Man, some vultures just need to get in their last licks, don't they?

Maybe the family was at Forest Lawn for a private family funeral and some time together before half the world started crying with them. Those charlitans!

Many a Memorial service has no casket. I was surprised to see it. I guess his family felt like "he" should be there and brought his body. Maybe his family did bury him and brought a symbolic casket instead. THOSE ANIMALS!!!! Why the fuck should you care?

Several of us sang at my Grandfather's memorial service (I suppose if Stevie Wonder had been a friend he would have too). There was no press coverage so we'll never know if our singing was acceptable. Oh well. We will also have to live in ignorance about the quality of our clothing choices and the various bouts of weeping. He was a pastor and some degree of a public figure in the area so there were people there we did not know. It was a comfort to see he had touched so many lives. My Grandmother could not attend because of her health and not because of some emnity towards his second wife yet somehow nobody felt the need to grill us on her whereabouts. I suppose that's something to be thankful for.

Most of all, I'm glad that nobody came to his service that didn't want to. And if they did, they kept that to themselves.

Not surprised to see Joan Walsh minimize Jackson's perversions. I highly doubt she would do so if the victms of Jackson's pedophilia were girls.

They were boys. And boy children don't count.

Like many survivors of sexual abuse, I celebrate the death of another pervert. Children are safer. Jackson was a monster.

The outpouring of grief, and the societal muzzling of the truth about his unconscionable behavior, is more illuminating than Walsh will ever understand.

I am sorry to hear about the abuse you suffered. I hope you can find the peace and healing you deserve.

Not everybody believed the stories, however. There are even abuse survivors among those numbers. Please know that very few people are grieving the death of someone they believed to be an abuser of children.

It happens sometimes you know.

Maybe this was silly, but I hoped someone would touch on the suffering and sickness that led Jackson to abuse his body and abuse a staggering array of drugs. What does it take to want to literally be sedated, put under, anesthetized to escape life?

We are going to hear every BAD thing about MJ for months and months to come. Of COURSE they didn't focus on that now.

He was taunted and tortured for decades, can't you people give him a lousy 2 weeks to be remembered fondly?

Lisa G.

Kentucky

And it doesn't matter if it's Michael Jackson, Senator Paul Wellstone, or my late grandmother--anything can and will happen when people say goodbye to their lost loved ones. The Jackson siblings' outfits probably were a little tacky for the outsiders looking in, but if wearing them made the family feel better why not be graceful about it?

For me, the most surprising moments of the funeral were contained in Brooke Shields' eulogy. Hopelessly trying to teach Shields the moonwalk and attempting to sneak a peek at Elizabeth Taylor's wedding dress the night before the ceremony...those simple words cleared all of Michael Jackson's bizarreness away and for the first time in two decades I didn't see him as an entertainer, a media oddity, or the King of Pop.

He was a person who lived and died, and deserved to be mourned by those who cared for him. Rest in peace Michael--you'll be remembered and missed.

Your 2nd post undermines your case that Jackson wasn't guilty of anything. Sure, magazines with child porn in them COULD have been planted, and sure Michael Jackson's fingerprints on a Barely Legal magazine COULD have been added when he was in a drug haze, and sure, the boy COULD have heard a description of MJ's anatomy from somebody else who saw it, but you're stacking up one semi-plausible alternative explanation after another.

Then there's this:

cabdriver: "If Jackson possessed that material and it was known that he was under a pending criminal investigation- and he must have known that much- how is it that he didn't get rid of the magazines?"

This is a good one. I am sure many defense attorneys will try to use this from now on. "Your honor, the guns and piles of money in my client's possession, hidden under his bed, simply do not add up. Why, if he knew he was being investigated, wouldn't he have gotten rid of them?"

this place could really use some fresh air and some new faces and voices ...

IMHO, Glenn and Andrew can stay, though they'd probably do better elsewhere.

was the talent of a Shirley Temple. One cannot remain precocious forever. without becoming a parody of oneself.

Joan

of all people, you really surprised me with this one.I don"t love you any less I simply don"t think this is the vintage Joan Walsh or is it? This is the kind of article I would have expected from sarah Palin.

Clearly,what you are missing is, This is the "something strange" that revernd Sharpton was making reference to.

Lets put aside Micheal Jackson for a moment and acknowledge a human being died and left a grieving family.Isn"t that worthy of respect and sensitivity? perhaps the real elephant in the room here is regular programming.It more than anything else keeps that feeling of contempt in our hearts.

That's cool! I might have gotten a might pissy because the A/C broke at work.

But I've always appreciated your input on salon on many issues.

~What does "race" have to do with the memorial service/funeral for Michael Jackson?

Perhaps your title should have instead read:

How some ignorant and angry black people

continue to speak like the old and unfair stereotype

.... that so many have fought against and died for.

or

Some black people simply want to continue racial discourse

~How wrong.

~How ruid.