Pop music was surprisingly multicultural in the seventies. In the eighties it turned almost completely white.

And out of that whiteness came Michael Jackson, smuggling funk onto MTV using his own mind-blowing stylistic genius.

I still wonder if the whiteness of eighties pop had something to do with Reagan and the War on Drugs.

Reagan announced his war on the "casual user." The Drug War was going to be waged against non-addicts, in the name of battling addiction.

Now we know, in hindsight, that this war was waged mainly against black casual users, in the form of racial profiling and the new drug-related crime of driving while black.

It can't be mere coincidence that all this got started at the same time pop music was turning almost completely white.

And out of that whiteness came Michael Jackson, never once in his life suspected of smoking reefer.

But he ended up dying from a drug overdose anyway. Go figure.

May he rest in peace.

As for the living, we are still cleaning up from the eighties in many ways. Afghanistan, Pakistan, the economy, and drug policy as well.

All those great-sounding decisions made back then are blowing up in our faces left and right.

I am 45 years old and grew up with Michael. I miss him today much more than I thought I would. This is a sad day for all of us.

every frakkin news outlet is covering this story 24-7. Worse than Phil Spector or OJ, MJ was a despicable criminal who repeatedly escaped justice due to his cult of celebrity.

The variety and detail of the charges against MJ from mulitple sources make any conclusion on this matter common sense unless you willfully turn your head. WHat other adult male gets little boys drunk, watches pornos with them to get them aroused, then sleeps with them... and people believe they werent up to something?

The greatest entertainer of all time.

A huge musical influence.

A lasting legacy of musical contribution.

The man who brought black music to the white population.

Nearly all the accolades are completely divorced from reality. MJ was barely out of diapers when Smokey Robinson was penning and recording some of the MOST memorable hits of the rock and roll/pop/soul era. Hundreds of black performers and musicians struggled for decades to get black music on the air and to have it available to white audiences; a task that was accomplished long before MJ ever came around with his single, wildly successful album.

I don't have anything in particular against the guy. Maybe he was a pedophile; maybe he was just a weird freak. Don't know, don't care. His music, such as it is, was popular due as much to his "celebrity" than to any overriding "innovation" or "contribution".

Remember: He made his MOST money from owning the rights to the Lennon/McCartney catalog. How many artists have covered Michelle, as opposed to Billie Jean?

He ain't no Lennon/McCartney. Hell... he ain't no Elvis, even (of course, neither was Elvis - another wildly overrated artist).

I'm so glad they finnlly buried Jackson a black dude who wanted to be a white woman. The media have made fools of themselves with all of the coverage of him.I hope I never hear his name again

Salon has front page live blogging coverage of the funeral for a man who has not been musically relevant in more than 15 years, and was also very probably a pedophile. And the last two weeks everyone has been falling over themselves to try and walk back all the things they've thought, read, or said about him since the first time he is known to have paid off a victim's family to get out of a conviction.

I have to wonder, when OJ finally passes away, will he get the same reverence? We're talking about one of the six or so greatest running backs the NFL has ever seen. That's at least equal to a pop star, which honestly, is not very high on the musical hierarchy to begin with- its below a bassist, I'd say.

Now sure, we all know OJ butchered two people, but he was acquitted too. And it was just that one time. Are we all gonna be pretending that didn't happen when his service is held at Ralph Wilson Stadium in the not so distant future?

I cannot for the life of me understand this outpouring of love for a man who just two weeks ago was still a pariah and a pathetic joke. Is it guilt? Is that it? Is everyone really just guilty because they thought mean and nasty things about him? And now everyone's just overcompensating? Are you all just really guilty for wishing bad things to happen to someone you thought was a pedophile?

Get over it. And can we get back to actual real news on a news site?

Why is this on Salon? You aren't better than this?

over the high plains,

the roar of a great waterfall at spring thaw in a year of heavy snows,

five hundred wild geese landing on glassy river water at dusk,

a tiger,

a bee,

a live birth...

all performers compete for attention and admiration with the free spectacle of nature, and very few can compare:

but MJ did.

With talent, and craft, and many, many hours of hard practice, he exploded the limits of human expression

and showed us the fierceness of life itself.

I've watched a solar eclipse, and the Leonid meteor shower, and witnessed a glacier melting into the sea. And I got to see Michael Jackson sing and dance.

What a life!

It was Kobe Bryant and Magic Johnson (not Michael Jordan) giving tribute to Michael. Magic's personal stories were a joy to hear.

As a child of the 80's I grew up with his music and videos, and I liked his music but not enough to every buy a record. Then the "hits" started to dry up and the allegations started. OK OK, so all charges were dropped but how many families of little boys did he have to pay off? He ADMITTED in an interview that he thought it was a beautiful, healthy and loving thing to share his bed with little boys. If I remember right couldn't a couple of those boys also id his penis?! YES he was a good entertainer but YES he molested little boys, and no amount of fame should excuse that vile, disgusting behavior. You would think Christ himself had died today by this absurd spectacle.