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Like most Americans, particularly those of us who grew up in the 1960s and '70s, I was saddened to learn of the passing of Michael Jackson, a tortured musical genius who, like many famous artists, had everything yet nothing at the same time.
Mourning a national musical icon is appropriate and has its place among the week's headlines. Obsessing over the movement of a corpse by helicopter and then by a plain white van, though, may have obscured the issues of the day that affect us in other ways.

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