Editor’s Note: A longtime journalist, Margo Howard went into the family business (her mother was the fabled Ann Landers) in the 1990s as Dear Prudence. Her broad experience and understanding of human nature provide answers for the troubled — and entertainment for everyone else. Margo’s advice column, Dear Margo, appears twice a week — on Thursdays and Fridays — on wowOwow.com.

This is a very delicate subject to write about, and I wavered, but I decided to do it because it is all so fascinating, in a loony kind of way, and says quite a bit about our country. I am talking about the aftermath of Michael Jackson’s death. It is becoming surreal, as perhaps was his life. (Let us stipulate that there is perhaps no one who does not think the man was an enormous and charismatic talent.) For one thing, the city of Los Angeles (along with the state it is part of, California) is flat broke, and the funereal circus coming to town is estimated to stick the city for two million bucks in services and overtime. The hotels, however, are getting a shot in the arm … forgive the infelicitous phrase in this particular discussion.

And then one wonders why all these fans feel the need to go to a memorial service where there will be more pushing and shoving than at a European soccer match. The need to be there is crowd hysteria; it is one thing to have admired an artist and to be sad he has died, but quite another to go to a stranger’s service. Some lottery winners (yes, there are tickets, which are actually spangly wristbands) have said they just needed to sign the book. I wonder who they think is going to read this book with thousands of names unknown to anyone. And I wonder if there’s ever been a memorial service for 20,000 people? (Never mind that there were 1,600,000 applications.) Perhaps an inducement was to see people such as Stevie Wonder, Mariah Carey, Usher, Lionel Richie, Kobe Bryant, Jennifer Hudson, John Mayer and Martin Luther King III … and maybe see them perform. Fifty theaters nationwide will be broadcasting the services. This is surely a first.

Jackson’s good buddy, Elizabeth Taylor, in this instance the exemplar of good taste, said she will be mourning in private. She said this on Twitter. "I just don’t believe that Michael would want me to share my grief with millions of others," she tweeted. "How I feel is between us."

Debbie Rowe, the mother (sort of) of two of Michael’s children, planned to come, then decided against it … I suspect for different reasons than Ms. Taylor.

There is nothing that is not news about Jackson’s demise. It was announced Monday that he will be buried without his brain. This is so that it can harden, allowing pathologists to do tests to that will reveal what substances the singer has taken over a period of time.