“My question is what will the cable channels do if there is some kind of breaking event of significant magnitude? They’ve invested in getting all the satellite trucks and big reporters out there in L.A. to report on the inch-by-inch caravan of the Jackson family to the Staples Center and to interview various fans standing out there waiting to get in.”

Silly Pam.

Events are not events unless the media make them into events.  If a tree falls in the forest and the media is not there to cover it, not only does it not make a noise, in today’s world it’s arguable whether it actually fell or not…

I just want to know if that 50-foot Michael Jackson robot is still roaming the deserts in Las Vegas shooting laser beams out of its eyes.

I’m watching AbFab today. No MJ worship for me.

“Herse Cam” Hello Tacky!

BTW, MSNBC just ran a report updating the status of Bubbles the Chimp, now living in Florida. The reporter actually asked the zookeeper if she thought Bubbles understood Jackson was dead. I missed her answer because I was laughing too loud. Enough of this sh*t. I don’t know what’s beyond jumping the shark, but the MSM will surely do it today.

God help us if we have to watch Pat Buchanan give commentary on the “festivities.”

Well, yesterday on Hardball, Buchanan essentially said, in response to that one congressman’s comments (I forgot which), that nobody should badmouth the recently dead (justified by some religious babbling).  You could probably find some video of Buchanan doing precisely that, but he seems to be keeping his mouth shut so far.

Maybe he’s like me and just doesn’t care that much.

I wasn’t originally going to watch it but relented and took a peek. I only got about two minutes in before Charlie Gibson showed footage taken from a helicopter of Jackson’s children walking into their father’s funeral. If I hadn’t changed the channel at that point I think my hair might have caught fire. Ugh.

“The reporter actually asked the zookeeper if she thought Bubbles understood Jackson was dead.”

...maybe they can start a Bubbles suicide watch…

The MJ death thing is one of the biggest (non-terrorist caused) gifts to the media since Elvis expiring on the porcelain throne.  Which says all too much about American culture…

What, is the body going to be on stage?!

I’d imagine they’d feel it was somehow appropriate, since poor ol’ Freakshow lived his whole life, good and bad, on-stage. Of course, they’re operating in a showbiz cloud-cuckooland.

My question is what will the cable channels do if there is some kind of breaking event of significant magnitude?

This is the breaking event of significant magnitude for the day—yet another low point in TV journalism’s complete descent into entertainment reporting. It’s days like this that I’m extra glad that I dumped out of the industry 15 years ago.

They’ve mobilised serious resources here, in terms of equipment, staff, and airtime. I can guarantee you that it would take nothing less than a 9/11-scale terrorist attack on US soil to drag the MSM away from the procession and the memorial service.

My guess is that he’ll be dressed in the red leather jacket and glove, and they’ll play “Thriller” as the coffin is brought out on stage, then be opened and slowly raised to a vertical position so people can see him.  The logistics of making an occupied coffin moonwalk are beyond me, though.

Didn’t he ‘own’ the elephant man at one point?  Maybe he wanted to be taxadermed rather than buried.

And now a word from the President.

“My fellow Americans,

Today we mourn a great, if flawed, American.  An inspiration for us all, black or white, ebony or ivory.  A man who touch- I mean, who affected so many of us.  Truly, the world will never be the same without Michael.

BTW I’m invading Iran.  Bye.”

Meh. I have to finish a project and I have the service on while I work. For the most part, the speechifying is sincere but predictable, with the odd bit of levity, but Stevie Wonder played beautifully.

“HearseCam?”  Holy crap. 

Today is the last day I will ever hear Michael Jackson’s name, right? 

RIGHT?

Maybe he wanted to be taxadermed rather than buried.

*can’t resist*

Heh, I thought he already was.  Maybe they can do a special when the nose prosthesis is sent to the Smithsonian.

“Maybe they can do a special when the nose prosthesis is sent to the Smithsonian.”

If they displayed all of them, they’d need a new wing…

If I were playing that game, I’d want to call the (game) police and see if they could prevent him from roaming around my neighborhoods interacting with my characters.

What, is the body going to be on stage?!

Well, it doesn’t seem to actually be on the stage.  Just at the foot of the stage with spotlights on it.  As Miss Manners says, the difference between a funeral and a memorial service is the presence or absence of the deceased, so this is definitely a funeral.

I guess we should all be grateful they didn’t go with an open casket.

Good Lord.  I just did a count - 17 FUCKING CHANNELS of MJ funeral on the tube.  This thing was covered not just by every cable news channel, but every broadcast network as well, plus all the music channels, entertainment channels, and numerous Spanish-language channels.

What planet am I on?

Sanford disappears to Argentina for a week, Jackson croaks, then suddenly Palin quits under cryptic circumstances. I’m supposed to believe these are merely unrelated, coincidental events?

No way. There’s got to be some bigger meaning to all of this.

Frankly, unless his corpse gets up, devours the brains of the mourners, then performs “Thriller”, I’ll stick to something much more relevant and exciting. Like my laundry.

I would SO pay to see that.  Around my lunch break, the MSM was going on and on about how “Michael Jackson’s body is headed to the Staples Center”, and all I could think was, unless it’s moving under its own power I really don’t give a rat’s ass.

Make it STOP already.

Left_Wing_Fox:

“...his corpse gets up, devours the brains of the mourners, then performs “Thriller”...”

It’s probably symptomatic of my complete slide twoards evil that I would think that completey awesome.

Damnit, I seem to have lost the ability to spell today.  It’s probably because I’ve done something to offend the deified Michael.  I must hasten home and perform a libation to his unhappy shade.

What planet am I on?

The free-market advertising-driven planet. Every one of those seventeen channels has more viewers than they would if the showed anything else, and they know it. Plus, it’s cheap to produce (same reason there’s so much professional wrestling on TV), since they’re all being given the feed for free.

Sad, but true.

And now a word from the President.

What he actually said, PIATOR, wasn’t so different than your joke:

“Michael Jackson, like Elvis, like Sinatra—when somebody who’s captivated the imagination of the country for that long passes away, people pay attention.  And I assume at some point, people will start focusing again on things like nuclear weapons.”

(Context—the press asked him about Jackson at the Moscow summit)

“The reporter actually asked the zookeeper if she thought Bubbles understood Jackson was dead.”

Well, the chimp hasn’t see MJ for several years, I understand.  But chimps are quite capable of understanding death . . .

But chimps are quite capable of understanding death . . .

You’d think so, given that they kill things and eat them.

What planet am I on?

I, at least, am in Los Angeles, where a celebrity circus is like an auto show in Detroit.  I don’t know why anyone else outside of our little company town is terribly interested, though.

In other news, the circus came to Staples Center today.  No, I mean the actual circus—Ringling Bros. opens there tonight.

I don’t understand this attitude of many bloggers.  So what if the coverage is everywhere; aren’t we the guys and gals who complain about the terrible job the networks and the cable stations do when it comes to covering the issues which matter to us?  So they take time off from dispensing their usual b.s.—to me, that is a good thing.  At least we won’t have to hear the Republican side of anything for at least a few hours (Peter King, notwithstanding).

From the bit I saw, I thought the memorial was pretty well done, in all honesty, and in spite of the media gawping. It also felt like the African-American community was claiming back the legacy of “Michael Jackson the singer.” Which is, for better or worse, what will survive —and is what he means to people outside of Western celeb reporting.

(That reminds me of a friend who told me that when Lionel Ritchie dies, there’ll be all manner of grief in the Middle East, where they absolutely adore his music.)

Ah yes, arial shots of a low-speed chase.  The real question being does the glove fit?

Yes, his body will be on stage.

SF to LA news departments are on the case.  It’s sooo nice to get the local touch… People complaining about how they’re not ready for Neverland to become a shrine, where will all the people stay?  And will it stop Joe next door from raising cattle?

Why doesn’t Joe next door build a hotel or sell or a hotel developer and raise cattle away from the damn road?

From the bit I saw, I thought the memorial was pretty well done, in all honesty, and in spite of the media gawping.

The service itself seemed to be pretty dignified and was put together well (though I still can’t get over bringing the corpse to the frickin’ Staples Center) but the media coverage has been anything but.

Al Sharpton actually had the nerve to credit Michael Jackson with making the Obama presidency possible.

“Al Sharpton actually had the nerve to credit Michael Jackson with making the Obama presidency possible.”

I’m still impressed that MJ integrated Baseball…

At least y’all don’t have to go through this twice like the folks in Gary, IN.  Mayor Mutton Chop a k a Rudy Clay is coat tailing this for all it’s worth

http://nwi.com/articles/2009/07/01/news/top/doc8a35e9f8d8350422862575e60006038a.txt

“Our top story tonight, world-reknowned music idol Micheal Jackson is still dead.  The star’s family predicts the King of Pop will remain dead for the foreseeable future.  We here at CNN will keep you updated on this developing story.”

(apologies to Chevy Chase)

Al Sharpton actually had the nerve to credit Michael Jackson with making the Obama presidency possible.

Right in front of Dr. King’s children, too. Classy.

The Revs. Al and Jesse have really become a couple of media scavengers, waiting for a high-profile death or tragedy and then sweeping in to grab a corner of the limelight.

Al Sharpton actually had the nerve to credit Michael Jackson with making the Obama presidency possible.

No, this is what he said:

Because Michael Jackson kept going, he created a comfort level where people that felt they were separate became interconnected with his music. And it was that comfort level that kids from Japan and Ghana and France and Iowa and Pennsylvania got comfortable enough with each other to, later, it wasn’t strange to us to watch Oprah on television. It wasn’t strange to watch Tiger Woods golf.

Those young kids grew up from being teenage comfortable fans of Michael’s to being 40 years old and being comfortable to vote for a president of color to be the president of the United States of America.

I never understood what Spike Lee meant when he quoted his grandmother about ‘crabs in a barrel’ until now.

Yeah, that’s much more of a “link in the chain of pioneers” than a “made it possible.”