The kids would still appear to have been fathered by a black man, though. There would be some genetic link in their physical appearance that links them. My teacher in 5th and 6th grades was the daughter of a black man and a white woman and she was paler than I am now, but she still had the broad nose and very curly, coarse hair that her father had. You can't expect people to see two apples and two oranges and not say there are four pieces of fruit on the table. All it takes is two working pairs of eyes to see that there is a very, very, very distinct possibility that he didn't father those kids. Again though, if it turns out he did.......science needs to study him.

Quite simple. I can respect his talent and appreciate what that talent produced, but I can't respect the person he allowed his hubris and celebrity to make of him. Whether you believe the speculations about molestation or not, the truth is Michael Jackson turned into a complete sideshow and never seemed to notice people were laughing at him, not with him. He became a drug addict (if all these stories are to be believed), he spent himself into hundreds of millions of dollars of debt and he physically took very poor care of himself. I can't respect people who have such a natural god-given talent and then piss it away. That doesn't mean I can't appreciate what he was able to produce when he still had the talent.

It is not genetically possible for a black man to father three lily-white kids. Those children have no appearance of being bi-racial. Which they would be if their natural parents were Michael Jackson and Debbie Rowe. Even the most light-skinned child of a bi-racial couple still carries the appearance of being bi-racial. Those kids are whiter than me and both my parents are of Northern European ancestry. If it comes out that he did indeed father those kids I'm going to be damn shocked because that means he just flipped hundreds of years of accepted science and genetics the bird.

Well to be fair, the fact his image got tarnished was his own fault. I wasn't a massive, massive fan of his music but he did a few songs I really liked and I too was hoping that maybe he'd seen the error of his ways and decided to put the freak show on hold, but it was not to be. The biggest problem he had was he surrounded himself with people afraid to say no. If he asked for a car made out of chocolate, someone would get it for him. If he had better people surrounding him, maybe a lot of his addictions would never have started or at least been fixed. What's really sad is that in the wake of all his personal problems the last 15 or so years, all the good music and charity work he did was completely obfuscated.

I loved his music. Not so much the singer, but the songs. And he could dance like no one's business. If I had to rank my Top 10 MJ songs, they'd go as follows: 1. Beat It 2. Off The Wall 3. Smooth Criminal 4. Billie Jean 5. Remember The Time 6. Human Nature 7. Earth Song 8. Who Is It 9. The Way You Make Me Feel 10. You Rock My World I still can't believe he's dead, I know he's had a lot of problems but 50 is too young.

I watch Are You Being Served? all the time....it's my favorite Britcom. Mrs. Slocumbe was my favorite character, right next to Mr. Humphries.

God damn right they can't. When I was old enough to start Kindergarten, one of the schools my parents were looking at, unbeknownst to them, still used corporal punishment. They were sitting there listening to the principal talk about what the school day would consist of, how much tuition would be and what not and when he got to talking about spankings/paddlings.....my dad flipped his shit. He told the guy that the only people allowed to spank his children were their parents and that if any teacher in that school laid a hand on me, they'd meet his fist first and his lawyer second. They promptly went to another school. After what my parents had to go through as children (daily beatings and being thrown into walls), they swore when they had kids they'd find some other means of disciplining them. My dad got into a fight with his own brother about this a few years ago. My uncle whipped my cousins, sometimes to the point the buckle would break off the belt and my dad would be foaming at the mouth over it. He told his brother that if you have to raise your hand in anger to your child to discipline them because you can't think of any other way, you have no business being a parent. If my mom hadn't stepped in, WWIII would have broken out. I have to tend to agree, though. I had a lot of friends growing up who were beaten and whipped by their parents and right now......they're fucked up beyond all belief. They didn't come from dysfunctional or bad homes, either. I don't keep in touch with many of them, but some other friends of mine do and they relay what's going on with them to me and it's just sad. I absolutely cannot condone what Joe Jackson did to those kids, I don't give a rat's ass if it was the norm or not. I think a lot of what happened to Michael when he was a kid formed what he became as an adult.

And there's #3. So we had Carradine, McMahon and Fawcett then MJ, Billy Mays and Karl Malden. Who's next?

I was definitely no fan of Michael Jackson the person, but I have enough respect for his talent and his abilities to know this thread is waaaaaaaaaay out of line. The guy hasn't even been buried yet and already people are lining up to take craps on his head?

No, Joe Jackson is not being an asshole in public because he doesn't want to cry in public. He's being an asshole in public because he is an asshole.

Joe beat the shit out of Michael and the rest of his kids when they were children and never gave a damn about them except to prod them into making more money for him. The fact that he's lost a child doesn't mean squat. I never expected him to look even remotely upset. All he cares about is making sure Michael provided for him in his will, and according to what I've been reading.......he didn't. He willed money to his children, his mother and several charities.

Sunburns. I put SPF 70+ on this weekend but apparently half the can wasn't enough, I needed the whole can. At least when it goes away I'll at least have some nice color, I was hoping for that much.

Hmmm, I wouldn't say that. According to the photographer, most of the band were unable to.....heed nature's call so to speak, so he tipped a container of rain water on the sides of the slab to make it look like they had done their business.

Why did you get bothered enough to say anything? I read copious amounts of dumb comments on YouTube all the time, but I don't let it get me angry or anything. If I make a comment about a video and someone says something like that in response, I just ignore it.

The Sun is basically England's version of the Enquirer. I wouldn't take anything they say seriously unless a reputable news source has said it first.

I said this in the Lisa Marie thread, but I wasn't a fan of Michael the person......but I love his music. That's what I'll miss the most. The art. His dancing. What initially put him in the stratosphere to start with. I don't think any of us will ever really know what made him become the person he was at the end of his life, whatever that reason was will be buried with him.

My parents watched him call Kennedy's death on national television. Both were home sick from school that day and of course when the news broke, my grandparents herded everyone around their respective TV sets. If Michael Jackson was the epitome of music, Walter Cronkite IS the evening news.

I always thought their relationship was more for show than anything else, but apparently I was wrong. I had no idea feelings like that existed between them, and knowing how gutted she is, tears at me. While I was no fan of Michael Jackson the man, I was a huge fan of his music and his talent, which we now will be deprived of. I can completely understand where she's coming from, though. Though there's no evidence that Michael committed suicide, I do know what it's like to feel like you're powerless in stopping someone on the wrong road. I absolutely know that feeling of "I wish there was more I could have done/If only had done XYZ.....". I've been there. It sucks and it hurts like something you wouldn't believe. You replay in your mind all those instances where you could have said something or could have done something and didn't, and then you tear yourself up thinking "if only". My words to Lisa Marie would be....don't. Don't tear yourself up over this. This wasn't your life, as connected with it as you were. Michael had to live that life and this is how his road came to an end. You couldn't control how it ended. That was his choice. A choice that has caused immense suffering in not just his friends and family but the hundreds of millions of people around the world who call themselves fans. My heart goes out to Lisa Marie. After losing one's father in the manner she did, to see it repeat itself almost to the letter in someone she deeply cared for, I can't imagine how she is keeping it together.

Well, then actually Carradine, McMahon and Fawcett were the first trifecta. Jackson and Mays are the first 2 of the next one. What a weird, weird week.

Jesus, who's next? McMahon, Fawcett and Jackson were the first trifecta. Mays starts the next one. Enough with the death already.

Lifeguards everywhere and of course you can swim in it. If the rip currents were too dangerous there'd be red flags all over the beach. It's Johnny Mercer's Pier (actual name) that you see people fishing off of. It's why you can't swim over there. You have to move over quite a ways. It's in Wrightsville Beach, NC.....about a 3 1/2 hour drive from where I live now.

Here's where my sister and I were today: It's a kick-ass wallpaper, BTW.

Going to Wrightsville Beach on the coast with my sister! I'll upload a couple pics in a few minutes.

I watch the BBC News and I'm actually kind of pissed off that they're devoting as much time to this story as US news stations are. There's other shit going on that is of more importance to the rest of the world and while I can see CNN and Fox News and MSNBC and every other station going bonkers over this, I was hoping at least the damn BBC wouldn't fall in line.

If one of the surviving members of Led Zeppelin died today, I would be upset. If you had bothered to read all of my posts in this thread, you'd have seen me saying that there are celebrities I am fond of and whose work I enjoy and if they died, I would be upset. Surviving members of Led Zeppelin fall into that category. There's a difference between being gutted and upset and then acting like you just found out your child or spouse has died. I don't understand people who place celebrities on the same level as they would members of their own family. However nowhere did I state that they couldn't act this way. Just that I didn't understand it. Next time read everything I've said before you critcize me for a piece of it.