Michael Jackson's doctor denies being the dad!

I watched the Michael Jackson funeral on BBC News. I doubt there was a news channel in the world that didn't take it. It was all Hollywood mixed with liberal doses of gospel rhetoric and American schmaltz. I wondered what Rev. Jesse Jackson was doing there. He didn't seem to be acting as a minister. This was nonconformity at its most extreme. Jesse Jackson is best at being Jesse Jackson in the way that stars are good at being stars. "Ladies and gentlemen, it's Jesse Jackson!" And on he trots. But he couldn't be vaguely related as he was born Jesse Burns.

Michael Jackson will live on, that's for sure. His life will be in his death and his death will allow records to rise in the charts. His casket was a gleeming white affair. The pharoahs would be rather jealous. Americans have dispensed with coffins in favour of humungous caskets. I understand the best require expensive pulleys to lower them into the ground. Pallbearers now just walk alongside these ten-ton burial boxes. Why did I get the impression this was a money making venture for some?

Now, as I have written before, speculation is rife after his death. The doctor who was his dermatologist has issued a denial that he was the sperm donor of Jackson's two oldest children. Interesting that in the pictures so conveniently supplied to the Daily News his left ear looks remarkably like that of Paris'. Why should I be bothered? Because I think this ongoing insanity, as Dr. Arnold Klein calls it, will just continue until a definitive answer is given. One by a DNA test. Surely the children should have the truth rather than innuendo.

Then there is the manner of Jackson's death. Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter said Jackson's brain, or at least part of it, was still being held by investigators and would be returned to the family for burial once neuropathology tests were completed. But why all the tests? What do they think they want to know that Jackson's doctors can't tell them? Again more stuff to keep things going.

I thought Michael Jackson's music was sometimes very good. But he was only a singer. He is being turned into a shrine occupant. That is unfortunate, because it won't be Jackson's memory that will be remembered as such but the money making ventures that will spring up. It's all a bit, well, not that edifying. Rest in peace was what used to be said. Will Michael Jackson be allowed to?