Human Nature is More Than a Michael Jackson Song - Or, Why Don't You Report All The Good Michael Jackson Has Done for Humankind?
From Jan Glidewell in the St. Petersburg Times:
The recent set-to about whether Al Capone ever hung around Moon Lake points to an interesting quirk in human nature.
We love places with historical associations, and, for some reason, we seem to be more fascinated with the negatives than the positives....
I can't ignore the fact that I live in Dade City, which draws its name from the 1835 "massacre" of Maj. Francis Dade and most of his command by Seminoles.
It was, of course, called a massacre because the Indians won. When such situations were reversed, they were described as glorious victories....
You do notice through all of this, though, that there are very few positive claims to fame hereabouts.
Elvis made a movie in Citrus and Levy counties; Grover Cleveland used to fish in Citrus County. I could tell you about the Gray Moss Inn in Dade City where Theodore Roosevelt is said to have stayed on a swing through the area that also took him to St. Leo ... but then I would probably have to point out that two of Saint Leo University's most famous former attendees were actor Lee Marvin, who got expelled from the old Saint Leo prep school for throwing another kid out of a second-story window and breaking his arm, and former brutal Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza....
From Gina Lubrano of the San Diego Union Tribune. Note that she blames the Communists and the baby seal clubbers for the problem:
Sometimes, newspapers cannot win. Report the news, and some readers will complain that the paper is too negative. Introduce some lightness, and other readers will complain that more important stories belong on the front page.
Tuesday, the front page of The San Diego Union-Tribune included a story about San Diego third-graders who entered a national science and technology contest and took second prize with an imaginary device called "the Sleep Doctor." The device, the Holmes elementary school children explained, would monitor brain activity and determine when a person is having a nightmare.
A reader complained that stories about the Iraq War that appeared on Page A2 that day were more important than what the children had accomplished....
The call referring to the story about the children was unusual in some ways, because instead of asking for more positive stories about Iraq, the articles the reader wanted on the front-page were negative – about Abu Ghraib and allegations of lavish spending by Halliburton Inc. in Iraq and Kuwait. Most complaints these days are about stories on the front page. Because developments in Iraq have been dominating the news, some readers are convinced that this newspaper is bashing Bush, that is, as one reader put it, "tilting to the left." What I hear from readers on an almost daily basis is that they want the positive news out of Iraq. One reader said she knows the newspaper needs to report the news, but contends there are positive stories that she said simply are not being reported by the Union-Tribune.
Editors will argue there has been positive news about Iraq, citing stories about the coming transfer of power....
What is of deep concern to editors...is the way some highly partisan readers on both sides of the political spectrum are dismissing stories that do not fit in with their worldview. They accuse editors of having an agenda, of being biased, of not reporting the truth. They listen to talk radio and television commentators with a view; they scour the Internet for tidbits that will support their point of view. They dismiss news stories that contain confirmed information. Instead, they prefer to rely on unverified information that has been gathered by people with an agenda. That is dangerous for anyone, regardless of what you believe.
So, since I cited Michael Jackson in the title, I should note the positive things that Michael Jackson has done recently. Let's look at one of his strongest supporters, his ex-wife:
With tears in her eyes, Michael Jackson's ex-wife Deborah Rowe took the stand in his child molestation trial Wednesday and contradicted the chief prosecutor, saying she was never scripted or rehearsed to say positive things about him in a video interview made to rebut a damaging TV documentary.
"I didn't want anyone to be able to come back to me and say my interview was rehearsed," Rowe said. "As Mr. Jackson knows, no one can tell me what to say."
MISTER Jackson? Reminds me of the lyrics of a song by his younger sister.
Prosecutors called Rowe to support their conspiracy case against Jackson, who is accused of molesting a 13-year-old boy in February or March 2003. The case alleges Jackson conspired to hold the accuser's family captive to get them to rebut the TV documentary "Living With Michael Jackson" by British journalist Martin Bashir.
Rowe reiterated that she had been offered a list of questions by her interviewers but she declined to look at them before she talked.
"It was a cold interview and I wanted to keep it that way," she said.
Deputy District Attorney Ron Zonen asked her what she expected after she gave the interview.
Teary, she said, "To be reunited with the children and be reacquainted with their dad."
Asked why she wanted to see Jackson again, she said, "He's my friend."...
Rowe said she knew Jackson for perhaps 20 years before they married and once they divorced she was allowed visitation with the children for eight hours every 45 days. She said it was a tough schedule to keep because Jackson travels so much with the children and she finally relinquished all parental rights.
"The visitations were not comfortable," she said, explaining that they would meet at a hotel and "it was a very sterile environment."
She said that she has not seen the children in 2 1/2 to three years.
In 2003, she said, she received a call through her former employer, a doctor who brought Jackson and her together. She said he told her that someone associated with Jackson wanted to talk to her and arranged a phone call for her with Marc Schaffel, who is named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case.
Jackson got on the phone briefly during that conversation, she said.
"He told me there was a video coming out and it was full of lies and would I help. I said, as always, yes. I asked him if he was OK. I was very upset," she testified.
Zonen asked: "What did he ask you to do?"
"He asked if I would work with Ronald and Dieter. I asked him if he was OK and the children were OK and if I could see them when things settled down," she said. "He said yes."
Ronald Konitzer and Dieter Wiesner, Jackson associates, have also been named by prosecutors as unindicted co-conspirators.
Zonen then asked, "Did you want to see the children?"
With tears welling in her eyes, she said, "Yes, very much."
Rowe said her conversation with Jackson lasted perhaps 2 1/2 minutes and there was no discussion of what he wanted her to do other than to work with his associates.
She said all she could recall him saying was, "There was a bad video coming out."...
Her testimony did link Jackson to the making of the rebuttal video. But her account offered less evidence than the prosecution seemed to expect to tie Jackson to a conspiracy. She said she was not pressured to say anything specific and that there was "no quid pro quo."
Asked why she would help Jackson, she said, "I promised him I would always be there for Michael and the children."
She did not give any details of her private life with Jackson and made it clear that she did not want to discuss it.
"My personal life was my personal life and no one's business," she said when asked by the prosecution if she had talked completely truthfully on the video that was made.
Rowe said that before the interview began at Schaffel's home, they talked briefly about her family and he reported on her children's progress.
She said Schaffel told her that "they were fine, that Michael was going to be OK, how big the children had gotten and how beautiful they were and how strongheaded Paris was, like me."
She said the videotaped interview lasted nine hours and that she recently saw a two-hour version of it which was shown to her by prosecutors.
She said she found it "very boring and dull" and didn't really pay attention while she was watching it.
Rowe said she did not see the "Living With Michael Jackson" documentary before her interview was taped.
"All I knew is whatever was being put out about Michael was hurtful to Michael and the children," she said.
Rowe said she told Jackson's associates that before she could take part in the video she needed a release from a confidentiality agreement.
"The confidentiality agreement said I could not speak with the press, public, anyone, regarding Michael or the children or our lives together," she said....
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