneyed interests to sell ad time.

He was media created, and media destroyed.

(never mind his family, parents and others who used him all his life to make a buck)

And such is life in Show Biz. Like Warhol said, it’s fleeting, and should be.

But sometimes, there’s just too much money to be made on a figure.

Alive, or dead.

Everyone wants a piece of the money, the action, the fame.

Everyone.

It’s hard to know the truth about celebrities in these times. I tend to believe the ones closest to him on a professional as well as personal basis. The studio musicians that worked with him most, contemptuously dismissed even the possibility of these charges.

I think this was a tremendously mistreated kid who never overcame his childhood and tried to re-write it. I think there are lots of these people walking this earth who had to endure such nightmares. Some of them were driven to excel in other areas, but few could harness their talent and present it so freshly and with such originality as MJ.

Personally, I don’t believe whatever it is that causes humans to molest innocent children resided in him. The lesson is in what we’ve allowed our society to sink to.

Remember that scene from Reversal of Fortune where a disembodied Glenn Close is pointing to the trial of Claus von Bulow below. What is the truth she ask? What really happened? In the world of mere mortals the heated opinions are all over the map. Only in a world with God can we be guarenteed that in the end the truth will out.

That’s why I wish I could be a believer again. Well, that and immortality of course.

Sorry the person that I knew at the trial and talked to was Mike Tiabbi, not Matt Tiabbi.

I mentioned him smoking because that made a big impression on me. I tried to bond with whoever I could to get them to listen to reason, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes it was permanent, but mostly it was just for a moment.