Overall, the early-morning coverage was tedious, trivial and trivializing, the natural result of talking heads required to keep talking when there is nothing much happening and little idea of what's about to. ("And up next," said Meredith Vieira on NBC's "Today," "a visit with the King of Pop's onetime best friend -- Bubbles the chimp.")
The tone improved once the memorial began. Perhaps because of the speed with which it was assembled, it was surprisingly straightforward -- in its dignified modesty as far as could be imagined from the experience of a Michael Jackson concert, or of the sort of tribute that a television network might have assembled. The songs, performed by artists including Mariah Carey, Stevie Wonder, Usher, Jennifer Hudson and Lionel Richie, embraced the gospel and inspirational.
And together with testimonials from Queen Latifah, Magic Johnson (he "made me a better point guard"), Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas), the Rev. Al Sharpton and others, they created a story of roots and continuity that argued for Jackson -- his pale alien mien and crossover appeal notwithstanding -- as a fundamentally black artist and a specifically black American role model.
Every memorial is both an affirmation and a denial; we are all darker than the words that will attend our passing. Far from the good being interred with his bones, Jackson's better self was sprinkled over the stage and to the watching world like fairy dust from Neverland.
Even as childhood friend Brooke Shields described him in a way more than one observer later called "humanizing," his memory was garlanded with superlatives. He was pictured as saintly, not just in his charitable good works and love for the world, but in his public martyrdom.
"We will never understand what he endured," said brother Marlon, as the Jackson family, including Michael's 11-year-old daughter, Paris, took the stage at the memorial's end, "not being able to walk across a street without a crowd gathering around him, being judged, ridiculed."
But for Motown founder Berry Gordy's allusion to "some bad times and maybe some questionable decisions on his part," the judgment here was all reflected outward. Addressing himself to the Jackson children in the front row, Sharpton said, "There wasn't nothing strange about your daddy. It was strange what he had to deal with."
There were, of course, many strange things about Michael Jackson; he was only human.
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robert.lloyd@latimes.com
