Every time a celebrity dies or a Politician the Media...... goes into a feeding frenzy. The wars are still on if anyone cares to know Mr.President and our young men and women are still dieing, where is the Media FFFrenzy...., the Flag draped Coffins the uproar for our dead the demonstrations in the streets. Where is the compassion of this so called Christian Nation? Thousands morning for a man they didn't even know, like they did for the war Criminal Ronald Reagen. They question were the money is going to come from to pay for this extravaganza, but there was no question for King Reagan. The hypocrisy of our people is going to be the cause of its demise. Two hundred years of promises of Change and all we get is one Plutocratic leader after another, except this time we got a horse with another name. Pray for the Hundreds of thousands that have died in both these wars Amen.

9 physicists and mathematicians...We've come up with an algorithm to prevent further occurences...The answer "don't have travelling weddings in a war zone"...Phew...

Mr. Engelhardt,

Your article is informative, scholarly, and heartbreaking. And by being those things, delineates the truncated breadth and missing depth of the American media.

I did not say "press", I said "media", as the first was effectively subsumed into the second by the end of the 1970s. Ironically, it was Watergate that did it, turning Woodward, Bernstein, the Irvin Committee and others into media darlings. People magazine was launched and took of like a rocket during those times, primarily as a way for the Washington Post to produce "softer" copy about the players involved.

Since then, the United States has not had an effective, independent press that was dedicated to fulfilling its required role in a democracy. What we got instead was a schizophrenic, bastardized dwarf whose resources and attention span were determined primarily by television ratings.

Michael Jackson-- singer, dancer, drug addict, conflicted wannabe hermaphrodite-- is the perfect subject and logical recipient for the full glare of American media scrutiny. He is important for being well-known, more than any other reason. By most critical standards, his best work is over 20 years old. In the interim, he has been installed on the Olympus of fame due to his personal relationships, financial missteps, personal excesses, and self-loathing behavior. One of the (very) few worthwhile contributions by the Murdoch media empire has been their pithy sobriquet for Jackson: Wacko Jacko.

It is sadly telling that Murdoch's influence has enriched American media while simultaneously neutering all but partisan investigative journalism. This is the reason your cogent analysis won't play on any MainStream Media outlet. First, it talks about people and places no one knows or has heard about. And second, it does not fulfill the political agenda that Murdoch, along with his loyal minion Roger Ailes, has installed as the central focus of Fox News.

That headline from the London Telegraph says it all! Why don't the Salonistas go back to their usual logrolling topics and let MJ RIP.

humorless douchebag! I mean, sure he enjoyed his daughter's wdding and all, but right after that he was back to thinking about the poor people in Afghanistan who's weddings weren't as much fun.

The only thing more overblown than the coverage of Michael Jacksons death is the hand wringing at how overblown the coverage of Michael Jackson's death is.

Most people could care less. Sure there's a tiny minority that are hanging on every moment, but most of us played a couple songs from Off The Wall at happy hour, made a few pedophile jokes and moved on.

Bush should have concentrated on getting Osama Bin Laden anyway he could and bringing him back to the US to try him for 9/11. But he went out of his way to do things different than the hated Clinton would have done them. So the cowboy invaded a country logic should have told him he could never win a war with. I knew it was a terrible mistake we were going to live to regret due to the mess the Russian had during the 80's. What ever made our leaders think it was going to be a gram better for us in the end defies logic. It was their overinflated ego's guiding there decision instead of their intelligence. You don't change people with centuries of tribal rule, warlords, criminal activities and religion guiding them. It's a battle that can not be won. So it's one more example of Bush's arrogance and ignorance. I grieve more the Afghans more than I do Michael Jackson. I just wish they would bury him and get it over with and stop parading him around in the media. Enough is enough and I have had enough! I am sick to death of hearing about him (you would think God had died). Who cares? He was a freak that some fan's were willing to over look his perverted nature and adore. So what? That doesn't make him any less a freak! I loved the Beatles to but no one made a big deal out of it when John Lennon was murdered.

I recommend Chris Hedges book, "War Is A Force That Gives Our Life Meaning." After covering a half dozen or so horrific wars, he describes in graphic detail what it means when the rest of life pales in comparison to the drama of war. Its a problem, he says, for war correspondents and soldiers. (But no, this is not his excuse to ignore suffering.)

Nobody doubts that "Pretty Young Thing" is utterly lacking in gravitas. What we're saying is that life requires that we come to terms with PYT and lives cut short by senseless violence.

When you watch the Dalai Lama giggle, you know there is something deeply true about this. You sense he is capable of mourning oh so many things at once, and still find joy.

I am sure this has probably already been said, but this article stinks of high school, existential angst. As if the mourning of MJ has something to do with mourning the innocent deaths in Afghanistan! It makes me wonder who is most deserving of being mourned in this implied hierarchy of grief and suffering. Surely, the author could shame himself by finding an even more vulnerable, victimized group whose suffering eclipses that of innocent victims in Afghanistan, and if he does, I expect him to shift his grief exclusively to them.