Now Michael Jackson's supporters rail against what might be "in bad taste."
The executors of the late pop star's estate sent an outraged letter to Discovery Communications today, expressing their, well, outrage over plans to air Michael Jackson's Autopsy: What Really Killed Michael Jackson, which would feature an imagined reenactment of Jackson's autopsy, on Jan. 13 in Europe.
"Your decision to even schedule this program is in shockingly bad taste, insensitve to Michael's family, and appears motivated solely by your blind desire to exploit Michael's death, while cynically attempting to dupe the public into believing this show will have serious medical value," wrote coexecutors John Branca and John McClain.
One could say something similar about the attempt to capitalize on Jackson's death with the release of the mashed-together Michael, but anyway...
Branca and McClain said that they were "especially outraged" by the "sickening" print advertisement for the special, which depicts a corpse on a gurney with a hand clad in a spangly white glove poking out from beneath a sheet.
"The ad is debased, sick and insensitve," they wrote. "No doubt this fictitious, morbid image is being spread worldwide even now on the Internet"—well, it is now!—"viewed by Michael's loved ones, and even accepted as authentic by those who may be unaware that Discovery made it up."
Citing the network's history of "some of the best programming television had to offer," Branca and McClain expressed further wonderment at how it could go ahead with something "so mind boggling," and urged it to reconsider.
Discovery hasn't yet responded to requests for comment.
Fans started an online petition earlier this month in an attempt to get the show pulled from the schedule.