It was hard to resist watching the news coverage of the Michael Jackson death all day. There is something morbidly and horribly fascinating about the mawkfest. But it was also entertaining to see the news channels managing to stretch this one story, which has already happened and which there were unlikely to be many significant developments into hour after hour of news.
I stuck to Sky, which is the funniest and most mawkish one and also the most likely to completely ignore everything else that might be happening in the world. It struck me that at times like these, Sky Newsreaders become like slightly upmarket QVC hosts. Having to ad lib with not enough to say. The fella I was watching was really struggling, trying to listen to his ear piece, speculating on how the world was feeling. He allowed himself a wry smile when he revealed that the Hollywood star around which people were leaving tributes (no life size ET, but there seemed to be a strange space panda there) actually belonged to a different Michael Jackson. He then started discussing Jacko's records, particularly the ground breaking Thriller video (the only thing that has probably properly interested me about Jacko's career as it was directed by John Landis and I loved "American Werewolf in London" and was hoping for another shot of Jenny Agutter in the shower) which he mentioned was 12 minutes long. "Let's have a look at a bit of it," he said. And then the news played the video from the beginning. That's not what the news is supposed to do. It's meant to give us the news, not act like a morbid MTV. It's unlikely that there is anyone in the world who hasn't seen the Thriller video, but the most the news should do is to show a tiny illustrative clip. It is not supposed to be a tribute show. I couldn't believe how much of it they were showing. Surely they could have used the five or six minutes to bring us up to date with other stories if they really had nothing to say. I didn't see them playing an episode of Charlie's Angels from the beginning when Farrah Fawcett died. It would be pretty lazy if they did. After six minutes they did cut back to the studio, but the video continued in the background as the newsreader talked to someone else about it. Was it a tribute to have Michael Jackson as a zombie dancing behind them? Is this the way the news should be? Does it matter as long as people are watching it? Including me. After all I had eschewed more reputable news channels to see what they would do next.
It's very sad and I am sorry it has happened, but let's try and get these things into proportion and stop this pornography of grief. Clearly he meant a lot to a lot of people, but really they should only behave like this if God Himself were to die. And then I'd still expect some occasional respite with a story about a stoned wallaby or something. Though they could just say, "God created the Universe and everything in 6 days, let's have a look at some of the things in that Universe" before showing fifteen minutes of film of pretty much anything they wanted.
Let's not let the grief distract us from what is important. The fact that
Virgilio Anderson T shirts are available for sale. It's the must have fashion item of the year and a fitting tribute to the King of Pop (even though it has no actual connection at all).
