Michael Jackson and the wackiest Reagan myth yet

Michael Jackson thrived when Ronald Reagan was president. Six months into the Obama administration, he was dead! What are we to conclude?

Thank God Rush Limbaugh is here to answer the question:

Michael Jackson's biggest successes, and as it turns out his final successes, real successes took place in the eighties. That was Billie Jean, Thriller and all this. I mean he was as weird as he could be but he was profoundly, because of his weirdness, an individual. He wasn't a group member. He reached a level of success that may never be equaled. He flourished under Reagan; he languished under Clinton-Bush; and died under Obama. Let's hope the parallel does not continue.

Really! Where exactly was President Obama on the afternoon of June 25 -- can he account for his whereabouts for the entire day?

As for the Reagan's administration's role in MJ's musical burst of creativity during the 1980s, there was none. But it is worth noting that Reagan's steep cut in marginal tax rate for the upper bracket meant that Jackson kept a lot more of that surging income -- which he then squandered on a bad real estate investment while racking up millions of dollars in credit card debt before he died from lousy healthcare. So maybe in a perverse way, Limbaugh is right: Michael Jackson was a parable for the Age of Reagan.