Parenting & Family Quote by Joseph Jackson

The line lands less like a defense than like damage control spoken aloud. "We know our son" is an appeal to private authority: the family’s intimacy is positioned as more credible than the public record. It’s also a rhetorical shield that can’t really be cross-examined. Who, after all, can argue with a parent’s certainty without sounding cruel? That’s the move: recast a legal-moral allegation into a question of loyalty and perception.

The next sentence tightens the frame. "We know he’s not a pedophile" doesn’t rebut specific claims or behaviors; it insists on an identity verdict. That matters because pedophilia isn’t just an accusation of acts, but a totalizing label, the kind that erases nuance and guarantees cultural exile. Denying the label is strategically cleaner than litigating details, even if it’s rhetorically thin.

Then comes the pivot: "like some of these newscasters are saying". Blame slides from the accused to the messengers. The media becomes the antagonist, a familiar late-20th-century script where the press is cast as predatory, sensational, and racially or economically motivated. It’s not just about truth; it’s about control of narrative. "That is not true" reads as a closing gavel, but it’s also the sound of a family trying to stop a story that has already escaped the household and become a referendum on fame, innocence, and what the public feels entitled to consume.