Was there money involved when these young men were children? To their parents, I mean. When these accusations first came out, I remember wondering what were their parents thinking? Were they willingly turning a blind eye to their sons sharing a bed with Michael Jackson? Even if he never laid a hand on those boys, that still strikes me as creepy.
Celebrity is seductive. Answering that question involves a lot of steps that add up to "knowing on hindsight" but not while it was happening in many ways.
As for money being involved...MIchael Jackson offered the trappings of his wealth to the two boys and their families, paying for everything etc. and it wasn't mentioned, but when they were part of his tour there must've been a salary, though that wasn't discussed, but the two profiled in the documentary were not involved in the two famous public accusations (they weren't the accusers in those cases) that resulted in money paid to the families, those were different situations, discussed in the film.
Lyle....I have watched this too. Both episodes. Apart from the utter horror with what Jackson did to these (and or others)kids.....what did you make of their parents...
letting their little boys go with him all over the world for weeks at a time ? Crazy.... and completely round the the loop comes to my mind.
I think this documentary, if one watches the whole thing, shows how people can be fine with something at first and just not realize the entirety of the situation. Yes, until it's too late.
I liken it to the game show scandals of the late 1950's. The film Quiz Show shows how a very smart, sophisticated, college professor from a great family innocently decides to show off his knowledge on a game show. The end of the movie shows how he becomes disgraced because he was ultimately cheating, but the middle shows how that happened. He was a moral and ethical guy, but small decisions that seemed correct and innocent at the time and were encouraged by the game show producers who were telling him that's the way things were done and there was nothing wrong with it, were ultimately his downfall. Even though he'd questioned it himself in various ways.
It's like being in the ocean and feeling like you can go out further and further until suddenly you realize you shouldn't have.
When people ask, "How could you have done such and such," it usually comes from a place of knowing on hindsight. I don't know how many times I've seen shows like Oprah or Dr. Phil where the people involved in something that seems so obvious had no idea what was going on when it was happening.
It's like the scene in the 1997 film TItanic where the guy on the salvage vessel in the beginning is telling and showing Gloria Stuart, with computer animated graphics, what actually happened to the ship after hitting the iceberg. She softly replies something like, "Thank you for that fine forensic analysis Mr. Bodine," and then almost to herself, "Of course the experience of it was somewhat different."
I also have to point out...there are people who STILL believe that Michael Jackson is absolutely blameless.