here's how not to do a "cultural context" piece. if you want the whole atmosphere of an era in 700 words, i'd go with...david brooks. here we just throw in a bunch of things in juxtaposition - the evil reagan and deregulation, crack, hip hop, and michael jackson sexually abusing children - and hope that the reader will fill in the connections or something. maybe this says "the eighties sucked" (though gangsta rap is basically a phenomena of the clinton period). now say we thought our own era sucked. well, we could just go "britney, meth, guantanamo, palin, billy mays" or whatever we don't like, i suppose. anyway, the first thing you should ask is: let's say the eighties were full of corporate greed, jingoism, crack, sexism, etc: then we have michael making googoo eyes at emanuel lewis: does that sum the whole thing up? why? how? really? bob. you've got to think through the connections somehow.