It’s two master showmen together for one fantabulous night!

Fresh off his stellar gig opening for Wanda Sykes, Barack Obama will be headlining, with Alice Cooper kicking off the night, one show only at Arizona State University’s graduation at Sun Devil Stadium.  Cooper will naturally be performing his hit teem anthem, "School’s Out,"  backed by Runaway Phoenix, a band that includes his son, Dash an ASU junior.

 Obama will perform as POTUS, solo.

It all comes full circle:

In 1983 Arizona’s own John McCain voted against establishing a national holiday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  and in 1987 supported Arizona Republican Governor Evan Mecham’s rescinding of the state holiday in honor of King created by the Democratic predecessor. In the face of overwhelming public disgust for this position, McCain eventually backed down and encouraged state recognition of the holiday.

Mecham’s infamy continued to grow: He got a triple kick as the first United States governor

to simultaneously face removal from office through impeachment, a scheduled recall election, and a felony indictment

and became the first Arizona governor to be impeached. So it’s kinda really extra huge to have Obama there. Except that ASU officilas did not grant Obama the usual honorary doctorate for a series of reasons that just got weirder and wackier. Instead university administration vastly expanded a scholarship which they renamed the President Barack Obama Scholars Program (which actually will do more good for a larger number  in the long run–by giving more students a chance to complete college–than an honorary degree would do Obama, but still it’s the principle)

Don’t expect conservatives to get all freaked out over Alice Cooper. Quite the contrary. First off,  it’s not like he’s Danzig or even pop-shocker Marilyn Manson. After a lucrative career as a glitter and gloom hard rocker, Cooper founded Solid Rock Foundation whose:

primary goal is to honor Christ by helping to meet the spiritual, economical, physical, and social needs of teenagers and children within our community.

 Cooper, a staunch Republican who’s said

[R]ock is the antithesis of politics. Rock should never be in bed with politics,

is keeping partisanship out of the mix.  Though he’s shared the stage with  the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Groucho Marx and Johnny Carson, Cooper says:

Of all the people I’ve ever shared a stage with, Obama is the biggest rock star. And I’d like to thank him, in advance, for changing the national anthem to ‘Schools Out.’