Michael Jackson's death is the most globally devastating and consequential celebrity passing since that of Princess Diana nearly a dozen years ago and surely the most axis-altering entertainment story since at least the dawn of the Blog Age. Possibly even the Internet Age altogether.
Here, after all, is a chronicle that embodies pretty much every aspect of tabloid culture in a single cataclysmic spasm: rags-to-riches, tragedy, early death, drugs, race, crime and celebrity justice, worldwide fame, financial calamity, sexual ambiguity, abuse (of self and allegedly others), kids, animals, dysfunction on the grandest imaginable scale, and warped familial dynamics.
It also carries with it an agonizing arc of heartbreak that ultimately proves downright Shakespearean in its scope. Harvey Levin himself couldn't have plotted it any better.
In the media's unforgiving and unblinking eye, we saw little Michael grow up, and we saw gravely wounded Michael fall down. All the King of Pop's horses and all the King of Pop's men couldn't put him back together again. Not even for a final duet with the spotlight. Or a last waltz with a "which" doctor (as in, "Which painkiller would you like to bond with today?").
In measuring the monumental impact of Jackson's death on a celebrity media culture consumed with trumped-up garbage like how mass hatred will wind up impacting "Jon & Kate Plus 8," we need look no further than the fact that from the get-go, the press mainstream (whatever we now perceive that to be) was placed in the uncomfortable position of chasing the tail of one TMZ.com, whose journalistic credibility ranges somewhere between that of Perez Hilton and a stag beetle.
The clear consensus is that TMZ largely lucked out in its early declaration of Jackson's death late Thursday afternoon and could just as easily have come out smelling more like unctuous vultures than story trailblazers.
Be that as it may, it became the Hollywood blogger's defining moment, with no less than the New York Times and L.A. Times following its Jackson lead in a frightfully ironic element of blind-leading-the-mind subtext.
Once Jackson's death was conclusively confirmed, all hell naturally broke loose. The feeding frenzy was instantaneous and massive, akin to the proverbial lion being supplied a fresh plate of steak tartare.
From the blogosphere to cable television to the networks to even the antiquated print-gone-online universe, the collective newsgathering world would scarcely mask its unbridled gratitude in having been handed the Hollywood story of the young century -- and in the middle of a weekday afternoon news cycle, no less.
Just when they thought this was destined to be a day reserved for Farrah Fawcett, who had succumbed earlier that day to the cancer that had grown to become a tabloid sensation in its own right, up popped a once-every-generation cultural touchstone our of literally nowhere.
Just like in the days of yore, the broadcast networks blew out parts of their primetime Thursday night schedules to cover...well...the fact that Michael Jackson had died.
If it required an hour to assure viewers it was indeed true, well, that's just the way the ball continues to bounce in the Let's-Still-Pretend-DVR-and-the-Internet-Don't-Exist no man's land in which the broadcast network news divisions find themselves.
