Thursday, November 20, 2003

Mr. Jackson

Now I swear this is true and I have friends from elementary school who can back me up. I never liked Michael Jackson. I secretly liked Beat It and Billy Jean, but I did not like him. I thought he was bizarre. Granted I was about 6 or 7 at the time. But while all of my little friends were buying MJ posters and excitedly discussing gloves, I stood firm in my dislike. I am not proud to be redeemed. Yeah yeah innocent until proven guilty. Fine. I still think he ain't right. What surprises me is that my husband, the gun lover, is surprisingly liberal in these matters. Not child molesting, but the innocent until proven guilty thing. He won't even make a judgement after the trial is over. The most I can ever get out of him is "based on the evidence that has been reported, he appears to be guilty." My husband is the type of person who would obey traffic laws if he were the only person left on the planet. I once talked him into running a completely deserted red light at about 3 am one morning. I can't tell you what a turn-on it was when he did, but then again, we had been sitting there for about 5 minutes. But I digress, or at least I think I do. I had a point somewhere around here. Oh yeah. There is, apparantly, a law in CA that allows you to bring in evidence of prior bad acts as long as they fit the MO of the crime you are being accused of. The evidence doesn't even have to be a conviction, just an accusation. Deep down, my conscience is pricked by this law. Don't get me wrong, I think it is horrible for a child molester to get off on a technicality, and the knee-jerk, civilly disobedient reactionary in me could embrace this law wholeheartedly, but there is still something odd about it. I think it has far too great a potential to be abused. But then again, so do kids. So there it is.