I don't want to freak you out, but I had a sort of premonition a couple days before Michael Jackson died.  Not exactly that he was going to.  But I was thinking to myself, this Iran thing's just going on and on, day after day those revolutionaries are stealing the headlines.  It's getting kinda stale.  Now, if Michael Jackson up and died all the sudden, we'd get some real news up in there again.  I'm serious.

And now all you have to do is look at the front page of the Times today to see we've moved on to bigger and better things:


Not a squeak about Iran.  Not one dickey-bird.

Forget Nada, Neda, whatever.  Today the world mourns a real loss to freedom and human dignity.  Jackson's family is obviously too deep in mourning to talk to the press.  Um, at least about Michael.  We'll all remember him our own way, of course. I stumbled upon this during a break from the slog today.  Good times, good times. 

Meanwhile, buried somewhere deep in the news, Iran's so-called Guardian Council announced it has confirmed the election results, surprise, surprise.  I guess it's really not headline-grabbing stuff at this point, just run-of-the-mill tyranny.  Now with a coup in Honduras and protesters confronting soldiers there, too, you have to wonder which pop icon will be next to steal the spotlight through heart attack, overdose, or autoerotic asphyxiation.