The DEATH SHOW

Death Show?
Ironically, LA Times has coined a new phrase of what just might be the new reality and new low in celebrity journalism:

Sound bites on Jackson's death show
risks of media's appetite for celebrities

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-et-onthemedia3-2009jul03,0,7154995.column

A comma would have helped, but oh well, the Digital Revolution and text messaging will kill the King’s English one way or another.

The Death Show, however, is now available - starting today where you go online and bid for one of 11,000 tickets to Michael Jackson Last Death-Defying performance at the Staples Center with a simulcast from the Nokia Center in L.A. California.

Now, I like Michael Jackson and I grew up watching his many metamorphoses, but this past week I am slightly horrified by the Death Show. As soon as his tragic death hit the airwaves, I knew ALL REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING WOULD BE PRE-EMPTED.

I don’t have that many cable channels, so there was no way to avoid the intense, insane, inyourface nonstop coverage of any media whore who ever had the slightest encounter with the King of Pop. That name, by the way, is one he bestowed on himself. And, I am old enough to remember when Elvis died, but there was no cable TV, Internet, and/or preempting regularly scheduled programming in 1977.

Nonetheless, people flocked to Graceland, much as they did to Neverland. But, then there was Princess Diana, and then John F. Kennedy Junior, and these were the beginnings of the Nationally Televised Death Shows, but the M. Jackson Death Show will definitely top them.

Instead of a dignified memorial service or tribute to a fabulous talent, we have a Thriller movie of the week where his ghoulish rock video is looped endlessly on every channel. Every malicious detail of his personal life is paraded before it is confirmed or denied.

If you read the aforementioned LA Times article, James Rainey, exposes one such hapless attorney who postured himself as a ‘spokesman’ and then Rainey counters with the facts, exposing him as just another media whore, but one who made headlines on CNN anyway.

So, let the circus begin in the continuing Decline of the American Empire, hailing the latest fallen ‘hero or Caesar, but remember this: Michael Jackson was a great dancer in the vein of Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly; a bestselling pop star who won many awards and the adulation of millions of fans. Ultimately, he was an alienated and tortured soul who maybe didn’t know his boundaries with children, and probably suffered at the hands of adults when he was a child. He
found refuge in painkillers and anesthesia, and altering his appearance ad nauseum, and now all that he tried to conceal is ablaze in neon lights like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

This is a man, not a hero, and there are three children without a father who will pay for his existence at the hands of merciless media whores and gold diggers, much like the concert promoters who are trying to recoup their losses by putting on a Death Show, in advance of the insurance losses that will surely follow, once the toxicology reports come back and show he overdosed.