Osborne Ink || News that's fairly liberal, but never unbalanced.

Okay, I get it. Michael Jackson is dead. That’s obviously more important than the news coming out of Iran, spineless and/or corrupt senators quietly spiking the health care bill, the newest revelations from the Nixon tapes, or Michelle Bachmann’s outrageous undermining of the US Census’ integrity.

Time to shift any and all coverage of news to the continued announcement that the King of Pop is no more, has ceased to be, has gone to meet his maker and joined the holy choir invisible.

Yes, he was a part of my youth. Yes, it’s sad that he’s dead. But I already know his death is going to eat the media all summer.

Here’s what we’ll see in the next 24 hours:

1) Jackson’s death as the lead story.

2) Retrospectives of his life and career.

3) Questions about his death.

That last one is the critical element in any celebrity death ’story,’ and Jackson will provide plenty of it. He was a weird, reclusive man with strange obsessions; and like most celebrities of that sort, he probably had six different doctors prescribing every herb and pharmaceutical known to humankind. Speculation will run rampant.

Let me repeat that word: SPECULATION.

Speculation is cheap. Speculation can be done by any self-titled ‘expert,’ and we will see them line up for cable interviews for months to come. From tabloid journalism to ‘legitimate’ news, the entire spectrum of American media — including the L.A. Times and the Huffington Post! — will breathe a deep sigh of relief that a big story has arrived that’s so easy to cover, and cover, and cover again.

We have been here before:

Alive, Michael Jackson was a study in the bizarre effects of celebrity. Dead, Michael Jackson is a Weapon of Mass Distraction™. A new Anna Nichole Smith. Pushing up the daisies, he’ll sell more ink and air time than he did while alive — to the detriment of everything else going on in the world. Because, let’s face it, reporting from Tehran is hard and expensive.

God help us.

UPDATE: Yes, Emjay was apparently abusing prescription meds. Like you couldn’t see it coming.