Those crazy kids at The Christian Science Monitor have unearthed a real gem: an interesting piece of experimental journalism from 1984, imagining how the Michael Jackson phenomenon would be viewed 25 years in to the future:

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The Michael Jackson phenomenon cannot be explained simply by talent or personal charm. Clearly, in certain mystical ways, Jackson expressed the '80s as few others did. How? The '80s, we see now, was a decade in search of lost innocence. After the awful disillusion of the '70s - Vietnam, Watergate - Americans of the '80s wanted to believe again. Why else was Ronald Reagan elected president? - that most old-fashioned and truly convinced of believers. (read on)