Celebrity Death=Media Nirvana

I was reminded earlier today why I really just prefer to get my news from the web and the BBC. I was in the office today and had gone down to the cafeteria to get a bit of lunch. I knew something was up when I went to sit down and noticed all heads riveted to the plasma screens that are positioned throughout our cafeteria. It took less than a second to see we had a celebrity death. CNN was going out of its collective mind, covering the death of Farrah Fawcett. The anchor was full of fake sincerity as he spoke of her passing and then reveled in loop after loop of footage from her prime to her rather tragic ending. It was twenty minutes of the same loop before I got up and left to return to the peace of my cube. I was fairly appalled by a couple of things - A) the coverage being afforded the death of a B-list celebrity whose heyday was 30 years ago and 2) the amount of coverage this was getting.

To be sure, she was a beautiful woman who in her prime made quite an impression on a whole generation of men, young and old alike, and I should know as I was one of those impressed young men. But that was thirty years ago. Sure, her death from a rare form of cancer was tragic. What death from cancer isn't? Even more tragic has been the media coverage of her battle with the disease and their collective reaction to her death. The loops of film juxtaposing photos from her peak of fame (you know the one I'm talking about - red swimsuit and the mane of hair) to photos of her in her last months as she fought a ravaging disease. It's galling to see someone robbed of their dignity like that.

The soulless anchors had barely caught their breath from covering Fawcett's passing when the Mother Lode was struck. Michael Jackson. Dead. Heart Attack. Farrah who? Instantly pushed to the side because now it was time to cover the death of the King of Pop. Or King of One Heck of a Booking Photo:

Unbelievable. I heard the news on NPR in the car on the way home. Even NPR felt compelled to mention his death but mercifully it's pledge season and there's no interrupting a public radio pledge drive. It's my opinion that not even Armageddon will get in the way of a public radio pledge drive. I was never so glad to hear more about a corn-based mug in all my life if it meant I didn't have to hear anything else about MJ's death. I cannot understand the hysteria associated with this has-been. Again, 1982, "Thriller" that was his peak. Nearly thirty years ago. Now he's remembered for being crazy, pedophelia, being crazy, financial indebtedness, more crazy, plastic surgery, and more crazy. And yet, already the TV news magazine two-hour salutes are already on air tonight. It's enough already. Maybe he'll finally get a break from the crazy.

So I've resolved to not go anywhere near a TV for the next few days. The media frenzy is more than I can take. All we need now is an epic natural disaster and frankly I think we'll probably see an anchor's head blow up on screen from overload.