This is not only silly, it’s factually incorrect. There are all sorts of issues arising from Michael Jackson’s death: Who gets custody of the kids? How does the estate get distributed? What happens to that Beatles catalog? What happense to his unreleased music? What’s up with that second autopsy? What about that doctor?
There are secondary stories too: How much does death help an artist’s bottom line? How much money will AEG Live, the organizers of that 50-date concert tour, have to eat? Why does the House of Representatives have so much free time?
All this, incidentally, is without even mentioning the media stories to come out of this: Too much coverage? What are the ratings? How will the magazine covers sell? What is Quincy Jones doing in Luxembourg, anyway?
Also, this makes no sense: “All that follows is discussion and wouldn’t we really rather discuss it with our friends than Al Sharpton?” I dunno, did our friends know Michael Jackson since they were teenagers? Did they collaborate on issues of race in the music industry? Are our friends meeting with the Jackson family to discuss memorial events? Sharpton may not be the best example of an unbiased source, given his own agendas here, but it’s clear that he has a lot of context and history to offer. More generally, obviously it’s more interesting to watch a discussion between experts and/or people who have information to provide; that’s why cable news and discussion shows exist. (And please don’t brandish declining ratings info at me here; it’s clear that for topics of big interest, people are tuning in.)
Anyhow. So that’s something else I disagree with Jeff Jarvis about.
The King of Twitter [BuzzMachine]
p.s. Instead of buying What Would Google Do, you should totally just talk to your friends about Google.
p.p.s. I do agree with him 100% on this, though.
I find it unfortunate that major networks will spend time talking about this rather than some pretty important things going on in the world right now, namely in Honduras and Iran.
I think that was the point Jarvis was trying to make, but he’s not very good at making it. There is a lot of news to the Jackson story, which unfortunately is distracting us from what really matters.
Dave Chappelle made Soup’s point perfectly during Michael’s last legal go-around:
“The timing of this Michael Jackson shit is what makes me doubt it. Every time there’s wars going out of control or the economy is bad or somethin’ goes wrong with the world at large, it’s always these moments in history when Michael Jackson will “coincidentally” jerk off a kid. This is getting ridiculous!”
