The result: an unparalleled, though unexpectedly sedate, public memorial that offered, like his jumbled life, a little something for everyone who went looking.

Sharing grief with millions of others on TV, in mass spectacles and across the gossamer human connection known as the Internet has become as American as, say, churning out fresh disposable idols on reality TV.

This was eulogy as performance art, public outpouring as premium content and, not accidentally, funeral as variety show. To call it a last performance is barely metaphorical. The service alone was a guided tour of American show business a little gospel telethon, a little Grammy ceremony, a little Soul Train, a little Weekly Top 40, even a little Circus of the Stars.

The public mourning of prematurely departed celebrities isnt new in America. More than 100,000 people, many of them weeping, turned out in 1926 for the New York funeral of Rudolph Valentino. It has only accelerated in recent decades: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, John Lennon, Princess Diana. And of course there was Jacksons former father-in-law and brother in stratospheric fame, Elvis.

But contained communal lament is one thing. What unfolded on Tuesday and in the days leading up to it felt like something else something magnified beyond even the usual American embrace of the epic.

In life, he was rejected by so many different groups of people. But, in death, everyone seems to want to claim him, said Jennifer James McCollum, 41, of Oklahoma City, who writes about generational issues in her blog, JenX67.

This absurdly talented, weird, tragic man who contained so many of the things that perplex and consume modern America from race and sex to obsession with appearance and attachment to childhood seems to have touched most every chord at once.

There are many Michaels for many souls, said CNN contributor Bryan Monroe, who interviewed Jackson at length in 2007 when he was editorial director of Ebony magazine.

There are also, suddenly, many more ways to connect, lament, magnify, share. The emerging mythology that the communications explosion that followed Jacksons death almost broke the Internet suggests both the emergence of new communities and the hunger for some kind of mass public square of sentiment.

People want to be a part of something. And this is something really memorable. Why did everybody go to Woodstock? asked Rosemary Hornak, a psychology professor at Meredith College in North Carolina who studies how people remember.

Now they can. No longer, as in Sunday morning services, do you just turn to your pewmate and shake hands. This is the age of the global funeral, the interactive death, with mourners always on hand to prolong the experience either with a big-time celebrity lament or a simple online guest book for a beloved great-aunt.

The Internet was originally an exchange of ideas. Its almost as if, with web 2.0, its about exchanging emotions, said Paul Soper, 25, who works in retail in Columbus, Ohio.

Thats not the only change, though. The usual suspects a 24-hour news cycle, the digitization of music and imagery, the fragmentation of society, the democratization of the arts helped set the stage for Tuesdays service and its runup.

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