If you've ever visited Los Angeles, you know that it's hard to imagine more than a million people crowding into downtown for Michael Jackson's funeral tomorrow.

It's bound to be managed chaos, much like Jackson's career and personal life.

Jackson's death is sad on many levels.

A pint-size mix of Wilson Pickett and Sly Stone - Jackson was a burst of energy when he first hit the music scene with his brothers. By the time mainstream America watched him moonwalk across their television sets in the Motown 25 special, he was already a megastar.

But Jackson's death could be a closing chapter in the global appeal of America's pop culture; it will be extremely hard for a music artist, in particular, to achieve the same level of fame as Jackson.

MTV, the vehicle that catapulted artists like Jackson and Madonna to such heights through music videos, has almost no influence over the industry today.

And then there's the music industry itself, which has imploded. It's harder than ever for an artist to make money by selling recordings when so many people acquire them for free.

The explosion in media that helped turn Jackson's music into record-breaking blockbusters eventually turned his personal life into episodic oddities.

Publicity isn't as easily controlled as it once was. And anyone - a snubbed fan, a former employee, an angry debt collector - can post opinions on the web about anything, sending the most sardonic messages and images out to the world in seconds.

Consider that a whole generation of young people knows Jackson as a suspected pedophile instead of the iconic song-and-dance man.

Promoters of Jackson's music image like to say he blurred the lines between young and old, black and white, and male and female musical tastes.

But the media often brought scrutiny and clarity to the Jackson drama.

No doubt, countless books and movies will tell various versions of that story again and again. Maybe one will explain why we continue to confuse some of our most flawed characters with heroes.