Thursday 22 July 2010

The Lockdown

As of yesterday my twitter account is locked and I will only accept followers who I know in person. Anybody I don't know personally has been removed from my facebook friends list and my profile is no longer accessible to anybody who isn't already following me.

The reason for this drastic course of action is that Bonnie Cox's supporters, either with or without her instruction (she says without), yesterday bombarded me with obscene hatemail and one fan in particular began recruiting cronies to spy on my personal accounts.

As anticipated, Bonnie Cox has posted a third blog about me. In it she claims that I sent her 'obscenity laden threats'. The only thing I sent Ms Cox which even vaguely resembled a threat was a notice that if she continued to publish libelous information about me, I would seek legal action.

As it happens, I will not be taking any action against Ms Cox. Whereas I was at first outraged by the misinformation being perpetuated about me, after a few days' reflection I've come to realise that anybody who subscribes to conspiracy theories about Sony assassins and body doubles is simply confused and vulnerable.

Ms Cox claims in her latest entry that I 'sent her way' a series of angry fans. This allegation is entirely bogus. I didn't ask anybody to email Bonnie Cox and even posted a message on my facebook wall today asking my remaining followers not to harrass her, because I feel she is emotionally vulnerable.

Cox and her supporters' favourite bogus allegation appears to be that I said Michael Jackson was a drug addict at the time of his death. I did not say this. A few weeks ago I became involved in a heated debate with several twitter users after I made a comment about Michael Jackson's issues with drugs over the years. A number of hardcore Jackson fanatics began sending me furious tweets, claiming that Jackson had never been addicted to drugs in his life.

Jackson's own family members have repeatedly stated in interviews since his death that he was addicted to painkillers at various stages in his life and they attempted to stage several interventions. Quite what it is that makes Cox and her supporters think they know more about Jackson's drug problems than his own brothers and sisters, I'm not sure.

Cox's supporters have left equally baseless comments beneath her blog and all over twitter/facebook. Many of them claim I am 'cashing in' on the wave of support for Jackson since his death. How many times do I have to tell them that my pro-Jackson articles have been written pro bono before they actually digest the information? Moreover, I've been penning articles in Jackson's favour since 2008. It's Cox, not me, who only began covering Jackson after he died.

Others claim that Bonnie Cox never accused me of being in cahoots with Sony, but I have emails forwarded to me by fans in which Cox states clearly her belief that the only reason I'm angry about her blog is because she made the connection between me and Sony.

Just to put an end to any speculation that I am, or ever was, on Sony's payroll; the only exchange I've ever had with Sony was when they banned me from their catalogue release department after I wrote a negative review of Thriller 25.

Tuesday 20 July 2010

Clearing Up More Nonsense

After discovering yesterday that one individual was impersonating me on TMZ, I discovered that another was writing inaccurate articles about me for consumption by thousands of vulnerable and impressionable fans.

Bonnie Cox, author of the 'Michael's Guardian' blog, has recently published two inaccurate and defamatory articles about me and has alluded on her twitter page to the fact that she's planning a third.

Cox, a supporter of the Tea Party movement who last year wrote on her facebook page that she hoped President Obama would get on a plane with one of his 'muslim buddies' and crash, insists on her blog that Michael Jackson was murdered by Sony, 'This Is It' is full of body doubles and Jackson's friends are being murdered to disguise the truth about his death.

Among the brainless witterings on her blog, she baselessly accuses me of authoring 'false' blogs about Michael Jackson, suggests that I am only covering him positively for my own financial gain and implies that my friendship with J Randy Taraborrelli is part of a Sony conspiracy to destroy Michael Jackson.

Cox claimed J Randy Taraborrelli's biography 'Michael Jackson: The Magic and the Madness' was sponsored by Sony as part of a campaign to smear Michael Jackson. Not only this, but Cox went on to insinuate that because I am friends with Randy Taraborrelli, I could be in on it.

She later sent me a message via twitter implying that there was something shady about my friendship with Taraborrelli, saying, "I have a photo of you and Taraborrelli together. How am I supposed to deal with that?"

The notion that a photograph of myself and J Randy Taraborrelli is evidence of a conspiracy is laughable. I have made no secret of my friendship with Randy Taraborrelli and nor has he. We had dinner together in LA several weeks ago and both posted the pictures on our facebook pages. I'm not ashamed of our friendship and nor should I be. Taraborrelli is a kind, warm, funny and generous man, and any implication that he's part of a conspiracy to destroy Michael Jackson is beyond absurd. The idea that a photograph of us together would evidence any shady conspiracy or subterfuge, or would be of any interest to Cox's readers, is insane.


Randy Taraborrelli and I in Los Angeles.


Cox has since threatened me indirectly via twitter, writing a message that I'm 'not going to like tomorrow's blog', so apparently her next entry will be filled with even more deluded nonsense.
Cox, by her own admission, only began writing about Jackson after his death. I, meanwhile, have a documented history of Jackson-related journalism stretching back at least as far as 2008. Ironic, then, that Cox should accuse me of being the bandwagon jumper.

Her inexperience shows, too. Among her 'evidence' of Randy Taraborrelli's anti-Jackson agenda she cites Bob Jones's tell-all book about Michael Jackson. That would be Bob Jones who admitted on the stand during Jackson's trial that his book contained fabricated information, such as false claims that he witnessed Jackson licking the head of a young boy.

Cox also neglects to mention that in a series of tape-recorded telephone conversations between Jackson and a female friend, known as the 'Glenda Tapes', Jackson name-checks Taraborrelli's book and confirms its accuracy.

A final word: The idea that I have only started writing in Jackson's defence since he died and it became profitable is easily disproven by this 2008 interview I conducted with Aphrodite Jones about her book 'Michael Jackson Conspiracy'.

As for the idea that I am benefitting financially from my articles about Jackson's media treatment, my work on the Michael Jackson case has been conducted largely at my own expense. My most recent Huffington Post article, 'One of the Most Shameful Episodes in Journalistic History', took a month to research and is over 5000 words long. I was not paid for any of my research or writing on that piece. I wrote it because I am passionate about the cause and believe the injustice needs to be highlighted.
Quite how my willingness to spend one month doing unpaid research and writing on a pro-Michael Jackson article ties in with the theory that I'm part of a Sony-controlled anti-Michael Jackson conspiracy, I'm not sure. You'll have to direct that question to Bonnie Cox.

The Idiots Have Landed

It has come to my attention that one or more idiotic individuals have been posting obscene comments at TMZ under my name.

Just to confirm, I do not post at TMZ under any name and the comments are nothing to do with me.