We rule the world. Bill Clinton with Michael Jackson and Diana Ross, singing 'We are the world', Washington, 17 January 1993 (AFP)

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The planetary event that was the death of Michael Jackson has less to do with the cultural significance of "an extraordinary showman" than with the fact that the 1960s culture war has been resolved at last, argues Daniel Finkelstein in The Times.

The right judgment on Michael Jackson’s career, argues Daniel Finkelstein, is that he was “a magnificent entertainer, but not someone who shaped pop history.” But why then did his death attract more attention than those of Elvis and John Lennon, “undeniably more culturally important?"

The answer, Finkelstein maintains, is that in the decades since Lennon’s death society has changed radically. The culture war fought out since the sixties is ended. “And pop culture has won.” Politicians like Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, “the first political tribunes of the post-1960s generation to reach the highest office” were instrumental in this change, bringing “liberal values, egalitarian assumptions, democratic accents and low culture hipness to the mainstream.” The fact, however, that across racial and class divides, an “essentially innocuous showman” like Michael Jackson can be big news is just one little sign that “(we’re) all pop fans now.”