Don't take this the wrong way, but Michael Jackson is dead to me.

I'm quoting my friend C. when I say that, but she perfectly crystallized my own reaction to the weeks-long hysteria surrounding the pop star's untimely death at age 50.

It's not that I didn't appreciate MJ's talent and showmanship or feel sad about his tragic demise. But picking over his bones is not my idea of a healthy or useful national past time, any more than picking over his psyche and his trash were when he was alive.

You may think that if Michael Jackson were truly dead to me, this column would be a Jackson-free zone where people who can't bear another word about him could find refuge. Merely bringing up his name would seem to contradict my premise.

But this isn't really about him. It's about the ballyhoo around him that defies all perspective.

It should be possible to mark the passing of an entertainment giant without elevating him to near-sainthood or wallowing in every detail of his alleged weirdness. Yet the attention paid to such mega-celebrities by the media -- and I say this as a member in good standing of that accursed group -- tends to skew toward the extremes.

Television's MJ coverage all but obliterated the equally sad death of another icon, Farrah Fawcett. It was also an unexpected gift to Mark Sanford, the Appalachian Trail-hiking governor of South Carolina, whose marital woes were eclipsed by the Gloved One's heart attack. And it just about drowned out the news that 4,000 U.S. Marines had moved into Afghanistan's Helmand River Valley in an effort to retake the region from the Taliban. That important initiative by the military happened a full week after Mr. Jackson's death, but still it took a back seat to the steady din of all-MJ-all-the-time.

The frenzy reminded me of a banner headline some years ago in The Onion. The gist of it was "Nuclear holocaust! Michael Jackson, 6 billion others die."

None of this is really surprising. Celebrity news makes news precisely because there's so little actual news involved. It's a voyeuristic time filler; it's easy to cover and rarely makes any difference in the average person's life. So of course, the appetite for it is bottomless -- unlike the appetite for, say, health-care reform or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These are serious, complicated subjects that really matter to the state of the nation and therefore tend to make our eyes glaze over.

So it was a relief when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi shut down any possibility of a resolution honoring Mr. Jackson. She said debate on the symbolic measure might raise "contrary views" about the pop star's life (no kidding), adding that lawmakers could speechify individually on the House floor to their hearts' content.

Congress does have a few other pressing matters to deal with right now. Plus, Quincy Jones, Brooke Shields and the Rev. Al Sharpton did a fine job of honoring the late performer during the tribute service at the Staples Center in Los Angeles with no help from the government. Unless you count the $1.4 million that the financially strapped city of L.A. in the bankrupt state of California spent on security, traffic control, police overtime and clean up, and is now trying to recoup through donations. Is there a better way for the fan-on-the-street to honor the late great millionaire than by chipping in for the police to protect so many other millionaires?

Next, I suppose, will come the Michael Jackson Memorial Statue and Park. Given the nature of the star's stage persona and personal life, the people who surrounded him and the tributes that credit him with everything short of curing cancer, it's not likely to be a model of restraint.

Who knows? It might even rival the kitschy statue of Diana, Princess of Wales and her lover, Dodi Fayed, in Harrods department store in London. This bizarre memorial, located by an escalator, is a bronze depiction of the two dancing on a beach beneath the wings of an albatross, said to symbolize the Holy Spirit. Its base is inscribed with the words "Innocent Victims." Harrods is owned by Dodi Fayed's father, so the statue is beyond the reach of the royal family. I sometimes wonder if Queen Elizabeth wakes up in the morning and rubs her eyes in disbelief that she can't do anything about it.

No matter how dead Michael Jackson is to me or to anyone else, the stories about him are going to keep coming. The circumstances of his death, the coroner's report, the role his doctors played, the genealogy and custody of his children, the disposition of his estate, the tell-all books from former friends and employees -- there's plenty still to come, and it's going to be awfully hard to shut it all out.

That may be the inevitable end for a superstar who courted and provoked so much sensation, but it's a sad one nonetheless. As was the case with Elvis, to whose daughter he was once married, Michael Jackson is not destined to rest in peace for some time to come.