Obitutainment

The morbid entertainment of celebrity deaths.

United States Representative Peter T. King, a Republican from Long Island, caused a storm when he said of Michael Jackson’s life and death:

“Let’s knock out the psychobabble. This guy was a pervert, he was a child molester, he was a pedophile. And to be giving this much coverage to him, day in and day out, what does it say about us as a country?”

Over on The Times’s Media Decoder Blog, Brian Stelter attempted to answer King’s question:

It may say that people are avidly interested in “obitutainment,” a term for celebrity death news coined in the Kurt Andersen novel “Turn of the Century” and reprised last week by “The Daily Show,” of Comedy Central, which parodied the often speculative coverage of Mr. Jackson’s death.

The Daily Show revived the term in a June 30 show in which host Jon Stewart presented: “The RIPpy Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Obitutainment.”