Appropriating a funeral for the sake of a "teaching moment" is something that's simply inappropriate, in my view.

In fact, imposing any agenda beyond the paying of expressing personal grief and last respects is arguably a very egotistical thing to do.

Another time, another place, perhaps. Not there.

I'm all with you and I wouldn't want to dispute a single word you wrote - because it is so simple - There is this man and his music and there is all this 'bad' and useless background noise - which finally will be as relevant as an 'evaluation' of Mozarts morals!

I had to read your article twice to try & get your perspective on the Michael Jackson issue. I never was a a Michael jackson fan but the events of the past few days made me think quite a lot about beautiful & ugly sides of human existence.

I do agree with you on some issues like MJ not being a civil rights hero. I certainly do not think so. Neither do I think he wasn't strange. He was. But for you to kind of dismiss Micheael Jackson, his achievements and the memorial service makes me want to think you're one of those who want to court controversy to get a little popularity. What's wrong with his brothers wearing matching balck suites & yellow ties & his daughter paying tribute to her father? What's wrong with it?

Memorials are time where you remember people for what they have done & how much they have affected lives not their mistakes. MJ certainly made mistakes, his celebrity status did go a long way to showcase it but he also did a lot of good that his celeberity status enhanced as well. My guess is you wouldn't want anyone coming around at a ceremony to honour you & do you great honours by pointing out your mistakes; the letters you didn't write, the thank yous you never said, the wrong judgements you made, the parenting mistakes & the inappropriate words you said.

Not everybody gets celebrated like Jackson was.No one gets to interrupt 'our regularly scheduled programming' He must have been importatnt. Taju died last week & he wasn't mentioned. Who is Taju? You might ask. Exactly my point. He didn't achieve as much as Michael Jackson. Like it or not, Jackson made an impact; Not through any political office or an inherited position or wealth but through his creativity & hard work.

What would have been a nice article was tainted with your prejudice and desire to downplay someone's achievements. The memorial service was beautiful & fitting.And as for you saying hitting out at his daughter being onstage at the memorial, Joan, get over yourself! Why did u watch anyway?

And yet it also seemed another example of celebrity excess; did that little girl really need to be onstage at the Staples Center, crying about her father? (The CNN Breaking News alert trumpeting that quote was the day's lowest moment by far.) And the Jackson siblings, all in sunglasses, and the brothers in matching black suits and yellow ties? At a certain point, the memorial matched Jackson's career: It started impressively but ended in ... just too much.

"too much"? Who the fuck are you to determine how a family should honor their dead? It was obvious that Paris wanted to say something. But, ohhh.. the brothers had on yellow ties... well thats just "too much" isn't it Joan.

You truly disgust me.

I typically agree with Ms. walsh but in this case I am extremely disappointed with this post.

I and millions of others were shocked at how the news of MJ's death moved us. It wasn't just that MJ had died; it reminded me of good times gone by. When I was dancing with my sister and brother to the Jackson 5, I was so young with my whole life ahead of me; my grandparents and great aunts/ uncles were alive. With Michael's death I mourn Michael and also my own youth.

I loved the memorial service and you are correct, many of (us) African-Americans believe that while MJ acted inappropriately, he did not molest those children in the horrific way he was accused of. I simply do not believe it and neither did a (all-white) jury. For once, many people like me were clapping our hands at a Sharpton speech, and I agreed with Sharpton fully that MJ's troubles had largely to do with 45 years of excessive media coverage...in the end more bad than good.

I think the ubiqitousness of the coverage and memorial service was perfect and personally wouldn't mind many days more of it.

So there!

Where those assholes from Skull & Bones can't get to him. Cause they'll try.

"It wasn't just that MJ had died; it reminded me of good times gone by. When I was dancing with my sister and brother to the Jackson 5, I was so young with my whole life ahead of me; my grandparents and great aunts/ uncles were alive. With Michael's death I mourn Michael and also my own youth."

Thank you. That was my experience, too. I vividly remember the first time I heard "I Want You Back" blaring from an AM radio station. I was in the 8th grade.

Michael's passing reminds my generation that we have more years behind us than ahead of us.

She (Palin) does her own thing with seat-of-the-pants gusto. It's why she remains hugely popular with the Republican grass-roots base -- as I know from listening to talk radio. Callers coming fresh from her rallies are always heady with infectious enthusiasm.

Of course you'd never know that from reading hit jobs like Todd Purdum's sepulchral piece on Palin in the current Vanity Fair. Scurrying around Alaska with his notepad, Purdum still managed to find comically little to indict her with. Anyone with a gripe is given the floor; fans are shut out. This exercise in faux objectivity is exposed at key points such as Purdum's failure to identify the actual instigator of Palin's extravagant clothing bills (a crazed, credit-card-abusing stylist appointed by the McCain campaign) and his prissy characterization of Palin's performance at the vice-presidential debate as merely "adequate." Hey, wake up -- Palin cleaned Biden's clock! By the end, Biden was sighing and itching to split.

Whether Palin has a national future or not will depend on her willingness to hit the books and absorb more information about international history and politics than she has needed to know in her role as governor. She also needs a shrewder, cooler take on the mainstream media, with its preening bullies (Joan Walsh), cackling witches (Joan Walsh), twisted cynics (Joan Walsh) and pompous windbags (Joan Walsh).

The vicious double standard is pretty obvious. Only the tabloids, for example, ran the photos of a piss-drunk Chelsea Clinton, panties exposed, falling into her car outside London clubs a few years ago. If Chelsea had been the scion of Republican bigwigs, those tacky scenes would have been trumpeted from pillar to post in the U.S. as signals of parental failures or turmoil in clan Clinton. As a Democrat, I detest the partisan machinations that have become standard in Northeastern news management and that are detectable in editorial decisions at major metropolitan newspapers nationwide. It's why I, like a host of others, have shifted my news gathering to the Web.