And you thought the Michael Jackson trial couldn't get any sleazier.
With enough media coverage to bring a blush even to Jackson's ashen cheek, the American public has been bombarded from every angle with images of the King of Pop's ignominious child molestation trial since Jackson surrendered to authorities in 2003. From radio to television to the Internet to late-night talk show hosts' opening monologues, the Michael Jackson investigation has become the O.J. case of the new millennium.
Now, almost two years later, one would think that there would be no ground left to cover, no storyline left to pursue. One would hope that the media would have learned their lesson by now that courtroom entertainment should be restricted to "Judge Judy."
Not if the E! Network has anything to say about it! From the station that can lay claim to such tasteful acts as "The Anna Nicole Show," Joan Rivers, and "E! True Hollywood Stories," E! News now brings you "The Michael Jackson Trial," a daily recap and play-by-play analysis of the proceedings in the closed-courtroom Michael Jackson trial.
Just when you thought E! couldn't 'beat it,' they recruit a cast of D-list actors to recreate scenes nightly from an official court transcript of the trial's proceedings on a given day. Interspersed in these scenes of telenovela-quality drama, a panel of so-called legal experts debates such pressing matters as the exact content of "Jesus Juice" and whether or not Jackson ever licked his accuser's head. Presiding over everything is the honorable James Curtis, a host whose pompous arrogance rivals the likes of Donald Trump and Simon Cowell.
Come on, fellas, have a little class. Press is not allowed in the Jackson courtroom for a reason, and that reason is not so that you could have the chance to dress up an MJ impersonator in drag and pass him off as the subject of a legitimate news broadcast. It is not so that you could have a bunch of photogenic lawyers pronounce judgment on a man's sexual integrity as glibly as if they were Joe Buck and Tim McCarver discussing the Sox's bullpen situation.
It is because sometime, somewhere a line has to be drawn separating curiosity from obsession, inquiry from voyeurism, and gossip from slander. Sure, the whole Neverland Ranch, my son's name is Blanket, "No, I swear I didn't have plastic surgery" farce lends itself to public ridicule. But that should be confined to the realm of stand-up acts and VH1 specials - not pawned off on the audience as a caricature of real TV journalism.
Think what you want about Michael Jackson, but at the end of the day, defendants in this country are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. In this instance, however, no matter what the verdict reads at the end of the trial, Michael Jackson will have been mocked, parodied, and scrutinized on national television every night for at least a month. Not even a dangling baby stunt could so effectively rid him of whatever remains of his reputation.
There is such a sense of innate wrongness to this show that its entertainment value is probably the furthest thing from the audience's mind. Viewers with even the slightest semblance of ethics will experience the same instantly nauseating knee-jerk reaction that can usually only be derived from watching promo spots for Kirsty Alley's new sitcom.
You might think that Michael Jackson is a freak or a lunatic or maybe even a child molester. You might believe in the public having a right to know or that celebrity overexposure is simply the high price of fame. And you may, indeed, be perfectly correct on all counts.
But when it comes right down to it, the E! News Presentation of "The Michael Jackson Trial" is just plain, common sense wrong. Anyone who can't see that is either completely devoid of human sympathy or has seen one too many Scott Peterson reports.
The fact that a bunch of producers over at E! Network sat around a boardroom one day and collectively decided that they'd all still be able to sleep soundly at night knowing that they were destroying a (possibly) innocent man's dignity and privacy begs just one question: is Jacko really the wacko one after all?
