It has been hours since Michael Jackson's funeral, but is it too soon to ask, "Can society have its sanity back?"

The global mourning and hysteria surrounding Jackson's death surpasses the grief and accolades given to Princess Diana when she died, and you really have to go back to Elvis Presley's 1977 death for such a reaction.

But here's the rub: Three weeks ago, Jackson was seen by most people as a joke at best; or another rich celebrity who got away with horrible crimes, at worst.

This is not to say Jackson didn't have his fans. Tens of thousands of people bought tickets for 50 comeback shows planned in London. But outside of his adoring hardcore fans, people wouldn't be caught dead wearing his T-shirts even ironically.

But in death, all that changed. The media in particular, and society at large, seemed to develop a mass amnesia -- the last 18 years of lacklustre musical output, the criminal allegations and civil settlements, and the just plain weirdness was forgotten.

Instead it was all about his incredible musical genius and tremendous showmanship -- a run that lasted from 1979's "Off the Wall" to "Bad" in 1987. Despite what you may think of the man, you can't deny the sheer awesomeness of songs like "Beat It" and "Billie Jean" -- songs that broke the colour barrier on MTV and still inspire random dance parties.

But for people under 30, Jackson has been "Wacko Jacko" for the majority of their lives, which is why I find it stunningly bizarre when I hear 20-somethings talking about the singular importance of Jackson's music to them. Especially weird, when I have never heard them once express that sentiment when MJ was alive.

I'm not the only person who has seen this mass "narrative revision," but I fear there are only a select few of us who have noticed -- like when Roddy Piper wears the sunglasses in John Carpenter's "They Live" and sees that half the people around him are really aliens in disguise.

Pop contrarian and author Chuck Klosterman also appears to wearing the MJ-charade exposing sunglasses. In an interview with ESPN's Bill Simmons just days after Jackson's death, he dared challenge the new-MJ worldview.

"Where have all these people been for 25 years? He's been an object of ridicule for almost two decades," Klosterman posed. "I understand people saying great things about him after he died . . . he was this iconic, brilliant musician . . . but what I think is weird, is all these people creating this false narrative about their relationship to his music.

"Go on Facebook now . . . and you see all these people talking about how "Thriller" was the soundtrack to their life . . . How come no one has mentioned this for a decade? It's almost like they watch television, see it's a big moment and they really want to feel like they are a part of this experience. It's so curious."

The false narrative phenomenon

Even U.S. President Barack Obama seems to have spotted the phenomena.

"There are certain figures in our popular culture that just capture peoples' imagination, and in death they become even larger. I have to admit that it's also fed by a 24/7 media that is insatiable," he told CBS.

The new-life after death for pop stars is hardly new. Tupac and Biggie Smalls were both hailed as rap pioneers much more in death than they ever were in life.

As Klosterman has pointed out in one of his books, everyone seems to forget that when Kurt Cobain killed himself in 1994, Pearl Jam was much more popular, both commercially and critically, than Nirvana. But after Cobain died, Nirvana flew into a beloved orbit and has never come back down.

But with Jackson's death, the first real important cultural figure of the Facebook/Twitter age to die, this entire "false narrative" phenomenon seems to have gone into hyper drive. No one has a story too small about what Jackson meant to them, even if in the 1980s their cassette players were only playing Boy George or Motley Crue.

The hyperbole culminated at Jackson's memorial with the Rev. Al Sharpton, giving the pop singer partial credit for paving the way for Obama's election. Okay, Jackson accomplished a great many things but of the bazillion reasons given for Obama election victory eight months ago, I don't think anyone ever mentioned, "Well, the King of Pop helped."

Why do we rewrite our histories in death? We do it for our gone-too-young celebrities and politicians, but we also do it for the regular people in our lives -- choosing to remember only the good -- rather than an accurate portrait of a person.

There was only one Michael Jackson -- there wasn't a brilliant entertainer who existed until 1987 and then his freakish clone who dabbled in plastic surgery, and spent some his time showing, at best, incredibly poor judgment around children.

You can choose to only remember his music -- in fact, you're probably best off for it. But let's not misremember his legacy, like we have for a dozen other artists. In life, Jackson won more accolades than any other artist in history, in death, he doesn't deserve any new ones created in our collective minds.