Obituaries identified Michael Jackson as an icon. Stories called a certain poster of Farrah Fawcett iconic. What is an icon, pray tell? In the popular sense, icon refers to just about everything a baby boomer liked during youth and arrested adolescence. The New York Times seemingly cites icons several hundred times a day. We have had iconic burgers, iconic commercials, iconic sodas, iconic movies, iconic cartoons, iconic television series, iconic songs, iconic jingles, and on and on.