And that’s all I have to say about that. If you want more information. You can get it from somewhere other than here. What I have to offer is this flashback to the death of John F. Kennedy Jr. and my reaction to the needless and irritating saturation media coverage:

A True American Tragedy
By K. Daniel Glover
IntellectualCapital.com
July 27, 1999

My celebrity-obsessed journalistic brethren insist that I will remember where I was the day I heard John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife and his sister-in-law had died in an airplane accident. But because I have a notoriously lousy memory, I will make note of my whereabouts here: I was on the couch at my parents’ home in Paden City, W.Va., ranting uncontrollably at the television.

Like everyone else, I was both stunned and saddened to learn that the 38-year-old son of an assassinated president had, like so many in his family, died in the prime of his life. But 15 minutes into the news coverage, my sympathy for the lost souls and the family mourning them was overwhelmed by disgust at the idiocy surrounding the tragedy.

A full-scale search involving two branches of the military, the Coast Guard and more? A Pentagon briefing? Non-stop, and nonsensical, news coverage that sensationally dubbed JFK Jr. the “crown prince of America” and his death “An American Tragedy”? A horde of journalists morbidly waiting outside the Kennedy compound in Massachusetts for a glimpse of grief? I could not believe it.

There was more to my essay, but you get the gist of it. You don’t really need to hear any more about the media reaction to JFK Jr.’s death anyway because the nation is about to relive the spectacle. Only the name has changed.

And with the deaths of Hollywood legends Ed McMahon earlier this week and Farrah Fawcett on the same day that Jackson died, you can multiply it by three. Broadcast legend Walter Kronkite also is reportedly on his deathbed.

I’ll be avoiding the news, and cable news in particular, as much as possible for a newsman the next few days.