Jackson’s celebrity suicide

(Salon): CNN’s coverage of Michael Jackson’s sudden illness in the minutes before his death was reported captured nicely the way the media has treated him. Nutty people were allowed to talk at length, including a guy who kept saying his concerts in London were in 2010. (They were scheduled for next month.) Wolf Blitzer looked into the camera to tell us earnestly that the head of the concert promotion company had told them that Jackson was in "tip-top shape," and that he’d passed a health exam "with flying colors." Funny how an impossibly pampered 50-year-old guy in top-top shape could just keel over dead.

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