My man Bud alerts me this morning to an outstanding column on MSNBC.com, where Michael Ventre examines the Michael Jackson case. In Ventre's opinion, Jackson is about to do hard time:

In retrospect, Michael Jackson and his people probably would have been well-advised to rent some prison movies, because it seems to me that in all the films and television shows I have seen that deal with the milieu of the maximum-security penitentiary, there are no stuffed animals, video games, swing sets, cotton candy machines or choo-choo trains. In the yard, they don’t play “Ring Around the Rosey,” they play “Garrote the Squealer.” In the shower, when somebody passes you the soap, it’s not just a gesture of courtesy, it’s the beginning of a relationship.

According to Ventre, things looked bad for Jackson from the git-go:

[T]here are...developments that disturb me the most and make me wonder if indeed Michael has a cavity search and a delousing in his immediate future.

First, Court TV reported that a portable toilet was brought to the scene. When the police bring their own toilet when serving a search warrant, it means one of two things: a) they’re going to be there for a while, or b) Michael Jackson’s bathroom is too disgusting to use. My guess is the former, not the latter, because people who have had 300 plastic surgeries tend to pay attention to detail. So that means the cops probably took the square footage of Neverland, divided it by the size of the average adolescent pubic hair, and then realized this was going to be a takeout food and porta-potty kind of day.

As of this morning, the cops are still there. That can't be good. Unless Haley Joel Osment can get himself arrested quickly, one suspects that Jackson is not going to find his cellmate so attractive.