King of Pop's little princess, Paris Jackson, brave in spotlight at father Michael's memorial

LOSANGELES - The accolade that would have meant more than anything to Michael Jackson, the moment everyone will best remember, came at the end when his 11-year-old daughter, Paris, spoke the first public words of her life before the whole world.
"I just wanted to say ..." she began.
"Speak up, sweetheart, speak up," her aunt Janet Jackson softly said.
Paris continued, her left hand trembling on the microphone, her right clutching the stand.
" ... ever since I was born ..."
Her left hand went to the back of her neck and her face constricted in pain, but she continued.
" ... Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine."
She paused and her head bowed.
She breathed in twice, fighting back sobs.
She kept on with this spectacularly brave act of total devotion for the father who lay in the rose-covered coffin before the stage where she stood. She was steadied in his love for her and propelled by all she felt for him.
"And I just wanted to say I love him so much," she said.
She turned into her aunt's embrace. Her older brother, 12-year-old Prince Michael, stepped over, joining in, his face full of that same love, for his father, for his sister, for their family.
The youngest, 7-year-old Prince Michael II, also known as Blanket, also was on stage and he showed some courage of his own as he lowered the memorial program he had been peering over.
He gazed out at the crowd and the cameras as if he felt almost safe in this moment where the world saw his daddy as he and his siblings had always seen him.
After a week of spectacle, this courageous little girl had presented us with a moment of immaculate truth. Other tears streaked the faces of fans who had trooped into the Staples Center as if it were as much a pop concert as a memorial.
They had cheered earlier in the service when Michael Jackson was called the greatest entertainer of all time, but they went absolutely still when they heard his daughter call him "Daddy."
Paris had made unmistakably clear that however eccentric the world may have viewed him, Michael Jackson was at his very core a daddy who loved his kids and whose kids loved him.
The King of Pop turned out to be the opposite of so many would-be kings of political life who present a veneer of absolute normalcy and turn out to have sordid private lives.
Jackson had proven to be the real family man at heart. And you have to wonder if that is part of his power as an artist all along.
From his earliest years, Jackson composed and sang and danced with all his being, tapping the part of himself that was the source of all true feeling and touching that same part in others. Read more