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At least since Orange County coffee klatches and erstwhile Southern strategists swept Ronald Reagan into the White House, consuming political news in this country has meant confronting the seemingly inexorable rise of one “interest group” in particular: evangelical Christians.
Even before the press corps descended on diner counters from Sandy Hook, Ky., to Racine, Wis., in their quest to understand the appeal of Donald Trump, reporters fanned out to Farmingville, N.Y., and Colorado Springs, Colo., in search of the rank-and-file behind such figures as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and President George W. Bush. PBS and U.S. News & World Report polled “America’s evangelicals.” HBO’s “Game Change” attracted criticism for focusing on the blind-item salaciousness of Sarah Palin’s disastrous vice presidential campaign rather than analysis of her appeal to evangelicals. And cable news networks hired movement figures as regular contributors: “A Guide to Christian Am
The Pointer Sisters performing in New York City in 1983, the year the group released its album em Break Out /em , which included four top 10 hits.
If you spun the dial of your AM/FM radio on any given day in the early 1980s, chances are you heard a Pointer Sisters record. The group was in heavy rotation in a variety of formats whose playlists included Duran Duran, Bruce Springsteen and the Human League or Patti LaBelle and Earth, Wind and Fire. The electro-pop sound of the Pointer Sisters Jump (For My Love), Automatic or Neutron Dance dominated the charts during the first half of the decade. The popularity of these records rested in the accessibility of their lyrical content and melodic structure and the hypnotic nature of their rhythms. Anyone could sing Jump for My Love after hearing the chorus once; after Neutron Dance was featured prominently in Eddie Murphy s breakout film