Within minutes of the first reports of Michael Jackson's cardiac arrest, the TV trucks and platoons of reporters had moved into place outside Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.
Cellphones flashing and glances darting, fretful news-hounds lacked only one thing that afternoon eight days ago: a single news source capable of filling the desperate information vacuum.
Then Brian Oxman arrived. He delivered quote after emotive quote. He worked his cellphone. He held reporters' hands. He fought back tears. As he jostled through a scrum of journalists and fans, the sometime lawyer to various members of the Jackson clan repeated an urgent refrain: "Where's the CNN truck? I need the CNN truck."
We have seen this character, and this movie, before. From the halls of the O.J. Simpson trial to the shores of every celebrity happening since, "experts" and "insiders" stand primed and willing for the next live stand-up.
They thrive on one part chutzpah, one part opportunity and one part complicity -- by a celebutainment media that seldom, if ever, presses the talking heads about what they really know and how they know it.
I thought I'd better find out a little bit more about the ever-ready Mr. Oxman, who acted as a commentator for what was then Court TV at the Robert Blake murder trial and who hosts a weekday radio program on KLAA-AM (830).
Oxman's arrival at UCLA could not have been better timed. The assembled reporters (editors yammering in their ears for more information) had been left bereft, as Jackson's family, police and medical center officials declined to provide information.
If you listened closely to what the 57-year-old lawyer said that day, you found that he had little more information than the weeping Jackson fans or the rest of us: no details of Jackson's collapse, no description of exactly what ailed the pop star, nothing but regurgitation of the already well-known claims that Jackson had a past problem with prescription drugs.
In a moment caught on video, Oxman did make sure to remind one interviewer that he had been with Jackson in 2005 "at the darkest hours of his life," when the megastar faced child molestation charges in Santa Barbara County.
"The man was innocent," Oxman said. "I proved that he was innocent. He proved that he was innocent. And yet now we have this. And it just hurts me to the core of my heart."
