Michael Jackson's Last Show

Ever since he was a child, Michael Jackson dutifully performed on stage for his family and fans. Today they made sure they got one more show out of him, death be damned. And so, 12 days after he died, his golden casket was driven from the memorial home and wheeled onto the stage in the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. The effect was no doubt intended to be funereal but it was often more akin to a body getting picked over by vultures, and he could only there prone while celebrities strangulated his songs.

Which brings us to Mariah Carey, playing Elton John to Jackson's Diana. Whether Carey demanded her traditional backstage rider, including "champagne flutes with bendy straws", is not known but there were moments when it seemed that she might bring Jackson back to life, if only to stop her signature milking of every note to barren death in I'll Be There. Perhaps the technique was intended to be a brilliant metaphor for Jackson's career. Perhaps not.

Lionel Ritchie, Stevie Wonder and a sunglasses-sporting Usher gave utterly forgettable performances, easily beaten by reality TV winner, Jennifer Hudson. Brooke Shields made their youthful relationship ("whatever that means", one American newscaster commented beforehand) sound even odder by revealing they had met when she was 13. That shrinking violet, Rev Al Sharpton, selflessly braved the spotlight, again, but US athlete Magic Johnson outshone him by revealing Jackson was a KFC fan, an anecdote that made the Jackson brothers – all wearing sunglasses and single white gloves – smile. His mother Katherine, to whom he was by all accounts very close, remained hunched and sad.

Despite having been in the public eye for several decades now, and often under a particularly glaring gaze, the Jackson family continue to display heroic levels of naivete about, or perhaps just disinterest in, how their actions might be seen by the public. Thus, to mark the death of their son and brother, who had been plagued by accusations of child abuse for the past two decades, they invited a 12-year-old boy, Britain's Shaheen Jafargholi, to sing at his memorial.

The most commented upon absence was Elizabeth Taylor's, who announced via the sacred medium of Twitter: "I just don't believe that Michael would want me to share my grief with millions of others." He would, presumably, prefer her to share it with millions in 140 characters or fewer. Debbie Rowe, the mother of two of Jackson's children, said she wouldn't attend because she "didn't want to take away any attention from Michael". This is a handy euphemism for "I wasn't invited".

There was some unfortunate phraseology. Berry Gordon, founder of Motown records, said Jackson was "constantly driven to top himself", while Diana Ross sent a message via Smokey Robinson that she "thank[s] Joe and Katherine Jackson for sharing their son with the world". As the gold casket sat on the stage, stared at by millions but isolated in its grandeur, it was hard not to think he might have been happier if they had been less generous.