Apparently you've never been to a funeral before. Funerals are generally propaganda events--public displays of grief for the deceased's community that gloss over the person's short comings. This is a lesson I learned when I was SIX, when a wife-abusing neighbor died and the funeral made him seem like a saint--did you really think you'd see anybody talk about his pedophilia charges or Howard Hughes-crazy-rich-man tendencies? Don't be ridiculous.

And yes, the daughter's words may have been staged, and it was probably exploitative. This is the Jackson family--they made their name by exploiting their youth. And I think Paris Jackson is going to have a lot more trauma in her life, as she grows up to learn more about the man her father was, than that awful time she had to speak in front of a crowd and had people.

This entry was filled with a lot of bullshit questions with answers you should have already known. TRY AGAIN.

A child speaking at a private funeral is one thing, letting a little girl with no previous exposure to the media sob helplessly in front of an audience of millions in an ampitheatre is another. The Jacksons are not known for their good judgement, and just because a child asks to speak doesn't necessarily mean the impulse is in her best interest. It was probably spontaneous, but responsible parents/grandparents/aunts/uncles would probably have declined to let her expose herself so painfully. Now this child's grief is on permanent record and endlessly looped on YouTube. People with more sense wouldn't have allowed it.

but I can tell you this, if it would have resulted in me to get millions of dollars in a bank account so I don't have to ever work for the rest of my life I wish my family would have exploited my emotional grief when I was 11.

... that this is unnecessary, overdone, and doesn't belong on the frontpage here anymore than Paglia's dim-witticisms. How is the big closeup of Paris's face going to help her escape the exploitation of the Jackson family entertainment machine??? How is talking about this any more going to facilitate productive dialogue on any subject whatsoever?

Thx.

If Judy Berman, and the crew at Salon, are genuinely concerned about the exploitation of this child who wanted to join ohethers in expressing her grief over her father's death, then PLEASE REMOVE HER PHOTO AND THE ARTICLE. Absolute hypocrisy of the highest order, and a despicably obvious grab for page hits. Gross.

How cynical of you, and Judy, might I add, classless! You're the one exploiting Paris Jackson to grab headlines.... grab a coffee and cigarette... and choke on it.

It was obvious the girl was not a scheduled speaker, she reached as she asked to take the mic and her family complied rather than embarrass her by withholding the mic from her.

Don't you remember being 11?

The media has exploited the clip by replaying it endlessly as it was obvious they would as soon as she surprised Janet and the others by stepping foward. Anything she said in that moment was bound to be replayed ad nauseum.

Why were her words so surprising and newsworthy? Because, any dimwit can see, she has been kept under veil for most of the past decade. Hardly exploited, she was cloistered. Her first public statement at such a loaded and terrible moment had me hanging off of my seat in shock and rapt attention.

She is a beautiful young woman and no doubt sincere. I saw nothing in the family's treatment of the children that was in any way exploitative. Their body language was protective.

The children had an absolute right to be there, unveiled, and she had an absolute right to speak her mind.

I'm not sure why people keep saying "we may never know" if he really was a pedophile. His children are not babies, and they will grow up. And (hopefully) they will learn that the life they have known till now is completely abnormal. I imagine they will have some really interesting stories to tell, and given the Jackson family penchant for attention at any price (didn't Paris's Daddy himself feed bizarre-o stories to the tabs about his hyperbaric bed chamber and buying the Elephant Man's bones?), I suspect we will hear from them eventually.

And to my earlier point, that a child can love someone who is sexually abusive - she has never known any other life. Eventually she will, and then, I suspect, the anger will come pouring out with a vengenace.

a cigar is just a cigar.

Give it a fucking rest. In the panoply of things to get all worked over, this is microbial.

Everyone I've spoken to on Paris Jackson's tears and speech has expressed that I may be going too far critiquing a child's words or actions in a time of mourning. However, I think this is a part of the problem that Michael Jackson's persona presents us. It his very vision of child-likeness/childishness which he masterfully purported and propagated that makes it easy for people to be get taken in by Paris Jackson words. Seeing a child express a pure love for M.J.(as a father) leads us straight and little a way away beyond to the very persona he wanted us to believe about him. The beyond here, is how M.J.'s universal love for children and his child-likeness were not impotent and wishful but in the final analysis concrete attributes fulfilled in his relation to his [adopted] children.

Paris Jackson's words also fulfill another function. After all the speeches, Paris Jackson's words sealed the persona that the whole memorial was after. In other words such child-like verbiage protects his iconic stature (which of course involves a legal/criminal component).

The whole scene made me wonder what the general patterns of grieving are? Paris Jackson's grief-or at least the grief she was encouraged to express--appeared narcissistic. At the age of eleven I imagine she is already self-conscious of the various portrayal of her father. Her words seemed to hone in the portray of M.J. as a misunderstood, eccentric, with a peculiar penchant for relationships to children.

Her words perform a trick of the brain on us: it possible to be on heavy medication, having peculiar--perhaps not even sexual--liaisons with children and still be a good father. Wow, hard to believe, but in such a moment, so believable.

A part of me doubts that this could have been conscious on her part. Most of me doubt very much that she actually came up with those "moving" lines by herself.