ith the Michael Jackson sex scandal capturing the imagination of America, news organizations at last have gotten over the post-election blues with some impressive ratings. The more ingenious networks have even overcome a ban on cameras in the courtroom by using actors or drawings to interpret the images of the trial for viewers, opening a lucrative new area for television: Reenactment news directors.

As theater directors already know, just because Othello has been performed hundreds of times doesn’t mean you can’t distinguish yourself and leave your own stamp on Shakespeare. The E! Entertainment Network were first out of the gate, with their very straightforward, set-thin adaptation of the Michael Jackson daily drama, nabbing austere actors Jack Donner and Rigg Kennedy, as well as much-sought Jackson impersonator Edward Moss in the title role. But first isn’t finest, as many know.

Other Jackson trial interpretations sprung up immediately, the most lavish among them at NBC news, under the guidance of legendary Broadway stage director Fischer Todland. The production immediately went after George Clooney for the part of defense attorney Thomas Mesereau and Renee Zelleweger as Michael Jackson, but found the actors too busy for the project. The roles were more quickly cast with Billy Baldwin and Fran Drescher, who weren’t doing much. The cost has already exceeded $12 million, but the network says no expense can be spared when going for a hell of a lot more money in advertising revenue.

Literal interpretations are not the only ones to make their debuts in the weeks of the trial. Among the more daring is Bravo’s rendition of the trial, filled with sharp zooms, color-drenched scenes, and elaborate dialogue based loosely on the actual trial transcripts. While it may not have the journalistic integrity of E!’s coverage, it’s received rave reviews from many television critics for its cutting-edge language and daring employment of nudity.

Unsurprisingly, VH-1 has found success by reenacting the trial as a musical, with songs featuring lyrics by Paul Simon and music by Philip Glass. Much of the production is overstated and purposelessly bizarre, but TV Guide praised Pink’s “heartbreaking� portrayal of Jackson, particularly for the song “(Why Do You Need) Photos of My Penis.�

One of the most abstract interpretations of the trial is BET’s all-black reenactment, with half-insane Jackson sister LaToya playing the role of the king of pop.

Media sourpusses have called the reenactments shameless sensationalism, but who cares what they say? Network executives are pleasantly surprised by the response to the creative interpretations and even see a future for other reenactments, with the possibility of extending them into hour-long shows, which might at least prevent yet another version of C.S.I. or Law & Order.

“Can you envision what this might mean for the future of network news?� asked E! News Director Vanessa Holmes, who obviously could, judging by the visible nipple outlines. “No longer would the news be limited to delivering long, in-depth trial coverage of famous people—we could suck in the audiences by casting famous people as nobody criminals! Like that guy who murdered everybody in the courtroom today. Think of all that sweet action, as directed by John Woo! If we had it on tape, some clumsy, shaky footage, we might get an art-house crowd—yuck! But cast Ving Rhames as the defendant, and Robert Duvall as the dead judge. Now that’s real news!�

resident Bush shocked observers who somehow still cling to their ability to be shocked by President Bush this week, nominating two-time Grammy winner and bald mullet inventor Michael Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Though lacking in diplomatic experience, the president’s supporters believe the 51-year-old soul crooner will be just as popular among the U.N.’s General Assembly as he is among people with truly horrible taste in music.

“I’m certain Michael’s smooth, soulful style will serve to soothe relations with our European neighbors,� Bush suggested, wiping tartar sauce on his ever-present lobster bib.

Regardless, political observers believe this move to be Bush’s latest and ultimate “Fuck You� to Europe, whose representatives will now all have to spend time with Michael Bolton.

“We were excited at first when we heard a rumor that the new ambassador would be American beach bunny David Hasselhoff,� explained Germany. “But then we got the real news. This is worse than an insult.�

“Michael Bolton is an asshole,� explained France. “And we do not like him.�

Spain was more diplomatic.

“He’s not going to sing, is he? I mean, if he has something to say in meetings, he’s just going to say it, right? Not sing it out like it was one of his cheesy goddamned songs, right? If we have to sit through some bullshit like ‘When a Man Needs a U.N. Security Resolution,’ we’re going to quit the U.N., no shit. Spain is not kidding.�

According to insider reports, Bush’s first choice to fill the position was Ronnie Gaylord of the pre-rock white vocal trio The Gaylords, but the president was disappointed to learn he had been dead for thirteen years.

“Michael Bolton has sold over 52 million albums worldwide over the course of his career,� boasted White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. “How many albums have the president’s detractors sold? Probably not as many. Unless you count The Eagles. They sold an awful lot of records.�

Bolton came to a very small fraction of the public’s attention in the late 70’s, as the lead singer for the heavy metal band Blackjack. However, Bolton’s lush, pussified style didn’t mesh well with hair band riffs, and by the mid-eighties he had discovered his true gift for making music fans vomit with the whitest of all possible R&B sounds.

“It’s always been my dream to lead,� explained a surprised Bolton upon hearing the news. “Actually, my dream was to make a lot of money, but I’ve already done that. Now leading sounds pretty good.�

While most people question from time to time the history of this or the history of that, few ever dislodge their heads from the collective bunghole long enough to ponder the history of history itself. How did we remember the past in the past, and why? The answer may rip your head off and crap down your throat.

The first histories on record were verbal, stories passed down from generation to generation like the one about the time uncle Henry beaned that hooker with a croquet mallet. This system worked fairly well for centuries, in spite of the complete lack of accuracy inherent in passing along history through a gigantic game of "telephone." Stories morphed over time until they bore no resemblance whatsoever to the originals, usually picking up fire-breathing dragons, large-breasted women and leprechauns along the way.

Then came pictographs, first in prehistoric, then in Egyptian times. These didn't help at all, and actually set the cause of history back 500 years because most people drew like shit. The ancient Sumerians actually believed that their ancestors rode around on giant dogs, just because their ancestors were so lousy at drawing horses.

Eventually, history yielded to the forces of progress and drawings were phased out in favor of songs. This ended up being only a marginal improvement, however, when it turned out that most people were lousy at writing songs as well. Most of the recorded history of ancient France has to do with cold-hearted women who up and left their men. In all likelihood, great wars were fought, technologies advanced, and other hard-to-rhyme subjects of note came up during this era, but we'll always have to guess at the details since no one could come up with any catchy songs commemorating these events.

Song-recorded history also posed the problem of popularity, as people often knew a great deal about the history behind songs they liked and wanted to hear again and again, but very little about the lame or sappy songs they thought blew. As a result, children in China in the 18th century B.C. knew everything there was to know about the time Willie Finch nailed his pecker to a tree, but next to nothing about the fall of the Xia dynasty. The dynasty's fall certainly made its way into a fair number of songs, but since the best of these was the bloated, pretentious "Tall Fall," the children never really had a chance.

Of course, similar problems exist today, since most American schoolchildren are at a loss to explain the purpose of the Bill of Rights, but have completely memorized the Meow Mix commercial and are quite familiar with Snoop Dogg's favorite sexual position.

By 1700 B.C. writing had been invented, which helped matters greatly except in areas afflicted by messy handwriting. Most of the history of Persia pre-600 B.C. remains a mystery due to the sloppy, lackadaisical hand of the day. Early writing was merely a streamlined version of pictographs strung together in sentences like "Me you seagulls two dogs fucking house buffalo."

Even after writing-down had become the widely accepted standard for historical recording, there still remained the question of how to store what had been written for the ages. The early practice of tattooing historical texts onto fat people gave way after it was realized that these corpulent canvases were literally taking history with them to their graves, and paper was adopted around 12oo B.C. But this helped matters little as historians discovered that books are heavy, and usually get lost every time you move. Also, paper was considered a delicacy by deer and the undereducated, so keeping starving people and wildlife out of your library became a full-time occupation.

Finally, someone realized you could just write history on a slip of paper, drop it into a bottle, and huck it into the ocean, at which point someone would eventually find it and learn about history. This solved several problems since deer can't operate bottle openers and starving people don't float. This practice exploded soon after the invention of the bottle in China in 12 A.D. The bottle was originally created as a musical instrument, before first being used to hold beverages in 13 A.D., after an extremely drunk man accidentally drank the spit collected at the bottom of a bottle-player's instrument after a particularly spirited performance. In spite of this experience, people somehow still decided to use bottles for drinking.

The first "message in a bottle" was invented after an unnamed Chinese man, who for some reason was carrying his grocery list in his mouth, accidentally dropped it into a half-full bottle of beer and couldn't get it back out. In frustration, he hurled the bottle into the ocean, where it remained until washing up on shore two years later. The man who found it, Yung Si-Bong, took his discovery as a message from God that he should go out into the world and find two-dozen eggs and a quart of goat milk. He told friends and family the story of his message from God, and before the day was done, the entire village was hucking message-filled bottles into the sea, hoping to hilariously fool morons like Yung Si-Bong.

Gradually, historians would migrate back to books, after the entire Pacific Ocean became clogged with bottles around 200 A.D. and swimmers had to wear chain mail to keep from being torn to shreds by all the broken glass, which incidentally contributed to China's 100% drowning rate in those days. But the main driving factor in the move back to book-written history was the development of new inks that didn't smell like a dying frog's balls. China's original inks were made from a blend of soot from pine smoke and fish-egg lamp oil mixed with the gelatin of donkey skin and wolverine musk. Around 230 A.D., the Chinese discovered that you could make ink out of soot alone, and that all the other ingredients had been thrown in originally just to get them out of the house.

Sadly, paper wouldn't make its debut in Europe until the fifteenth century, when Europeans were finally able to end the laborious practice of finger-painting their history on the walls with baked monkey feces. The Europeans were at first resistant to give up their shit-smearing ways, but quickly relented when they discovered that paper is delicious.

In modern days, thanks to the advent of the Internet, we've done away with paper altogether and have returned to the ways of our forefathers with a verbal history tradition, usually carried on something like "I read on the Internet that they've still got Napoleon's dong in a jar inside somebody's freezer in Hoboken." But you know what they say about being doomed to repeat history. I'm just kidding, I know you don't.

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