Be Careful Who You Love: Inside the Michael Jackson Case by Diane Dimond Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Be Careful Who You Love: Inside the Michael Jackson Case
Book Review: Completely Transparent
Summary: 1 Stars
I'm not even a rabid Michael Jackson fan, but I watched this woman all through the trial and she's not dealing with a full deck. Half of her claims could not be backed up and her bias was transparent. It's time Ms. Dimond to get a real job. I've only ever seen her talk about Jackson. People wonder why Michael Jackson was found not guilty. It shouldn't have been a surprise if you listened to or read something other than Diane Dimond. She belongs on the Faux News Network, a company that doesn't rely on facts.Book Review: A Real Eye Opener
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm a person who grew up with magazine pictures of Michael Jackson and the rest of the Jackson 5 plastering my walls, so you could call me skeptical when the first charges of child abuse were filed. However, the undeniable reality of what he has done to his outside appearance should be a clue to anyone that there's something really, really disturbing going on inside Michael Jackson. This isn't about eccentricity, it's about self-hatred and mutilation. However, I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. So I'm one of the reviewers who actually read the book, and I have to say, that it is one of the most disturbing books I have ever read. The facts are right there, laid out and compiled for everyone to see (and to those who say do your own research I would say that I also happen to have a life, and not being an investigative reporter it doesn't include reading trial transcripts about some entertainer). So I read the book and I have to congratulate Diane Dimond for her work. It's a good read and it presents the facts. The real tragedy of this story is how money corrupts people; people who KNOW better who continue to shelter and cover for a sick individual because they are being paid. People who hand over their children and turn a blind eye because they get a check. SHAME ON ALL OF THEM. Read the book and then replace the name Michael Jackson with your neighbor across the street. You would break your fingers calling the police and social services on him. Michael Jackson will never get the help he so desperately needs because of the leeches all around him. A real tragedy, thanks Diane for telling us the truth.Book Review: Excellent and Informative
Summary: 5 Stars
I found this book to be excellent and informative, and worth reading if you're interested in the Michael Jackson saga. Even though many of his fans can't seem to separate the entertainer from his personal troubles, it's very clear from reading it that Dimond simply followed the facts where they led her. What comes through loud and clear is that this is not a case of an isolated incident, or even two isolated incidents, but a very apparent pattern. Draw your own conclusions. As for me, I'm a believer in "where there's smoke, there's fire."Book Review: A wasted opportunity
Summary: 3 Stars
She scooped the biggest ever celebrity scandal. She was first with the sexual allegations against Michael Jackson in 1993. She has been Jackson's most persistent detractor ever since. So it might be supposed that Diane Dimond would have something pretty hot to offer in Be Careful Who You Love - the first Jackson book to give substantial coverage to the acquitted but tarnished superstar's trial.
The trouble is that Dimond, famous from tabloid TV's Hard Copy and Court TV, is used to putting out news when it is new - not a great formula when you need to hold stuff back for your book. Asked in a Washington Post online forum what scoops readers would find in her pages, she cited among other things misconduct by a juror in the trial, transcripts of discussions between "the 1993 boy" and his psychiatrist, and how Jackson reacted when police first went to Neverland with a body search warrant to take pictures of his genitals.
The first "scoop" turns out to be a damp squib, the second involved transcripts already long available on the internet (she makes poor use of them) and the third was actually a scoop more than a decade earlier for Christopher Andersen in Michael Jackson Unauthorized. The other "scoops" in her line-up are too feeble to discuss.
Remarkably, she had at least three better stories she could have mentioned. One was a detailed examination of the 1994 out-of-court settlement with "the 1993 boy" and his parents, in which she revealed that Jackson admitted he had "negligently" engaged in "offensive contacts with plaintiff, which were explicitly sexual and otherwise". This is a far cry from the public position of the parties, in which Jackson admitted no such thing - whatever "negligent" sex might be.
Whether this genuine scoop, and her other important revelations, hold up factually is another matter. Her text includes a number of simple factual errors and her anti-Jackson bias is blatant; together, these weaknesses severely impair her credibility. Just a few of the mistakes: Jordan Chandler, was said to be 12 at the time of the alleged sexual relationship with Jackson. Wrong, he was 13. Mary Fischer's famous whitewashing piece on Jackson in GQ magazine supposedly appeared in 1995. Wrong, it was 1994. Jackson's recent accuser Gavin Arvizo, according to Dimond, could not travel in the whole of 2001 on account of his cancer. Wrong, he could and did. She says Jackson's "second arraignment" in the case was on 13 Feb 2004, when additional charges were laid, including conspiracy. Wrong, it was on 30 April.
These mistakes doubtless reflect Dimond's news-driven inclination to be first in the field rather than the best. A little more time for reflection and checking would have helped enormously. I found quite a lot of apparently good material I had not seen elsewhere - not all "scoops", but interesting anyway - so it is a pity one is left having to take so much of it with a pinch of salt.
Her subtitle is a bit of a fraud too. A book claiming to be "inside the Jackson case" really ought to have access to inside knowledge - a juror's eye view perhaps, or that of a lawyer in the case. It does not. Even a competent outsider's straightforward account of the trial, pulling threads together in ways not possible in daily news coverage, would have been valuable. Instead, Dimond highlights only the evidence that bolsters her biased view of the case. A sad waste of a golden opportunity.
Book Review: For Those Who Think He's Guilty and for Those Who Don't
Summary: 5 Stars
The Michael Jackson "story" isn't finished yet. But this book documents what is surely among the final few chapters. Devoted Jackson fans of course believe he is wrongly maligned and innocent of any criminal charges. And it's no wonder they do.
Michael Jackson is a powerful entertainer with the money and influence to control a great deal of information that relates to his public image, like the old movie studios used to cultivate an image of their biggest stars.
His talent is real. His hit music is infectious and loved around the world. The allegations that have been brought against him have been murky...not easily proven, to say the least. So, it's easy to see why people don't want to believe anything negative about him.
Still, most reasonably educated people realize that Jackson, for all his charm, sweetness, and money, seems to end up in a lot of very ugly legal battles for a wide variety of reasons. Up until very recently they have been kept mostly quiet.
This book sheds some light on patterns in Michael Jackson's life that cannot be disputed and that are corroborated mostly by employees, some who are in legal disputes with him up to this day.
Of course, Diane Dimond is seen as one on a witch hunt for Jackson, as opposed to a reporter who was handed a lead on a story that blew up into something big...and kept growing. Dimond has been told things by people who know and were around Michael Jackson. People who saw things, people who never spoke to each other or knew that anyone else saw something like what they saw. She presents the information she obtained from various sources and charts some behind the scenes information about the most recent molestation trial in which Jackson was acquitted of all charges.
She makes no catty remarks, although she is sure to receive nothing but vitriol from Jackson fans. The book's easy to follow and great airplane reading. Jackson fans will want to know the details of some of Jackson's business arrangements, and current-events and celebrity followers will be solidly brought-up-to-speed on many salacious details. No one wants a sequel to this book, but few readers should be surprised if there is one.