Jackson trial eating up others’ TV time

While people left town last week, traversing to many a warm, sunny locale south of the… While people left town last week, traversing to many a warm, sunny locale south of the Mason-Dixon Line, I went home — or, more accurately, I stayed in Pittsburgh, making the 15-minute drive to my family’s house. Some quality time with the family — well, with the family’s 52-inch television — would do me good over the break.

With my dad at work most of the time and my mom and youngest brother spending most of their time preparing for their theatre projects, I was left alone. It was because of this, and because of the captivating powers of the moving-picture box, that during spring break, I was sucked into the black hole that is the Michael Jackson trial.

It started innocently enough when my mom urged me to turn on CNN so that we might see the important goings-on of the day. What we got was hard-nosed — or fake-nosed — coverage of Jackson showing up to court in pajamas and a blazer, and more than an hour and a half late.

The real fun of this wasn’t the spectacle of Jackson himself — a ridiculous character if ever there was one — but how CNN was covering it with the depth and seriousness I thought was reserved only for presidential assassinations, nuclear war and the centuries-old religious conflict between Lindsay Lohan and Hilary Duff.

Instead, we had hard-hitting coverage of Jackson’s arrival, possibly from a hospital where he’d spent the night after supposedly injuring his back. CNN couldn’t confirm any of this, but when your programming for the hour is based around watching a human-shaped plastic mass walk from his limo to a courthouse, I guess you fill time with whatever you can. So not only was CNN devoting its time and resources to covering something totally inane, but it was doing a pretty poor job of it.

We watched over lunch, soaking up the unintentional comedy of the ordeal while the anchor went back and forth with the 15 on-site reporters, trying to determine the severity of Jackson’s back injury, the consequences of his tardiness and the brand of his pajama pants.

When my mom left, I went back to watching college basketball. When she got home, she jokingly prodded me to turn on CNN, as she needed, “a quick Michael Jackson fix now!”

So to prevent my mom’s fake tantrum from escalating into a fake lack-of-Michael-Jackson seizure, I reluctantly switched off the game I’d been watching. I tuned to CNN — no luck, as they’d moved onto real news. CNN Headline News also had nothing. Luckily, Court TV has round-the-clock coverage to satisfy any Jackson cravings. We were luckier still in that Court TV’s coverage was more outlandish than CNN’s.

It seemed Court TV had people in the courtroom whose sole job was to track Jackson’s movements and facial expressions. One panelist suggested Jackson might have been faking his back injury, because he turned to wave at his fans in court. The assembled panel then spent several minutes discussing whether moving in such a way would be possible if Jackson’s back were injured as badly as he’d led us to believe. Because the judge won’t allow cameras in the courtroom, the viewing audience couldn’t make the determination for itself.

One panelist commented that it was ironic for Jackson to show up in pajamas on the day when the hot topic was testimony over events that had taken place in Jackson’s bedroom.

I ended up watching trial coverage for a few hours, and at some point, I crossed the Threshold. What’s the Threshold, you ask?

Remember the first time you saw an episode of “Iron Chef” and thought it was one of the most unintentionally funny things ever? Sure you do. But after you watch it enough, you not only stop thinking it’s ridiculous, you become immersed in it to the point of convincing yourself that competitive cooking is a great idea. That’s the Threshold.

Luckily, I stopped myself before the coverage melted my brain. Although I am again a productive member of society, I am still a member of “the media” and hence, quite disgusted with myself.

For weeks, there’s been a lot of discussion about the media circus surrounding this trial. This isn’t a media circus. The O.J. Simpson trial was a circus. There was audio and video — images made the drama abundant and intense. This isn’t a media circus so much as it is an exercise in televised public theatrics.

There’s real news happening in the world, and it’s a shame that so much time, attention and money go into covering things so horribly insignificant. Unless Jackson touched you in an inappropriate place, giving you some legitimate interest in this case, do your part: Tell the media that you don’t approve of its overindulgence by simply tuning out.

Send your analysis of Matt Wein’s pajamas to mattwein@hotmail.com.