Is no one immune from the ratings game?

Michael Jackson died today and while it’s certainly a momentous event in the history of pop music, is it really so newsworthy that every media outlet is now devoting hours and hours of air time to blather on about it?  Even FOX News is preempting Bill O’Reilly’s show tonight to air a hastily-patched-together special.

I find this ironic and I find it sad.  And, somehow, it’s almost like a perfect storm.  Ed McMahon died Tuesday.  This morning Farah Fawcett lost her long fight with cancer.  And by the East Coast prime time news hour Michael Jackson is unexpectedly pronounced dead in Los Angeles.

And no one can talk about anything else.

Conservatives, in particular, want to cling to their Bibles and too-often beat others over the head with their beloved book yet it is the Bible that says to “let the dead bury their dead”.  I won’t deny that the death of a pop icon is sad but am I the only one remembering that Michael Jackson was also of questionable morals?  Frankly, this is a time when there are truly important matters at hand that must be properly addressed.  The citizens of Iran are dying in their streets for fairness and freedoms, North Korea is moving nuclear weapons material across the seas and, most frightening of all, the Waxman-Markley energy bill – cap & tax – the biggest destruction of American life we have yet to see in our lifetimes – is going up in the House tomorrow for a floor vote.

I imagine that Obama and his Congressional cohorts are doing happy hula dances at tonight’s White House luau to celebrate their good fortune at this distraction.  A shindig paid for by us, by the way, but to which we, the American taxpayer, are not, of course, invited.