In a World Gone Sad

This week, which isn't even over yet, has been a cable "news" producer's long, drawn out wet dream. Don't get me wrong, I hate cable "news" and everything it stands for... wait a minute, I guess that's actually my point - I never watch the stuff.

Yesterday, we lost two pop culture icons from my youth, not six hours apart and barely 24 hours after another cultural icon had passed. That, in itself, is reason for some sadness, depending on where you set up camp on the long arc of pop culture. But what made it even sadder for me, even thought the inevitability was practically climbing up my pant leg, was the perverse display of... well, I don't even know what the Hell you'd call it. Soul-fucking, maybe, by the blow-dried vultures who rule the roost of consumer media.

I happened to be out with a friend last night at a place that had Fox Tabloid Channel on one of the TVs and was somewhat dismayed that Michael Jackson's death garnered non-stop coverage, though I suppose I shouldn't have been. And this isn't about my opinion of Michael Jackson's life or work - it's about the media's obsession with... what? Scandal? Salacious tut-tutting and pearl clutching?

Farrah Fawcett's body was barely cold and she was already forgotten. I guess it says something about our national obsession with celebrity, and perhaps more about our obsession with gasp!-y celebrity horror stories, that a man whose personal demons caused him to undergo multiple episodes of self-denying physical mutilation and whose alleged predilections regarding children would consume the media more than the death of a woman who was, at the very least, as well known and who turned her intimate battle against the ravages of cancer public. Perhaps I'm naive.

In my wanderings today, I read a comment somewhere that made this (paraphrased) point: They use these people in whatever manner suits their needs at the time. When they're alive, they're the subject of jokes, ridicule, and all manner of disdain. But when they die, they're saints and the Girls Next Door (see: Anna Nicole Smith). Why does Death turn these media idiots into such fans?

Seriously - Greta van Sustern talking about Michael Jackson? That girl couldn't get down if you chainsawed her legs off at the knees and gave her a shove. But blahbbity blahbbity blah, there she was, yammering on about Michael Jackson as if he were a real person to her.

They say there's no such thing as bad publicity. I sometimes wonder if the cable "news" outlets don't believe there's no such thing as bad news. They certainly seemed to get a little thrill, yesterday.