mozfonky said:

Maybe nobody questioned it before Oprah,because they did'nt feel it was any of there business to be asking him about it,and maybe he did'nt think he had to explain to everyone why his skin tone was changing. It was his business,he really did'nt owe anyone an explanation. Why would he have wanted to be white?
[Edited 8/22/09 21:12pm]

mozfonky said:

He didn't really go from dark to light over night. I mean, if you look from 1984 to 1987, it was a definite progression

That is correct and even on thriller he was looking less black, how is a gradual lightening vitiligo?

More than 50 percent of the patients who begin depigmentation therapy are able to go on to total vitiligo — that is, complete depigmentation. The key to depigmentation is the topical application of a cream containing monobenzyl ether of hydroquinone, an antioxidant, that has the generic name monobenzone. The most widely used commercial product is called Benoquin that contains 20 percent monobenzone. Other compounds such as hydroquinone simply do not work.
PROCEDURE:
Because complete depigmentation will take one to four years, there is no hurry in applying Benoquin all over the body. I always want first to demonstrate to the patient that the process works. Photographs are taken of both arms, but Benoquin with 20 percent monobenzone is applied only to one arm for two to three months.
When the patient returns in two to three months, photographs are taken again. The treated arm should be significantly lighter than the untreated arm. If it is not, the patient should continue treating the arm for another one to three months. When it is obvious that the treated arm has become noticeably lighter than the controlled one, the patient applies the cream to the hands, arms, and the face. While all these areas are depigmenting, other parts of the body where no cream was applied usually lighten as well. Most patients have a wonderful response and are happy to once again be of one color. In public no one comments or stares at them.
Once satisfactory depigmentation is achieved, most patients have no further problems. However, a few people may get some pigmented spots on the face during the summer months. These spots should be treated with 20 percent Benoquin or, if available, the 40 percent preparation. Sometimes freezing the spots with liquid nitrogen helps. On rare occasions a patient will initially respond well to Benoquin but then may stop or later repigment or even hyperpigment. In these patients Benoquin in 40 percent concentration will not work. They may even go on to repigment enough so that they no longer need to consider depigmentation.

EmeraldSkies said:

I conveyed what I meant pretty thouroughly. Not saying he didn't have the disease, just questioning, it'll all come out in the wash. And I'm sorry, it is important for our public figures to share some things. When it comes to the black and the brown, all I have to do is go outside the front door to see myriads of them who hate themselves, can't stand themselves, try to slowly kill themselves, that is why we needed men like Muhammad Ali, the kinds of men who don't exist anymore. How many black people felt so much better about themselves after hearing Ali shout I am pretty I am the greatest? That is why such things are important, because you know the hammer is eventually falling anyway, white society has always systematically destroyed the images of great black men, why should we "try to be equal to him" as Malcolm used to say.

mozfonky said:

Sorry,but you can't lump white society as a whole.Not every white man has some personal vendeta against black people. I am sure that there are ingoranI know that
t bastards out there that still think that way,actually I know there are,but that does not mean that every white person feels the same way,lord knows I don't.Those are the kinds of people that make me ashamed to be white.

EmeraldSkies said:

I know that, I'm saying the system, the power structure itself always demonizes black icons, always. Not saying your average white joe cares one way or the other.
[Edited 8/22/09 23:22pm]

Timmy84 said:

I said white because the people who use those alternative methods will never be the same shade as white people like Michael was they will still be brown or yellow. The depigmentation evened out the skin tone to get his brown skin to match the white patches. But even after that he still had vitilgo so he still had to apply makeup. He also needed the lipstick because he lost pigmentation there.

Well it's either the system or your father's self-esteem. I don't see how that's related to MJ. People have an assumption that he hated his "race" but he never did. I've yet to see evidence of it. Bob Jones' book doesn't convince me either because it's tabloid-ish the way that book is.

Brett Ratner on Michael Jackson: 'You felt like God was within him'
June 26, 2009 | 12:25 pm

My father loves to brag to his friends that while his son is a big-shot Hollywood reporter, it was his father who actually met Michael Jackson. Until he retired a few years ago, my dad had a store called the 24 Collection on the Lincoln Road Mall in Miami Beach that specialized in fashion, jewelry, art and one-of-a-kind oddities (I still have a clock set into a Cuban cigar box with a portrait of Fidel Castro on the clock face). One day Brett Ratner, who grew up in Miami and whose mother was a regular customer at the store, called my dad and asked if he could bring his pal Michael Jackson by to look around. As he often did as a courtesy for celebrities who might be annoyed or hounded, my father closed the store that afternoon and put the staff at Jackson's disposal.

"Michael walked around every inch of the store, feeling things, smelling things," my father remembers. "He'd ask questions about what this was or that was, where it was from, how we found it. I made sure the staff didn't intrude on him, although one person did ask for an autograph, which made them an ex-employee right away. But Michael was just off in his own world, curious about everything he saw."

I think my dad got his hopes up when he saw that Jackson was also accompanied by an aide who had a zippered envelope full of cash. But the King of Pop never bought anything. After spending an hour in the store, he just thanked everyone for letting him look around and left.

I called Ratner this morning to ask him how he became such fast friends with Jackson. It turns out that they met in 1998 when Ratner was finishing his first "Rush Hour" picture. One day, Chris Tucker was doing a scene and broke into a wild, Michael Jackson-style dance. The sequence was so funny that when Ratner had test screenings of the film, it got one of the biggest laughs in the picture. But because it was an obvious Jackson impression, Ratner knew he had to clear it with the pop star before he could put it in the movie.

That presented a problem, since Jackson was so reclusive that even Ratner, one of the great celebrity schmoozers of our time, couldn't get to him. He even called Jackson's Neverland ranch but never got anywhere. Then he got lucky. "My editor was talking to the projectionist who ran the final screening and it turned out that he was Michael's personal projectionist," Ratner told me today. "So I gave him the print and asked him to play the beginning of the second reel for Michael, which had Chris' dance in it."

Two days later Ratner picked up the phone and heard the soft, feathery voice of Michael Jackson. So what did Michael say? Keep reading.

"Michael said he'd watched the whole movie and loved it, especially the scene Chris did with his dance. He said, 'You have my permission to use whatever you want.' " That was great, but Ratner needed something in writing. When he asked Jackson to sign something on a piece of paper, Jackson simply invited him up to the ranch. "So I drove up there and walked in, with all his giraffes and other animals, all out there to greet me." Ratner recalls. "I ended up staying at the ranch and we just became great friends. We both had this huge, almost childlike fascination with movies and music and all kinds of entertainment."

Over the years, Ratner and Jackson spent an enormous amount of time together. They would film each other, with Jackson asking Ratner about how he became a film director and Ratner asking Jackson about how he became an entertainer. "I have hours of footage of us, sitting around in our pajamas, with me asking him about what kind of music he loved as a kid, what kind of books he had on the wall as a kid. When you were with him, you really felt like God was within him. He was an amazing, superhuman kind of person, but he always treated you as an equal. He would be your friend and he never asked for anything in return."

One of their favorite activities was to have dance-offs in the game room at Jackson's house. Jackson would put on a record, usually a song by his sister, Janet, and unleash some awesome dance moves. Then Ratner or Chris Tucker, who would sometimes come along, would play Michael's records and dance along to them. I asked Ratner if that felt a little like a mere mortal playing one-on-one with LeBron James. "Hey, I wasn't self-conscious. I'm a pretty good dancer. It was just fun to do it together."

When they weren't dancing, Ratner and Jackson would watch movies together. He says they must've watched the original version of "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" 50 times over the years. "I know that people looked at Michael and thought he was strange, but to me, he was fascinating," Ratner says. "He was the most inspirational person in my life. His one dream was to cure all the sick children in the world. And when I'd say, 'Isn't that impossible?' Michael would just start to cry. He was very emotional about things that moved him. I guess you'd have to say he was a pure innocent in a world that wasn't so innocent anymore."

http://latimesblogs.latim...human.html

OK, this is getting beyond the point of ridiculousness, lol:

Who Is The New Mystery Woman In The Michael Jackson Paternity Scandal?

Posted on Aug 12, 2009 @ 09:02AM print it send it

A new woman’s name has surfaced the Michael Jackson paternity saga -- and like Billie Jean, she was not his lover.

Rather, a Mexican nurse named Helena was handpicked by the late King of Pop to act as surrogate mother to the late entertainer's 7-year-old boy, Blanket, the Daily Mirror reported Wednesday.

Blanket was conceived, according to the Web site, via IVF, using King of Pop's sperm. The child was born February 21, 2002 at the Sharp Grossmont Hospital in La Mesa, California; on his birth certificate, Jackson is listed as the father, while the mother’s name is left blank.

The Thriller singer's third son was born to Helena, a friend told the Web site, because the mother of his first two kids, Debbie Rowe, had health problems that interfered with any more pregnancies, sending Jackson on a hunt for his next surrogate mother. He reportedly paid the woman $20,000 for her services, and gave her an expense account and a staff of servants, at one point.

“He chose Helena because she had a Latino background but she was also a US citizen and had quite fair skin," a friend of Jackson’s told the Web site. “He liked her because she was very attractive and seemed stable and intelligent. She was a nurse or medical assistant, which he also liked. She was around 5ft 4ins, slim, aged around 30 and had long, dark, straight hair. He said she was strait-laced, almost a girl next door type. There were no dramas with her. She knew what she had to do and got on with it.”

Jackson died after suffering a sudden cardiac arrest June 25 in Los Angeles; results of an autopsy conducted on the pop icon have yet to be released, pending the conclusion of a police investigation.

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Timmy84 said:

Well I know this now. I feel like such an ass.