Word: jacksonism
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...most striking statement at Michael Jackson's memorial service was not his daughter Paris' tremulous and wrenching goodbye. It was not Berry Gordy's declaring Jackson "the greatest entertainer that ever lived," nor was it the Rev. Al Sharpton's assertion that Jackson's fame made a generation of white kids comfortable with electing a black President. It came before the encomiums and music began, after Motown singer Smokey Robinson took the stage, read testimonials from Diana Ross and Nelson Mandela, walked...
...utter hush. Broadcast and cable news alike took a breath - for the first time, it seemed, in a week and a half - and let the darkened arena and the stilled crowd tell the story. It was an unintended tribute, and a blessed relief. (See TIME's full Michael Jackson coverage...
...says something about our media culture that it took a mammoth event held in a sports arena to demonstrate the power of a moment of quiet. Jackson's memorial was an outsize spectacle, befitting an entertainer who engaged the world through outsize spectacles. The performers and eulogizers were A-list, the music anthemic, the casket gold-plated. And yet the service was also cathartic and tasteful, especially compared with the media frenzy that preceded...
...memories and goodbyes, much of the memorial was about the media. A clip reel displayed tabloid headlines, and several speakers portrayed the singer as the victim of sensationalism. "Maybe now, Michael, they will leave you alone," his brother Marlon said. "Wasn't nothing strange about your daddy," Sharpton told Jackson's children. "It was strange what your daddy had to deal with." (See the top 10 Michael Jackson moments...
People can debate whether that's true, whether Jackson was a victim, whether the media persecuted him during his child-molestation trials and other scandals or soft-pedaled his history after his death. But certainly in death, Jackson served the media the way he did in life: as a limitless draw for audiences. (And yes, I know I write this in a magazine that rushed out a special commemorative issue the weekend after Jackson died...