Larry King's addiction: Michael Jackson

An intervention couldn't save Michael Jackson, but maybe it's not too late for Larry King.

The King of Talk can't stop blathering about the King of Pop. It's been building for three weeks now, getting more and more absurd.

Night after night, the CNN host tosses out sentence-fragment questions ("Brain not returned to the family . . . right, Carlos?") that seem like they should have been written for Jimmy Kimmel.

Night after night, the "experts" lob back speculation, piled on theory, heaped on postulation.

Twenty-two days after Jackson's death, new facts about the cause remain fleeting. As the gravel-voiced, ever-game host acknowledged in one of his occasional moments of clarity this week: "We don't know any facts yet. . . . All of these are assumptions."

That was just before King's panel of judges and lawyers launched into yet another round of speculation, King urging: "What do we know? What do we know?"

To be fair, the suspendered-one is only the most visible suspect when it comes to what Comedy Central's Jon Stewart dubs "obitutainment."

Geraldo Rivera used a whiteboard to scrawl out his theories on the cause of death. One cable correspondent offered an update on his "reporting," that consisted of reading from the latest missive on celebrity website TMZ.

A Scandinavian reporter called our paper looking for "an expert on Debbie Rowe's womb." (Rowe is one of Jackson's ex-wives and mother of his two eldest children.)

Dear old Larry King's relentless Jackson coverage merits special consideration, in my mind, because of his sizable audience and his failure to heed his own better instincts.

As I watched each night this week, King seemed to experience spasms of doubt, only (not unlike the alleged addict he's covering) to plunge headlong into the next bout of overindulgence.

Tuesday night may have been the most hilariously appalling.

The program began with King regurgitating a New York Post report that claimed Rowe had sold, for $4 million, any claim to the two oldest Jackson children.

King immediately wondered if the screaming headline "Cash Cow -- Rowe Sells Jackson Kids" was just another example of the tabloid "running wild here." His guests concluded that the report could not be verified. And Rowe's attorney had offered an unequivocal denial, saying Rowe "has not accepted and will not accept any additional financial consideration" beyond her current spousal support.