Why I Love the Internet

I realized how much I missed "the Internets and the Google" during NBC's coverage of Michael Jackson's memorial service, which was video recorded by my Santa Barbara friends. Although we fast-forwarded through gospel singing and replayed Al Sharpton's observation that Barack Obama owes his political success to Jackson's "We are the World," I was unable to satisfy my concurrent curiosity about the cost of the Staples Center extravaganza. I was captivated by Brian Williams' humiliating color commentary of the event and the fact that the surviving members of the Jackson 5 wore matching costumes, but could not simultaneously Google-search, Twitter query, or otherwise research who was paying the tab for the 2.5-hour production. I did learn in the next day's Los Angeles Times, delivered to the driveway, that LA residents were invited to make donations for police crowd control costs, but not who paid for the matching Rolls-Royce Phantoms and Land Rovers. Did the entertainer's parents, sisters and brothers pool their resources? Will the Michael Jackson Family Trust, set up in his will and holder of the deceased's considerable, albeit illiquid, assets, get the invoice? How much did the Anschutz Entertainment Group chip in? (AEG owns the center and will no doubt be making a sizable claim to insurance carriers for losses associated with Jackson's cancelled This is It! concerts. Watch this space for when the insurance adjusters deny the claim due to false medical assurances.)

At last I am back at my monitor in D.C., where I am reunited with a 24-hour news cycle that's filling me in on the CIA's longtime practice of misleading its congressional overseers, AIG looking for political cover to pay executive bonuses, and news that Ronald Burris, the placeholder in President Obama's former Senate seat, is bowing out. In my Washington-centric news world, the only Michael Jackson controversy is Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee's teenage crush getting the better of her with a proposed House resolution paired with Nancy Pelosi showing leadership by telling her "no."