Littlejohn attacks media over Jackson coverage, omits current and former bosses

Richard Littlejohn's latest column focuses on the outpourings of emotion following the death of Michael Jackson. Even in that he manages to include a bit of gay-bashing, referring to the 'provisional wing of the Friends of Dorothy,' whatever the hell that means.

Never one to shy away from his enormous ego, he claims he is 'someone steeped in the history of Motown'. Even if he does say so himself.

Using this 'expertise' Littlejohn goes on to claim Jackson is 'a fairly minor figure compared with Smokey, Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye, Holland-Dozier-Holland, the Tops and the Temps'. I may not be as 'steeped in the history of Motown' as our world authority, but I would have said that Jackson became much more of a pop figure than a Motown one, so the comparison (and showing off) is a bit pointless.

Our 'expert' then goes on to dismiss Jackson further, claiming his:

global fame and fortune was predicated upon a single album, Thriller, which owes as much to Quincy Jones's brilliant production and John Landis's groundbreaking video as it does to the songs themselves.

As if nothing before or after Thriller was of any importance and, in any case, that album's success wasn't really down to him anyway.

Thriller is the biggest selling album of all time, so we have heard repeatedly over the last few days, but given his Off the Wall - which came out three years before Thriller - sold 20 million copies and Bad, five years later, sold 30 million, Thriller doesn't appear to be the be all and end all. Perhaps Littlejohn isn't as 'steeped' in knowledge about Jackson's music as he likes to think.

He then switches his attention to the media, and follows in the great Mail tradition of bashing the BBC: 'As usual, the BBC went bonkers, with one reporter even wearing a black tie.' He neglects to mention that Sky had just as much coverage on its news channel, although this surely has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact he used to have a debate show on Sky News.

He then has a pop at the printed press for all their coverage:

Newspapers followed suit. Rainforests have been felled to churn out special souvenir supplements, which will end up as cat litter.

Of course the Mail would never go overboard in its coverage. If you put Michael Jackson's name into the Mail website search engine, there is simply no way that you would find some 90 articles that mention him since his death five days ago (including, at time of writing, four in their 'top story' section).

And the Mail certainly wouldn't have put Jackson on the front page for three days running from 27-29 June.

And the Mail's star columnist definitely wouldn't dream of indulging in such 'bonkers' coverage with 909 words of his own on the subject.

Oh wait.