Our true priorities

Forget Iran. Forget health care. Forget cap and trade. You can even forget Mark Sanford. It seems like everything was shut down to cover Michael Jackson's death. Ed McMahon and Farrah Fawcett's deaths were poorly timed enough to be eclipsed by the Gloved One's passing. It even slowed down the Internet.

On Twitter, a kind of snapshot barometer of American popular culture, the Jackson news quickly eclipsed attention to Farrah Fawcett's death and the adultery scandal of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.

"My Twitter search script sees roughly 15 percent of all posts on Twitter mentioning Michael Jackson. Never saw Iran or swine flu reach over 5 percent," observed Ethan Zuckerman, a fellow at Harvard's Beckman Center for Internet & Society. He "tweeted" his report.

By late afternoon, eight of the top ten "trending" topics on Twitter clearly alluded to Michael Jackson — or MJ, King of Pop, Thriller — and another cited the Los Angeles Times, credited with breaking the news. (The tenth referred to the late Ed McMahon.) m

This would be the time to release any bad information that politicians have been dreading releasing. And watch out for what Iran and North Korea do now.

As for me, the true news of yesterday was the NBA draft. For fun, read the Sports Guy's draft liveblogging.

Sheesh! Even my local sports radio is talking today about Michael Jackson's death. Hey guys! There was an NBA draft last night and several major NBA trades. Is Michael Jackson's death really more important to sports fans?

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg nails it.

And while we’re at it, his relatively early death wasn’t “tragic.” He was one of the richest people in the world. He spent his money on perpetual childhood and he was perpetually with children not his own.

Meanwhile, in the last ten days, we’ve seen or heard of remarkable people who’ve given their lives for freedom in Iran. We’ve heard of innocents killed because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the last decade, America has lost thousands of heroes in noble causes and thousands of innocent bystanders who were denied the simple joys of life through no fault of their own. Those deaths are tragic, and we're hard pressed to think of more than a handful of names to put with the long line of the dead.

Read the rest of his rant.