Tribute to Jackson is widespread

DETROIT - It was a moment shared by perhaps a billion people.

They gathered Tuesday in London, Las Vegas, Berlin, Conyers, Ga., the Jackson hometown of Gary, Ind., swaying together to the music flowing out of Staples Center, murmuring as ancient videos of the young Michael were projected onto the screen in front of them.

Through the sunshine of Los Angeles and the darkness of the early morning in Beijing, they all shared a moment.

The moment was a confluence of high technology and pop culture, creating something both global and intimate in real time.

When one sighed, there were sighs around the world.

At a multiplex theater in Conyers, east of Atlanta, the 500 people gathered ooohed at the video footage of the lithe Jackson moonwalking and spinning in place, complementing the cheers that arose in Staples Center. They shouted their affirmation to Stevie Wonder when he told them that God was good. They clapped their hands at "You Are Not Alone."

At that moment in Las Vegas, Gwendolyn Benton, 60, teared up and rummaged through a Starbucks bag for a napkin to dry her eyes.

AEG Live, which organized the memorial service at Staples Center in Los Angeles, said the televised broadcast probably reached about 1 billion people worldwide. But there was no way to know the full reach of the event. The British Broadcasting Corp. estimated that 2.5 billion people watched the televised memorial service for Princess Diana in 1997, but that was before the advent of Twitter, blogs and other new media.

The Jackson memorial was telecast on hundreds of Web sites and carried by a number of mobile telephone platforms, including Apple, CBS Mobile and Sprint TV.

It was if the distance separating Los Angeles from where they were - be it Detroit, London or Shanghai - did not exist.

"I JUST GOT CHILLS," wrote Regina Lopez on a Facebook site that allowed fans to leave messages while watching a live feed of the event.

Laurie Maloney posted one second later from some unknown location: "Here comes the tears."

The world has shared other moments - the Apollo moon landing, a World Cup soccer match and the angry bus rider video on YouTube. They have become more frequent, even mundane. But this was something different.

In many ways, it made no sense that so many people journeyed to movie theaters and arenas - or social Web sites - when they could have stayed home and watched the memorial on television by themselves.

But for those who joined in the moment, there was a powerful logic.

To hear his most devoted fans tell it, there was nothing like seeing Michael Jackson in person, not just for his radiating charisma but for the communal experience. So it seemed only natural that, as his fans mourned his death, they gathered together, sometimes just dozens, sometimes by the thousands. It made sense to celebrate a life spent on a stage, before thousands of people, cheering and clapping to the music.

In Berlin, where an estimated 7,000 people packed the 02 World Arena, it was sometimes hard to distinguish the cheering and clapping there from that at Staples Center.

Viewers spoke to the screen as if they were in Los Angeles.

When Felicia White, at the Conyers theater, heard the Rev. Al Sharpton end his eulogy by saying, "Thank you, Michael!" three times, she had to respond.

"Yes," she said, holding a Kleenex to her cheek. "Thank you."

When John Mayer played "Human Nature" on his guitar, the crowd in Detroit sang along so loudly they nearly drowned out the broadcast. When someone in Los Angeles screamed out "We miss you, Michael," a woman in Detroit yelled back, "We miss him too!"

At times, the reactions differed.

In Detroit people shouted "amen!" at the screen and stood up to cheer when Kobe Bryant described the singer as a "true humanitarian." At that same moment in Las Vegas, no amens were heard as people watched screens set up outside a strip casino. But Natasha Singleton, 39, turned to her daughter Cierra Wilson, 13, and explained, sincerely but incorrectly: "He didn't have much money left when he died. He gave it all away."

But at the end, one little girl could make the world weep.

Jackson's daughter, 11-year-old Paris Michael Katherine Jackson, struggled to address the audience, family members standing behind her for support.

"I just wanted to say, ever since I was born, Daddy has been the best father you can imagine," she said, in tears. "I just wanted to say I love him so much."

After two hours, the memorial had come to an end. The cameras in Staples Center pulled back to show a empty stage.

People lingered for a moment and quietly filed out of the auditorium. People around the world did the same.

Times staff writers Huffstutter reported from Detroit and Fausset from Conyers. Times staff writers Kate Linthicum in Los Angeles, Janet Stobart in London and Kate Connolly in Berlin contributed to this report.