From left) Janet Jackson, Paris Jackson, LaToya Jackson, Jermaine Jackson and Prince Michael Jackson I during the public memorial service for Michael Jackson held at Staples Center.

The protracted departure of Michael Jackson from this world formally ended Tuesday morning with a private funeral at Forest Lawn and a public memorial at Staples Center. The first event was seen from afar, on television and so by the world, primarily as a sequence of arriving and departing black cars. The latter was planned from the start as a television event and carried live by all the major broadcast and cable news networks. The stars of the evening news were all on site, blinking in the sun outside the very arena where Jackson had been rehearsing his upcoming return to the stage.

Like the gold-plated casket in which he was laid to rest, and which sat before the stage at the Staples Center, the day provided the brighter coda to the darker days that preceded it. The memorial service, often referred to by reporters or commentators as a "show," seemed staged as if in partial recompense -- to Jackson himself, even more than his audience -- for the 50 London shows he'll never play. As does most any memorial service, it mixed mourning with celebration, laughter with tears. But in the way that it was universally reported on, from before its beginning until after its end, it also seemed a kind of apology for prior doubting or nasty press. Death, for a moment, wipes a slate clean.

You can say that the world has been divided in recent days into people who wondered what the fuss was about and people offended by the thought that anyone would wonder what the fuss was about. Practically speaking, there was no call for that much coverage -- one network's was very much like another's, and once the memorial itself began, the feed was identical. But there is a power to pop culture that a broadcaster ignores at its own peril, and once one network had signed on for the full run, it was inevitable that others would. In the end, everyone came.

"Circus" was a word often used in expectation of the event. You had to wonder, said Shepard Smith of Fox News Channel, "what sort of crazy something-or-other is going to happen, because Michael Jackson is in the house, and when Michael Jackson is in the house, crazy things happen." But pandemonium never erupted, and to the extent that a circus atmosphere reigned, it was one created and embodied by the media itself.

"It's got to be chilling for the family to have 20 helicopters overhead as you're trying to mourn the passing of a relative," KTLA's Asha Blake said as her network shot the mourners from a helicopter.

Overall the early morning coverage was tedious, trivial and trivializing, the natural result of talking heads required to keep talking when there is nothing much happening, and little idea of what's about to. ("And up next," said Meredith Vieira on NBC's "Today," "a visit with the King of Pop's onetime best friend -- Bubbles the chimp.")

The tone improved once the memorial began. Perhaps because of the speed with which it was assembled, it was surprisingly straightforward -- in its dignified modesty as far as could be imagined from the experience of a Michael Jackson concert, or of the sort of tribute that a television network might have assembled. The songs, performed by artists including Mariah Carey, Stevie Wonder, Usher, Jennifer Hudson and Lionel Richie, embraced the gospel and inspirational.

And together with testimonials from Queen Latifah, Magic Johnson (he "made me a better point guard"), Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), the Rev. Al Sharpton and others, they created a story of roots and continuity that argued for Jackson -- his pale alien mien and crossover appeal notwithstanding -- as a fundamentally black artist, and a specifically black American role model.

Every memorial is both an affirmation and a denial; we are all darker than the words that will attend our passing. Far from the good being interred with his bones, Jackson's better self was sprinkled over the stage and to the watching world like fairy dust from Neverland.

Even as childhood friend Brooke Shields described him in a way more than one observer later called "humanizing," his memory was garlanded with superlatives. He was pictured as saintly, not just in his charitable good works and love for the world, but in his public martyrdom.

"We will never understand what he endured," said brother Marlon, as the Jackson family, including Michael's 11-year-old daughter Paris, took the stage at the memorial's end, "not being able to walk across a street without a crowd gathering around him, being judged, ridiculed."

But for Motown founder Berry Gordy's allusion to "some bad times and maybe some questionable decisions on his part," the judgment here was all reflected outward. Addressing himself to the Jackson children in the front row, Sharpton said, "There wasn't nothing strange about your daddy. It was strange what he had to deal with."

There were, of course, many strange things about Michael Jackson; he was only human.

robert.lloyd@latimes.com

WASHINGTON — Unanticipated events in politics — say, for example, Sarah Palin’s announcement that she was quitting as governor of Alaska — tend to be overanalyzed, imbued with more motive, forethought and political calculus than might really be there.

That could have been the case with the storm of interpretation that greeted Ms. Palin’s announcement — running the gamut from her laying the groundwork for a run for the 2012 presidential nomination, to preparing to become a conservative commentator, to making a pre-emptive step in anticipation of an embarrassing disclosure.

“I don’t think there’s nearly as much to this as people are trying to make of it,” said Fred Malek, a prominent Republicans fund-raiser who has been one of Ms. Palin’s closest advisers. “I think you have to take her at her word. I don’t think it’s a grand strategic plan to clear the decks and form a grand strategy for 2012 — I really don’t.”

Few people expected Ms. Palin, who was the Republican candidate for vice president under Senator John McCain of Arizona last year, to seek re-election when her term expired in 2010.

If she is indeed running for president, it is all-but-impossible to do that as a sitting governor of Alaska: Wasilla, where Ms. Palin lives, is about 2,660 miles from Des Moines, where the first caucus in the presidential nominating process is scheduled to take place. And if even if she does not want to run for president, her friends said it had become increasingly clear since her return from her supernova months of 2008 that she was restless on the small stage of Alaska, and had no desire to seek a second term.

Quitting, though, is quite different from not seeking re-election, particularly given the atmospherics that surrounded it. Hence the frenzy.

Some people suggested there was a shrewdness to her gambit. From this view, the announcement, as precipitous as it might have appeared, was part of a considered grand plan of rehabilitation and preparation that would position her as the strongest possible challenger to President Obama in 2012.

“This unusual move might be the right move for her to become president of the United States,” said William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard who is a fan of Ms. Palin.

Perhaps.

But there is plenty of evidence that argues against the idea that this was done with forethought and planning. The rollout was something of a car crash, as even her fans acknowledged. After a jittery and visually discordant announcement at her home, she was forced over the next 48 hours to clarify what she meant with a series of Twitter and Facebook postings. It reached a point where her lawyer warned news organizations against reporting that she was under investigation for something.

And there is no evidence that she has begun to build the kind of infrastructure one would need to begin running for president (though there still is time), no apparent plan for Stage II. There was no coterie of staff members ready to make the case for her or explain what she was doing. Her press secretary was in New York City that day.

There is no evidence that she informed — much less consulted with — other leaders in her party, either as a matter of courtesy or to prepare them to make the case for her. Michael Steele, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, had no warning; neither, less surprisingly, did Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and an early strong contender for the 2012 Republican nomination.

Her own advisers said they learned she was quitting either moments before her news conference — if not later.

But does all this mean she is not running? This is one of those questions that will be answered in the months ahead by what she does: If she starts building up a campaign staff, making trips to the early primary states, trying to get in the debate on some of the big issues of the day, as Mr. Romney has, that would be tangible evidence of her intentions.

So in the end, this could simply be one of those it-is-what-it-is moments. Ms. Palin was weary of being governor, and, facing constant ethics complaints, she saw her family being chewed up by bad publicity and decided to trade those things for the opportunity to work on her book (for which she received a lucrative contract), tour the country giving paid speeches and consider offers from television or radio to become a highly paid commentator.

As one friend remarked, Ms. Palin is facing potentially high legal bills because of the ethics and other investigations — all frivolous, she said — that were one product of being thrust into the national spotlight.

From this perspective, the decision was simple and sensible: Less stress, and more national attention and money. A year from now, perhaps, she will find herself in a position where she wants to run, or is being pressed to run, and may do it. Or she may find that being a big player in her party and the conservative movement — you could see candidates making a pilgrimage to her doorstep for her endorsement — might be satisfying enough.