This is the kind of people that Americans used to be

It was 1983, forty whole years ago.  At the White House.  "Santa Claus" came that year in the form of Mr. T.  Here he is with beloved First Lady Nancy Reagan sitting on his lap:

Damn it.  What the hell has become of us, since then?

We aren't like that anymore.  Our culture and society has become so degenerated that something so playful like that photo would be practically impossible in today's environment.

But once, in seemingly a better time and a different reality, we honestly were like that.

I like to believe that we could be again.

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Michael Jackson's THRILLER was released 30 years ago today

Ignoring the obvious - that soon thereafter he began his downward spiral into cosmetic catastrophe and overall instability - it will forever be acknowledged that once upon a time, Michael Jackson was a musical genius. As well as a masterful performer on stage and in his music videos. It was not without reason that he was dubbed the "King of Pop". How long he maintained that title is debatable... but Jackson did earn it.

Thriller, Michael Jackson's masterpiece album, was released thirty years ago today, on November 30th 1982. It remains by a significant margin the best-selling music album in history.

So in honor of Thriller's thirtieth anniversary, here is a photo of the artist behind it. Along with two other celebrated figures from a far, far better era...

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Not so long ago...

...in a different time and a better reality...

The Eighties. What a time to have been alive.

Personally, I think America hit its high water mark as a culture around 1994. There was a kind of dynamic that seems to have vanished about the time that O.J. Simpson went for that ride in the Ford Bronco.

I don't know if we'll ever see days like those again.

But just as King Arthur came to cherish at the end: It was a fair time that will live on in memory. And so long as the memory of that time endures, it may yet come again.

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