In an unprecedented communication from the afterlife, the ghost of Michael Jackson said that even he was sick of hearing about himself. "I'm here with some really important people who also passed away this year but you would never know it from the media coverage. Where are the movie festivals celebrating the work of John Hughes who as it turns out wrote, directed, and/or produced every movie I saw in my teens and twenties. Not bad for someone I'd never heard of. And Don Hewitt told me that Walter Cronkite, in addition to anchoring the CBS Evening News, personally covered Allied bombing raids over Nazi Germany, the campaign in North Africa, Operation Market Garden, the Battle of the Bulge, the Nuremburg Trials, the Olympics, the Kennedy assassination, NASA's Gemini missions and the Apollo Moon landings, the Tet Offensive, Watergate, the Camp David Accords and countless political conventions and elections including the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. I don't know what most of those things are, but they sound important. By the way, why does Ed McMahon always
laugh like Santa Claus when I say stuff? One of the guys here who I had heard of is Les Paul. As the most famous music artist in the world, I actually wore one of his guitars once; it looked neat but it was too heavy to dance with." The former King of Pop then read from a prepared statement, "I have been instructed to ask those in the media who continue to relentlessly cover my death to demonstrate some perspective, selectivity and decency, and to give some measure of attention to the many other important people who passed away this year." He then closed his message from the spirit world by saying, "Please do something about this; everyone here has been very nice so far, especially Frank McCourt. Why's Ed laughing again? Frank talks funny and says he's a writer but I haven't heard of any of his songs. Anyway, do something because I can tell this media coverage thing is really starting to annoy these guys and if things don't change soon they might make me room with Billy Mays."
