A Saint Is Born

A little more than a week ago, Michael Jackson left the Staples Center in Los Angeles, standing on his own two feet. He returned Tuesday afternoon, lying in a golden casket, surrounded by his parents, his three children, his friends, his fans and his famous brothers, all wearing the same uniform: a yellow tie, a rose on their lapel and hands gloved with silver brilliants.

The farewell ceremony was broadcast live on millions of screens, small or giant-sized, and lasted for more than two hours. Even though two hours doesn’t represent that much in a lifetime, it’s nevertheless the period of time that Michael Jackson’s friends and allies needed to re-write history and raise their deceased brother to the level of a clean, pure, generous and appealing hero.

The “has been” 50-year-old Michael Jackson, who hadn’t released a CD for eight years, who hadn’t been on tour for an even longer period of time, and who was desperately dreaming of getting back his brilliance of yesteryear with a new show, was gone. It was the end of this Jackson, a lover of oxygen tents, chimpanzees, extreme plastic surgeries, unrestrained depigmentations, theme parks and compulsive shopping. The Michael Jackson who was accused of offenses against decency on minor people and who fought these accusations with an out-of-court settlement and a long exile in Dubai, was forgotten.

On Tuesday, at the Staples Center, this Michael had disappeared and been replaced by his twin, Michael the musical genius, the visionary, the greatest entertainer of all times, the national icon, the global trademark, the American legend.

From Smokey Robinson to Martin Luther King’s son; Brooke Shields; Kobe Bryant; Magic Johnson; and Berry Gordy, founder of Motown, a rain of superlatives poured over the golden casket of the deceased artist, just as had the roses.

Although the circumstances deserved a complimentary eulogy, there was an obvious desire, on the part of all of those who paid tribute to him, to take advantage of this moment to rehabilitate the image and memory of the king of pop music. Among those people, the most acclaimed was undoubtedly Reverend Al Sharpton who, in a voice full of reproach, said to Jackson’s children: It wasn’t your father who was strange, but everything that revolved around him and all that he had to go through, was.

After this declaration, the reverend raised the stakes and kicked history up a notch. Not only did he make Jackson somehow responsible for the reconciliation between black, white and Latino people all over the world, but he clearly implied that if there is a black president at the head of the White House, it’s because of Michael Jackson. Barack Obama has to remember that.

However, while those eulogies were as large as the sails of a boat, while tears were streaming like rivers in this blue-lit arena, and everyone was engaged in a sort of sanctification number, only one picture looked true, and its significance was much more moving than any other: the picture of Jackson’s three orphans, sitting there, next to their grandmother. Prince Michael I, the eldest, was chewing gum, in an effort to put a brave face. Paris, the youngest, a beautiful girl of 11, was as good as gold, although her words at the end of the ceremony: “Since I was born, Daddy has always been the best father ever,” triggered waves of sobs in the audience and probably in the homes of every viewer attending the ceremony in front of their television set. At last, between them, the little boy, Prince Michael II, seven years old, was holding all he had left of his famous father: a plastic doll bearing his father’s effigy.

Much more than tears and sad faces, this simple doll spoke volumes of the magnitude of a drama that had nothing to do with the surrealistic death of a saint and everything to do with the very realistic death of a father.