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Comment by XMPPwocky | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to feel weird about watching old DVDs of the Cosby Show, for example. With the "benefit" of context, the vibes are sort of irrevocably off.

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Bill Cosby's character was a gynecologist whose office was in his basement (!)

Yet Michael Jacksons music is still played on the radio and in other media contexts.

The allegations against Jackson surfaced while he was still very famous so you could argue it’s already been “priced in”, for want of a better phrase.

Better comparison would be R. Kelly who, like Cosby, was actually convicted of what he was accused of, and did end up having a lot of radio stations (and other media contexts) stop using his music. Not all, but a good number.

I googled around, and ... has R. Kelly been convicted? Searching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Kelly for the string "convict" yields only the sentence saying "R. Kelly had not ever actually been convicted of any crime", quoting a news article from 2019. There is mention of a "sentencing trial", but the cited article (from Dec 2020) says he has pled not guilty and that evidence will be presented, which also sounds like it hasn't reached the conviction stage. And recent news results don't mention convictions (other than "If convicted") either.

Do you have a citation?

Uh, damn, you're right. Honestly, he's been in jail for so long now- 2.5 years and 22 counts against him- that I wrongly assumed/forgot he wasn't/Mandela effected it.

At the time of this writing I had 13 upvotes for a mostly wrong take. Still maintain that the jail time puts Kelly closer to Cosby than Jackson.

Aside, but there seems to be a much higher level of collective cognitive dissonance with Michael Jackson, perhaps because of his stature in popular culture. I'm guilty of this myself - my brain sets a higher bar for evidence, perhaps unreasonably.

Yeah, his music is so deeply ingrained in my mind that the "new" information doesn't stick. I have to many fond memories associated with his music and art that it always takes a few seconds for my mind to change course.

He's also dead, so it's not like he is personally benefitting from our enjoyment of his music anyway.

Yeah, same. As a lifelong fan of the genre, I think R. Kelly's work is boring pastiche, almost entirely forgettable (notable exception, "I believe I can fly" does have some nostalgic value). So it's never been a challenge to put his music away...

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