I'll try to make this quick.
Way back in February of 2007, I published a piece that was written as an open-letter apology to America for the media's coverage of the death of Anna Nicole Smith. Needless to say, it was pretty scathing -- an indictment not only of this country's supposedly respectable news outlets but of Anna Nicole Smith herself and her overall importance in the lives of you and your family. (Hint: She wasn't important at all.)
One of the points I made was this:
"During the past week, those charged with the awesome responsibility of relaying to you the global, cultural, political, economic and medical news which you rightly expect and demand from us, have instead willingly allowed ourselves to be taken hostage by every permutation of loathsome, opportunistic degenerate -- each claiming to be able to add yet another spoonful of pabulum to the pot we're all too happy to stir. During the past week, hundreds of American soldiers and innocent civilians have been killed in Iraq -- as our focus shifted to one minor celebrity who died just off the Florida Turnpike... I'm sorry that we've allowed Wolf Blitzer and Diane Sawyer to look no better than Pat O'Brien and Maria Menounos. I am truly sorry that we have, even for a moment, lent a shred of credibility to the opinions of Nancy Grace."
Obviously, Michael Jackson wasn't a B-list celebrity -- he was a pop culture icon of the highest order. But the truly sad thing is that, other than that one very pronounced difference, you could easily plug in his name for Anna Nicole Smith's and the point would be exactly the same. In other words: The all-day-all-night freakshow on cable has begun, just as it always does in the wake of a shocking, seemingly epochal event within the throroughly fucked-up world of the self-proclaimed Hollywood elite.
Larry King, fresh from his most recent blood transfusion in Transylvania, is already trotting out a few of the characters whose names will become common cultural knowledge by next week -- the Kato Kaelins, Denise Simpsons, Howard K. Sterns, and Larry Birkheads of this particular affair. I'm talking about people like the frightening plastic surgery nightmare that is Iris Finsilver, Debbie Rowe's "close personal friend"; future tell-all author Dr. Arnie Klein, Michael Jackson's dermatologist, and so on. (I'm not even bothering to bring up that repugnant mainstay of obscene opportunism, Al Sharpton; he's a given.) These are the vultures who will be swooping in to feast on the carcass of Michael Jackson, to use his death to get their 15 minutes in the spotlight.
And the media -- the cable media especially, the 24/7 beast that must constantly be fed fresh meat in order to survive -- will be more than happy to give them all the time they'd like to turn one loss into their gain.
Get ready, folks. It's gonna get ugly.
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