I would have written sooner, but I was busy watching the 102nd hour of continuous live coverage on the death of Michael Jackson.

I am now taking meals in front of CNN and am thinking of installing a TV in the shower so I can still maintain some semblance of personal hygiene while all of this is playing out.

I am not proud of this facet of my personality. But I figure if I wasn’t addicted to lurid and gross over-exposure of news events, it might be something even worse, like mah jong.

I believe it all began with the 1991 trial of William Kennedy Smith. I was fortunate to have been miserably sick with a long flu of some kind during that one, which allowed me a convenient excuse if anyone asked why an otherwise normal woman would find this so compelling.

I’m not sure what my excuse was during the Menendez brothers’ murder trial  in ’93, but I know I was pregnant during the O.J. Simpson trial in ’95.

I was also gainfully employed during these years, so it wasn’t like I could watch all the time, but I think that’s actually what got me hooked.  With the advent of televised trials and continuous coverage of events like these really heating up, that was the intent. Keep repeating the same news loop over and over, but with EXCLUSIVE and BREAKING NEWS over the headlines, so that your viewers always felt in danger of missing something if they walked away or turned the TV off.

As a seasoned, veteran journalist by that time, I fell for all of it and still do.

As my husband Rick reminded me last night when he walked into the bedroom, saw me still glued to the Michael Jackson coverage and asked sarcastically, “Is he still dead?” I have a problem. Of course, I don’t see it that way.

When Princess Diana was killed in 1997, yes, I did watch the coverage into the wee hours of the morning, the next day, the day after and the day after that. But I loved Princess Diana. When I covered Wimbledon through much of the 1980’s and most of the 90’s, the press section was situated next to the Royal Box, so we would get an up-close view of Diana and sometimes even the kids.

Often, a match would be in a fifth-set tiebreaker or Boris Becker would dive across the court with a shot for the ages, and I would have to ask what happened because I was watching Diana adjust her binoculars.  

It sounds a lot more disturbing than it really is and trust me, I was the source to go to for any breaking Diana news at the time.

And just so I don’t sound like I am simply obsessed with celebrity deaths, I was also addicted to the 1987 continuing coverage of little Jessica McClure, when she fell down a well in Midland, Texas, and that had a good ending.

I should also point out here, just for clarification, that I do not slow down and rubber-neck when I pass accidents on the side of a highway.  I am also disgusted at the practice of gathering in person on the scene of tragedies, like those who stood around the outside of the hospital where Michael Jackson died or actually got in their cars and drove to his rented mansion. You’ve seen these people, the ones standing behind police barricades at midnight with small children clinging to their legs.

“I thought it was important for her to see history,” said one woman the other night, pointing to her dazed and half-asleep child holding a “We Love Michael” sign.

Now, that’s sick.

Me? I kept watching last night because they promised BREAKING NEWS and I always trust Anderson Cooper, even when he knows there is not going to be any actual breaking news but still another interview with Deepak Chopra, who, I swear, at one point was live on two cable shows at the same time.  

I also kept watching because every time they’d play a snippet of a Michael Jackson performance, I somehow held out hope that they would return from commercial and just run a full-blown concert, beginning with the Jackson 5 days.

Eventually, I gave up and my son and I put in the Michael Jackson History on Film Vol. II DVD the kids loved  when they were little, and then Alec slipped out of the room and I found him watching some You Tube performances of the Jackson 5.

And finally, something beat out the continuous live coverage.

If you are famous in America, you are what your obit says you are. Usually, it’s boiled down to some silly line you uttered in a commercial, your divorces or other legal problems. If you’re lucky, your accomplishments are great enough to make the lead paragraph.

I’m glad I’m not writing Michael Jackson’s obit.

I can’t think of a more conflicting legacy than that of Michael Jackson’s.

I flash back almost immediately to the memory of watching the Brady Bunch and Partridge Family in the late 60s and 70s like most every other white kid in this country, and then being absolutely knocked silly by the talents of Michael Jackson and the Jackson Five.

The dancing was unlike anything I ever saw, the music made you want to dance. And it didn’t matter what race you were, it was intoxicating.

I was a senior in high school when Off the Wall came out. Three years later, in 1982, came Thriller. And if you claimed not to play both until the grooves wore thin, you were lying. We crowded around the television to see the premiere of the video on a new network called MTV.

I remember watching Michael moonwalk on the Motown special in ’83 and I may as well have been watching the real moonwalk, surreal as it was.

He was in his prime, sexy, though no girlfriends in sight. Brooke Shields on his arm in one photo, Emmanuel Lewis in another. Then came the pet chimp Bubbles and the plastic surgery. He was sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber?

He was eccentric. He said he was abused as a child. He lived in an amusement park with llamas.

He was married to Lisa Marie. He wasn’t married.

The plastic surgery continued. You wanted him to dance more, but he mostly grabbed his crotch. Other artists came around, many copying his.

There was the child molestation suit, a settlement and then the documentary in which he brazenly talked about sharing his bed with children. He became a father, but didn’t seem interested in his kids having a mother. He named his two sons Prince, nicknamed one Blanket, then dangled the baby off a balcony in a clip that still makes me nervous to watch.

Was he a martyr or a criminal?

I was repulsed by him, didn’t know what to make of him, forgot about the music.

He was indeed a pop icon. And a troubled man.

The obits will say it all.

Sadly.