JSON parser for zencommand

I found an old ZenPack for createing Event Histograms (see: http://community.zenoss.org/docs/DOC-4538Event Histograms), but it doesn't appear to be current. So, I took a look at what I could do now.

I found:  getEventSeveritiesCount()  which when scripted like:

    dmd = ZenScriptBase(connect=True).dmd
    print dmd.Devices.getEventSeveritiesCount()

gives me what I think I want:

     {'info': {'count': 1057, 'acknowledged_count': 0}, 'clear': {'count': 0, 'acknowledged_count': 0}, 'warning': {'count': 333, 'acknowledged_count': 0}, 'critical': {'count': 376, 'acknowledged_count': 0}, 'error': {'count': 2937, 'acknowledged_count': 2}, 'debug': {'count': 244, 'acknowledged_count': 0}}

which is very nicely formatted JSON (and, if I want, i can iterated over the Device sub-classes).

I've read that the zencommand collector can parse JSON. 

1. Is that the "Auto" parser?  (nothing in the list says "JSON")

2. How do I structure the datapoints under this datasource?

TIA!

Richard Evans