Most cultures bury their dead, but here, we lavish them with hordes of backup dancers, expensive stylists and the best Swedish pop hits money can buy just to prop them up on a stage and watch them entertain us. So it goes with Britney Spears, who, despite all outward signs of being unable to count to 11, much less headline a big-budget revue, has been getting dragged around the country for the past two months to promote her sixth album, "Circus."

Then again, whoever is in charge of Spears' affairs these days has gone to great lengths to make sure people actually pay very little attention to Spears.

At her sold-out concert at Oakland's Oracle Arena on Wednesday, the beleaguered 27-year-old tabloid pet was the least interesting part of the show - a wobbly figure making very little effort to lip-sync along to the mediocre songs from her most recent releases while all around her acrobats, clowns, contortionists and magicians offered a dramatic re-enactment of a real big-top spectacular.

Spears never fully recovered from the upheavals that sidelined her career a few years ago - from stealing backup dancer Kevin Federline from his then-pregnant wife and shedding tears on cue for Matt Lauer, to her pantyless late-night Hollywood excursions, head shaving, the use of one of her kids as a steering wheel, and on and on. She may have made a decent album, but on Wednesday, it was hard not to look past the gleaming blond extensions and meticulous dance routines to see the same broken, bald-headed girl that just two years ago was smashing car windows with an umbrella.

Part of the reason people shelled out the big bucks for the concert probably had to do with wanting something to go wrong, like in Vancouver, where Spears inexplicably walked off the stage after only three songs, or in San Jose, where the star welcomed the audience with, "What's up, Sacramento?"

But Spears notwithstanding, the tour itself is almost flawless, with a great sound system and dazzling video effects. The set list, however, which leaned heavily on tracks from "Circus" and its predecessor, "Blackout," offered just a few musical highlights, such as latter-day hits "If U Seek Amy," "Womanizer" and "Toxic."

The only glance back at Spears' glory years was served up in a remixed version of her first hit, "... Baby One More Time." Even that was a extravagance, considering that during the 90-minute set, Spears spent nearly as much time off the stage as she did on it, letting the circus acts carry most of the show.

The capacity crowd - the female to male ratio was roughly 100 to one - didn't seem to care, cheering wilding every time a backup dancer did a flip or a metal shop worker made sparks fly - don't ask. They even applauded the awkward mid-concert advertisement for a mobile phone carrier.

So there's the upside. While Spears may have lost her children, sanity and personal freedom - her father, Jamie Spears, was granted legal conservatorship over her last year - she still has a thriving career.

But as much as you want to join the masses and root her on for the bad lip-synching, it's hard to put aside the feeling that Spears shouldn't be paraded around like this just to make everyone involved a tidy profit, that maybe she would be better off at home with her two boys, eating a bowl of cereal and watching "The Princess Diaries."