"Radio stations in Canada, New Zealand and Australia are removing Michael Jackson songs from their playlists after two men alleged in a new documentary that the late singer abused them."
Even if all the allegations are true, canceling Michael Jackson is a "Bad" and "Dangerous" road to go down.
Silencing music by a dead person who committed crimes does nothing to stop those kinds of crimes from happening in the future. If we consistently threw out all music by people who once acted horribly, we’d have no John Lennon,* no Beatles, no Miles Davis. Of course, the Beatles revolutionized rock and pop music, and Miles Davis revolutionized jazz. So we’d be left musically impoverished, just to let us feel vaguely good about ourselves.
* John Lennon said this in 1980, the last year of his life:
All that "I used to be cruel to my woman / I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved" was me. I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically — any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace, you see. It is the most violent people who go for love and peace. . . . I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence. I will have to be a lot older before I can face in public how I treated women as a youngster.
(And yes, I am that guy!)
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