SHUTTING THE DOOR ON 2004
The end of the year prompts review, analysis, a look back and a look
ahead. Here in DeanLand we will take our annual acounting of the
year, make a few predictive observations, and offer up our take on the
year.
In many ways 2004 seemed a year of change. Yet so much stayed the same.
Bottom line: 2004 was the year of the paradox.
The year before was a troubled one. September 11th was still
reverberating, the repercussions still an open wound not yet fully
attended to. Come 2004 and that softened some, despite the
politicians constant reference to that day. It went from a day of
disaster, pain, loss, attack, tragedy . . . to a product and a brand,
the object of attempts at possession by the political parties and
politicians.
Of course the families and loved ones still being rocked and shaken by
the events of that day will not feel this way, but to the rest of the
citizenry, September 11th has become the focus of much commercial and
idealistic brand-snatching.
In keeping with the paradox, this was the same year that saw the emergence of the Richard Clarke book [1],
and the Suskind/O'Neill book, among others. And the 9/11
Commission --a concept Shrubby & Cheney originally sought to
quash-- issued a full report. This bipartisan commission managed
to get past the bullshit, even in an election year, and present the
findings the administration seemed to have feared before they
flip-flopped and supported the very concept of the commission.
Yes, flip-flopping, a major meme of 2004.
I am not generally one for the meme thing (or, as they don't say in French, la meme chose) but I was quite interested in the very recent meme-craze viral blogerati activity: The 43 Things List [2].
The good news is that it is a fun way to waste some time on the web,
and can even be thought provoking, evocative. The bad news is
that either I bungled it somehow, or the software sucks (or some
combination thereof) , since I can't manage to make what is supposedly
the link to my list -- actually show my list. And when I messed
around with it, I ended up starting a new list from scratch with the
same URL that is purportedly the one I saved after completing the darn
thing.
The year before last, 2003, was for me and for many that I know,
a banner year for The Angel of Death. I lost friends, extended
family, loved ones. 2003 saw all sorts of losses, and it seemed
it wasn't just me here in DeanLand; it was rampant.
Time marched on, it morphed into 2004, and the year of the paradox saw
many names of note bite the dust. But more notably, it was the
year of many deaths. Nameless deaths.
Victims. Wars and starvation (Iraq, The Sudan, et al), bombings
(Israel, Palestine, et al), acts of nature (hurricanes in the US, the
Tsunami throughout Asia and the subcontinent), criminal and terrorist
acts (the Russian schoolhouse in Beslan) . . . these all took lives of
everyday people. People who are not common names or faces that
people would otherwise have come to know.
Sadly one fears this is leads to a reaction of being desensitized to
death. 2004 - the year Death became an all-too-common coda to the
day. Every day.
Already the stories out of The Sudan and Iraq are, to the desensitized,
items they merely scan or glaze over in the daily papers or whatever
the news source may be. As the death toll of soldiers is released and daily tales of murderous attacks by the the so-called Iraqi "insurgents"play out on the news, it becomes remote. There is a sense of
being removed from these stories as the realities of the
day. These events happen over there, to other people. And the administration spin is that this is all a part of the War on Terror.
Imagine that spin if you are an Iraqi. A pro-Saddam or
anti-Saddam Iraqi, it matters not. Consider this: the US
invades the country (and the Coalition, a smattering of soldiers from
other countries comprising a minor percentage of the total invading
force), wages war, overthrows the government, continues a campaign of
assaults and bombing, puts in a provisional government of its choice,
then seeks to quell any uprising of theocratic leaders in a country
known for embracing theocracy over all other forms of government -- and
when you, the Iraqi, fight this invading force, it characterizes you to
the outside world as an insurgent.
Explain to me, please, how these are what the dictionary [3] would define as insurgent [4] forces. The Wikipedia [4],
to its credit, points out the current political usage of the
term. Turn the tables around, and these "insurgents" might be
perceived as Freedom Fighters, patriots, martyrs.
2004 was the year that the FCC went bananas
over one exposed mammary gland. Hip-Hop wannabe Justin Timberlake
tears off part of Janet Jackson's costume on live TV during a musical
number on the Super Bowl halftime show. Bad enough this is bad
taste, crass, and misogynistc. But worse is that FCC Chairman
Michael Powell makes John "fear of tits" Ashcroft look like a
hind-tit liberal by holding hearings, levying fines, and protecting the
unwashed and innocent masses from ever seeing a bare breast again.
That is, unless they watch cable/satellite TV, go to the movies, read
any number of magazines, or, gasp, check out all those porn sites on
the net. But Powell need not protect them from that - -he can let
the faith based arbiters of all that is good and right (you know, w's
inner circle and support base) take care of that.
2004 - The Year That Pigs Began to Fly
All sorts of
peculiar and seemingly unatural phenomena ocurred in 2004. Bob
Dylan did a television ad, appearing as an inferring endorser for a
product line of Victoria's Secret. Here it would normally be the
place where I would link to the blog entry all about Dylan, the ad,
with the funny graphics . . . but the server housing this sucker is
acting up, I am trying to finish this post and get some rest before
leaving for a short New year's getaway . . . (later: server behaving again, here's the link [5])
More odder-than-fiction sort of events occured in 2004. The
Boston Red Sox, those perennial losers, they who have fans who so hate
the (dearly beloved) NY Yankee fans, and who have learned to accept
defeat as an inevitable result . . .not only beat the Yanks in the ALCS
--while down three games in a best of seven series-- but then went on to beat the Cardinals, four in a row, and take the World Series.
Yes, 2004, the year nature took a different course.
too old to host the show in the cold out there in Times Square?">Then as the end of the year approached the oddness got evenmore pronounced. America's most famous teenager, the ever-young
Dick Clark, suffered a small stroke as the year was winding down.
Dick Clark, the world's oldest teenager. The man who never aged.
HE HAD A STROKE! Say it isn't so!
but he represents it as well as one could want.
">And who is replacing Clark on the annual ABC TV program,
"Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve?" None other than Regis
Philbin, who is a few years older than Clark. But wait, something
is wrong. Well, maybe not, this is 2004. But while
Dick Clark is the former deejay, the host of American Bandstand, the
Philly Top 40 Disc Jockey who broke into TV and then became a household
name. But Regis? "Rockin' New Year's Eve?" This is a
man who just released an album of standards. What's wrong with this
picture?
more coming . . . stay tuned