Tearful Tribute to the King of Pop

Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr. may have exaggerated when he called Michael Jackson "the greatest entertainer that ever lived," but there's no question that the memorial service yesterday in Los Angeles deserved all the superlatives anyone might want to apply -- biggest, most elaborate, most widely viewed. There were no half-measures for the King of Pop.

In many ways, it was more a commemoration of the man's genius than of the man himself. Funerals are not a time for ambivalence, and the one thing everyone could agree on about Jackson -- the one thing, perhaps, that anyone except those closest to him could truly know -- was that his artistic contributions were revolutionary, profound and lasting.

In a Maya Angelou poem, read from the Staples Center stage by Queen Latifah, there was a telling line: "Whether we knew who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his." Some of those who paid him tribute did know him intimately -- his brother Jermaine, who sang "Smile" as if Michael were standing next to him, or Brooke Shields, who struggled to speak through tears. Some others seemed barely to have known him at all, and they were the ones who touched on the controversy in Jackson's life. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.), for example, took a moment to point out that our legal system is based on the presumption of innocence.

There was much about Jackson that his millions of fans perhaps didn't want to know. His talent, though, was unmistakable. When John Mayer brought out his guitar for an instrumental version of "Human Nature," you heard Jackson's sweet voice in the riffs he played.

As Lionel Ritchie sang "Jesus Is Love," the video screen behind him briefly showed the columns and vaults of a medieval cathedral. I couldn't help but think of Princess Diana's funeral, which I covered. There was a big difference between the solemn walk that Diana's family took to Westminster Abbey and the freeway motorcade that conveyed the Jackson family to the Staples Center. But the sense of moment was the same: the sudden death of an icon who, without our really knowing it, had defined an era.

Near the end, it was heartbreaking to see the Jacksons on stage as a family. We knew so much about their difficult show-business upbringing, we heard so much over the years about their dysfunctionality, that it was easy to lose sight of the fact that they remained, indeed, a family -- brothers and sisters, a mother and a father, Michael's two sons and his daughter, Paris, whose tearful tribute was the most emotional moment of the day. To them, he was no enigma. He was real, and now he's gone.

Soon we will learn more about the circumstances of Jackson's death. The disposition of his estate may well involve unpleasantries. We'll hear more about his faults, his eccentricities, his habits. Much of it, I am confident, won't be pretty.

So it was appropriate, I think, to take a day to focus more narrowly -- on his generosity, which was undeniable; on his ambition, which was shrewd and purposeful; on his vulnerability, which came through in all the tributes; on his amazing talent, which profoundly changed the art and business of popular music; and on the stunning worldwide reaction to his death, which could come only in recognition of a life that truly mattered.

-- Eugene Robinson