Until the Gender and Body Parts Task Force gets around to your place and probes your inner working we will never really know. In the meantime your bodily arrangement will, for all of us, remain a mystery wrapped inside an echidna.

your arguments have been defeated many times over.

as doilyhead said you just can’t accept that you have not provided anything to the contrary. Many readers here have written the same but you continue to hammer on. A cursory and/or deep examination of the public record reveals no evidence that the author’s hypothesis is rejected.

Your continued reference to the 1993 evidence is a non-sequitur. It proves nothing to the contrary. Look again, and don’t be so cowardly as to not admit it.

The other irksome thing is this editorial high-ground that you perch upon. Id trust the editor’s view any day over your cowardly attacks on what is an interesting and obviously good story.

Perhaps we can paraphrase your nastiness toward the author and editor and say “MByrnes, appalling cur, is not worthy of Crikey readership”.

Just because there’s a sack, doesn’t mean there’s potatoes in it. For those who are not squeamish, have a look at the clamps they use on livestock for the same job. removes the bloodflow only, and not the aparatus inside. Yet they stop working. Hence, a photograph of the package will not be conclusive.

I do realise I’m beginning to come across like one of the protagonists in those never-ending Gerard Henderson-Robert Manne exchanges ! It’s really more about the journalistic quality of the article that Jackson. It’s reflective of the appalling standard of many pop culture pieces.

Predictably there have been some websites and forums devoted to the thesis that Michael Jackson’s death is an elaborate, staged hoax. As ludicrous as that proposition is, the arguments presented in some of those fora are more cogent and factually based than presented in this article and accompanying comments. At least those people have done a little bit of research on the subject, even if they reach rather bizarre conclusions.

If some of those commenting and defending the article saw it on a News Limited or conspiracy theory website, they would dismiss it as the work of an ill-informed crackpot. Because it is featured here on Crikey, the cosy literary love-in clique get to work.

The thesis is stale and the research non-existent. It’s simply not worthy of this site.

@mbyrnes et al: The appearance of testicles doesn’t disprove castration. It is an easy plastic surgery to get prosthetic testicles. Given Jackson’s penchant for plastic surgery it would surely be expected he would restore his manhood that way, at least aesthetically. But you just get on message and then keep insisting that you’re right; the “proof” the “evidence” and so on. You mean: your interpretation of third-hand knowledge of the alleged photographic evidence, right?

David Sanderson. You sir, are a class act! Albeit a terrible stirrer. I’m worn out with laughter.

Goodnight.

Venise.

We are all behind you in this remarkable scholarly journey. New Idea is so hungry for dissertation that they are leaving the cover, and the first eight pages, of their next edition free in order that they may be the first to present your findings to a gobsmacked populace.

The number of comments about an article doesn’t reflect on its quality; in fact, often the inverse is true. For instance, this article has only achieved a mere fraction of the notoriety of Max Gogarty’s ill-fated, short-lived, nepotism-originated blog.

In the same way the Guardian was tone deaf on the paradigm on new media in the Gogarty scandal, perhaps the writer and editor here are as well.

Mr Ellis hasn’t deigned to respond to criticisms of his article and the editor has made just one post. If this was on one of the News Limited blogs both would likely have been responding regularly. There are too many old media types who are struggling to make the adjustment to a new media paradigm of direct accountability to its readership.

Dear Mr Green,
Would it be possible to allow this particular comments section to be printed? It isn’t often a subject has been printed -thank you so much Jack Ellis-and has excited such interest and genuine humour. It would be a great shame to mislay it.

Most sincerely

Venise Alstergren

Truth being stanger than fiction, the fascinatingly stranger yet most piteous thing is the rabid energy consumed by the mediocre to defend a stand that is cover for their underlying insecurities. The fragility to order the world as they see fit. What in fact is being hidden here.

Banging on about LAPD investigations, photos, interviews with Presley, dis/misinformation on castration (and the ability to have sex one of the most lost departures in all this - as if you have to be ‘whole’ to perpetrate) etc……. misses the point entirely that you “whole Jacko” brigade are highly selective with what you choose to believe.

Oh yeah and do you reckon their sloppy, to understate, ‘investigation’ of OJ: example of your blind faith in the authorities version of events/’evidence’? But a drop in the ocean of incompetence/fabrication that pollutes/corrupts unsuspecting minds. And you reckon we were born yesterday.

Speaking of which, getting back to the fuss - none of these non Tall Poppy examples are negro. Making it the most curious perversion that the icon has so many bigots for defenders. How many, in the scheme of things, were perturbed at Hoover’s relentless ‘criminal’ setups of Martin Luther King? If you ‘act’ white, try to be white, (or a woman, or a child or forever young and ‘beautiful’), ride the wave of popularising sexual instant gratification circa Madonna….. all the way to the bank - you’re an untouchable. Why did our insane world ‘justice’ with attendant media circus leave criminals OJ and MJ free to predate? Because black heros trump sex/violence towards women/children.

Oh yawn, yawn, yawn…. how few does it not escape that no less than any other sphere of double standard servings, the media scrutinises black leaders mercilessly to the most perverse degree: Obama. Just as well he’s such damned fine calibre, with an unenviable role most unbecoming of him - instead of the the other way round for all the incredulous racists. [“Oh we’re in such an intractable mess: let’s give the darkie a go!”] His own savvy up to date utilisation of medium aside, how many stop to compare the inane twisted minutiae mutated as ‘analysis’ re the most spurious ‘connection’ to the man; all the unable-to-conceptualise let alone deal-with mocking pre and post presidency reaching stratospheres transcending any gloves off political sniping that no (white) leader has ever had to traverse.

We did it with Charles Perkins, ATSIC and Land Councils etc as if a skerrick/scheme of corruption through (forced) adoption of western ‘civilised’ institutions were inherent in non white culture/persons and not learned, opportunistic and systemic. How many of you pseudo crusaders have a remote appreciation of the tragic breadth and depth of countless Aboriginal greats that we have - no less than figuratively - castrated? I ponder the incidence of crossover subsets within an individual of this, fans of MJ and deep male organ/manhood fears. ‘Cause as with many ugly manifestations it’s a cover for deep if not historical guilt. So who’s got the bigger picture perspective on authenticity and what’s really behind newsworthiness or insight for that matter? It’s rarer than your presume.

As one scholar to another I salute you on your extraordinary scholarship and I look forward to reading the results of your basic research in New Idea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_child_sexual_abuse_accusations_against_Michael_Jackson

Remember my primary point that Ellis failed to do this basic research.