Michael Jackson, Iran, and the Media

I was getting ready to fix myself a bachelor’s dinner of hot dogs last night when I noticed that it was 6:30 and time for the NBC Nightly News. I love me some Brian Williams (even if his whole I’m-a-salt-of-the-earth-type-of-guy-with-blue-collar-roots-just-like-my-viewers shtick has worn a bit thin), so I opted to put my exquisite dinner on hold and turn on the television. Before the picture on the screen faded in, I could tell that Mr. Williams was talking about a death.

That makes sense, I thought. Farrah Fawcett died earlier today.

But when the screen finally vivified and the graphics were clearly visible, it said that Michael Jackson was dead.

Huh-whaaaat?! I implored my TV set. Michael Jackson died?

And since we’re living in 2009, I naturally jumped on the nearest laptop to verify what Brian Williams was telling me. Sure enough, everyone else was saying that the King of Pop had passed away. Apparently, everyone else in the world was hitting the 'net just like me to learn about the breaking news or weigh in on the situation.

After my initial shock had subsided, I took a step back to reassess the situation. Hmmmm, I thought, he was only 50 years old, but he was a pretty eccentric guy. Plus he obviously had some phsyical problems, and lord only knows what sort of state this guy's mental health had been in. It's actually not that surprising to hear that he died.

I then did a quick perusal of Facebook and Twitter to see measure others' reactions to the news about MJ. Sure enough, it had already begun to dominate Facebook messages and was the hottest trending topic on Twitter. And since I've been so cynical when pondering the news media recently (y'know what I'm talking about: the saturation of "Jon and Kate" stories when some fairly momentous history is playing out in Iran) I hastily wrote this quick thought on my Facebook wall:

Sadly, a large portion of Americans are going to forget about what's transpiring in Iran because the news media will probably devote an ungodly amount of coverage to Michael Jackson's death.

Sure enough, before the Nightly News had concluded, Brian Williams informed me that Ann Curry would be hosting a two-hour special later in the evening to remember Fawcett and Jackson. And so it began...

Now, allow me to lay my cards out on the table. As I said, I was initially shocked to hear about MJ's death. Less than 24 hours before it all went down--in some eerie, cosmic coincidence--I had been singing along to "Man in the Mirror" and "Billie Jean" as they played from my iTunes library. I won't deny the musical genius and the physical gifts with which he was blessed. Brother could do the Moonwalk! A lot of pop stars living in the lap of luxury today (*cough* Justin Timberlake *cough*) owe approximately 98.9% of their careers to Mr. Jackson. The point I'm trying to make is that this man deserves to be memorialized. He had too much of an impact on American popular culture for too long a time to simply be ignored and forgotten.

But I'm only hoping that the media (CNN and Fox News, I'm looking at you two) will exercise some restraint. I can't help but think back to February 2007 and the inordinate amount of coverage given to Anna Nicole Smith's death. And my god...she had absolutely no talent! No redeemable qualities! (Well, not completely true. She could apparently perform oral sex on that wheelchair-bound geriatric without vomiting all over his lap.) My generation is going to have to atone for the sin of having polluted the airwaves with some truly vacuous crap about that woman and her overdose.

What will be worse, however, is if we allow the coverage of this celebrity death to trump the coverage about the protests in Iran. The Iranian reformists opposing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the religious clerics have been buoyed by the attention the United States and other nations have paid to their struggle. Serving as the audience for their courageous citizen-journalism, we must continue to bear witness to the saga. It's quite distressing to think that the heartbreaking video of Neda Soltan might have flown under the radar if Michael Jackson had died at this time last week. But in the culture of round-the-clock infotainment that we absorb and perpetuate, it's fairly simple to imagine that it might've played out that way.

So, please: mourn the loss of a cultural legend. It's natural and it's right. But let's not allow ourselves to get mired down in murky, trivial details surrounding his death.

As I wrap this up, CNN's reporting that the authorities are looking for MJ's doctor, since his cardiac arrest may be drug related. It seems that they want to ask the doc some questions. I'm sure we'll be privy to more of these riveting details in the days to come.

Oh, brother...