Jackson and Reagan

It's not for political reporters to eulogize Michael Jackson. But a day after his death, I found this video, posted below, on YouTube. It evokes the power of celebrity and the modern gray era between it and politics, an apt subject in the time of another celebrity president. Here you have a TV reporter noting the superstar of the eighties meeting the super-politician of the eighties. It's a reminder that somewhere between politics and entertainment is winning the audience. And while the quiet and crawling impact of Alzheimer's on Reagan was not as outlandish or public as all that took down Jackson, you see both men here free of their decline, on one day in 1984, at the top of their worlds.



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