Radio Dead Air

The Oncoming Storm

June 29th, 2009

Shhh . . . do you feel that?

That, my friends, it the distant rumble of the first great New Media Celebrity Death.

Many things have happened since the internet took over our homes in the late 90′s. Regan’s death, Bush vs. Gore, 9/11, Princess Di . . . huge news stories, one and all. Before all this, 9/11 was easily the watermark for the effect of the internet in terms of needing to find out information, and what part the electronic world would play in the real one. But now there’s a new entity lumbering its way across the world wide web: the death of Michael Jackson.

Let’s put this in perspective: 9/11, the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, the second Iraq War, the election of the first African-American President . . . these were all truly important, historic, and monumental moments. The Death of Michael Jackson is not. It’s one thing and one thing only: a cultural event. It has no bearing on the way we live our lives, it doesn’t threaten our society, it doesn’t loom over our safety or continued existence. It is the epitome of popular culture . . . something none of us are truly directly connected to and yet something it seems everyone feels a need to touch. And just because the man is dead, that doesn’t mean this is over.

This week is going to be the best week ever to dump bad news. Every day this week, Monday to Friday, is going to focus on Michael Jackson . . . and unlike every other news story, people will be following this as avidly as if their lives depended on it. It began this morning: Debbie Rowe, Michael Jackson’s ex-wife, is now claiming that the children she had during their marriage aren’t his. Further? She doesn’t want custody. In other news, the autopsy report has leaked . . . Jackson’s nanny/maid is now saying she didn’t say things about his stomach being pumped . . . and bad penny Joe Jackson is slowly sliding front and center. And there’s other shady people popping up, like Jackson’s doctor who is being scrutinized, and the Nation of Islam, and . . . well, if I were in the White House right now, I would be rushing to get out any and all horrible news stories I had saved up, because no one at all will really be watching. It’s the perfect storm of news cycles. Mark Sanford is a thankful son of a bitch at this moment.

So what does all this say about us? Nothing new, honestly. We’ve been through this before, with Monica and OJ and a host of other stories that grew legs and became their own subsets of the media. But what’s going to be interesting is to follow how this thing creeps across the New Media behemoth. The announcement of the man’s death threatened to crash Google, after all. We’re just a bombshell revelation away from all hell truly breaking loose . . . if it comes out that Jackson was murdered or some other huge “twist,” I can’t even begin to predict what the reaction will be.

What stuns me is that however you felt about Jackson, his music, his troubles, the accusations against him . . . none of you reading this right now were connected to him. This story literally has nothing attaching it to your lives, and yet it’s got this massive popular sway with us that seems to force us to pay attention. And as a result, all our computers, our netbooks, our smartphones, and many other gadgets will be locked on this with a laser-like focus. It’s a story that has no practical impact on us, yet it right now commands so much of our communications apparatus as to be terrifying.

So sit back and enjoy the ride, folks. I have the feeling this news cycle’s just getting revved up.

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