Given his recklessly eccentric personal life, Michael Jackson"s premature death seems almost destined—one of those deaths Yeats had in mind when he wrote of a friend"s lost son: "What made us dream that he could comb gray hair?"
【F1】
Still,the global outpouring of grief and craziness of public attentionfocused since Thursday on Jackson"s death is an acknowledgment not only of his popularity but of the reach and influence of America"s most successful export: popular culture.
Jackson was an icon and, in the end, perhaps, a prisoner of that now all-pervasive, world-encompassing force.
American popular culture"s triumphant appeal around the world is the product of several forces: First among them is this country"s historic dislike to assigning distinct values to high and low culture.【F2】
Some would say that a fair playing field has opened high culture—literature and classical music, for example—to a valuable interaction with popular media and made it more vigorous by forcing it to compete for its audience.
The real strength of American popular culture, in fact, is its democratic impulse—a willingness to take into account the reality that, for most people, entertainment is an end in itself.【F3】
American entertainment bows to what economists call "consumer sovereignty," and Jackson"s popularity, with its demonstrable impact on music, dance and fashion, was a clear example of that.
On cable TV and on newspaper websites, it was all Michael, all the time.【F4】
So, how did a pop singer heavily in debt and desperately hoping for a comeback, one who was best known for his bizarre life, obsession with cosmetic surgery, become in death the most beloved media figure since JFK?
To understand, you need to go back to that all-conquering popular culture. America"s serious news media—whether print, broadcast or cable—are in the grip of a collective nervous breakdown. Embracing popular culture and its icons seems somehow remedial on several levels: It appears to address chargesthat seriousmedia areelitist,as well as themanifest indifferenceof younger readersand viewers to conventional news.【F5】
Then there"s the fact of simple, cruel commerce: popular culture in the form of film, music and TV now provides an outsized share of the financially strapped media"s advertising revenue.
Finally, there"s that source of the news media"s anxiety and confusion—and that great enabler of popular culture—the Internet.
【答案解析】解析：“化词为句”技巧的使用；主语包含两个名词性短语。如果直接根据原文的构架来译，译文就会非常僵化，可考虑将名词短语转译为句子，the global outpouring of grief译为“全世界的人们陷入了一片悲痛”：the craziness of public attention译为“公众对之关注的程度几近疯狂”。acknowledgement原为名词，由于宾语过长，可考虑词性转换，转化为动词“承认，肯定”。
【答案解析】解析：后半句Jackson"s popularity…example of that是论证前半句“美国式娱乐极力迎合经济学家所谓的"消费者主权"”这一观点的，所以在翻译这部分时，可以先将主句。lackson"s popularity was aclear example of that直接译出.而with部分单独提出作为一个句子来翻译。