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Usually a newspaper columnist is busy at this time of year looking back at the year just passed and remembering it for what it was.
I'm no different. Without taking the time to look at our mistakes, how will we ever be able to repeat them over and over? But instead of looking back at the year, I figure I have an entire decade of insanity to examine. Without further ado:
The decade started like so many in history. The economy was rolling along. The national debt was a national surplus. The president wasn't under so much pressure that he could easily find time for a pizza party here and there.
Our computers purred on despite Y2K and because of the fact that we spent more than $900 billion to prevent it from sending us back to 1900. But then we had an election and ruined it all by rejecting peace and prosperity and trading it all in for…
Actually, we traded it for months of trying to figure out exactly whom we were trading for. Then the Supreme Court voted along party lines to install the next ruler of the United States, Dick Cheney! This wouldn't end well, especially the party lines thing.
Eight months later while reading his dog-eared copy of “My Pet Goat” to children ravenous for an education, George W. Bush was informed that Dick Cheney had ordered all the planes in the U.S. to land and for him not to worry because we wouldn't want him to walk out of class and leave those kids behind. So he didn't.
September 11, 2001 became the most overused marketing slogan of the decade, which is as great a tragedy as the attack itself. It isn't used to sell fast food but as a rallying cry to start wars of choice. Shameful.
Enron, the seventh largest corporation in America, crashed as if to warn us all that the house of cards we were living in was well…a house of cards. We didn't pay any attention and President J.C. Penney told us to keep shopping. So we did and bought more cards for the house.
Enron CEO Ken Lay came to Aspen/Snowmass, dressed a bum he killed in a $1,000 suit to fake his own death, and flew straight to Barbados where he is now sipping margaritas.
The year 2002 was a chance to find out how easy it would be to persuade the gullible nation to attack a country that had never done anything to us. It worked excellently and George Orwell smugly smiled from the grave. In Congress, Republican representatives changed the name of French kissing to Freedom tonguing, then stuck theirs out at the world.
In March of 2003, President Clint Eastwood stared into the camera and called the bluff of the Hussein clan, telling Saddam and his two boys to get out of town by noon. Then he started “shock and awe,” which proved once again why America lost in Vietnam.
No one in Iraq was shocked or awed. Instead they fought back and we're still there spending our money and losing our kids. Republicans would later change the name of the Iraq War to “Obama's Quagmire.”
President Truman appeared on an aircraft carrier to hold up a newspaper proclaiming “Dewey Defeats Truman.” Actually, President G.I. Joe landed his very own toy plane to proclaim “Mission Accomplished.” Whew! Were Americans ever happy that was over.
He then went on to break the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, National Guard and the French Legion. Republicans immediately changed the name to Freedom Legion.
In California, voters recalled the duly elected governor and installed an actor. Like all California actors that go into government, he spent California's entire budget on hot tubs full of Playboy models. California teeters still.
A CIA agent accused of spying on America's enemies and patriotically defending the country is hunted down and exposed by the office of the vice-president. I. Scooter Libby is convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in the case that reaches into the Bush White House but is never pursued due to the spinelessness of the Democratic Party.
The year 2004 begins with Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction proving that a split second of a woman's breast on television is infinitely worse than an erection that lasts four hours. More 20 million men taking Cialis and watching the Super Bowl all said the same thing, “I think it moved.”
In April, a bunch of yahoos were caught torturing Iraqi captives. No one responsible for these crimes was prosecuted but a couple of low-level grunts were tried and tossed in jail for show. The torture scandal became one of the biggest of the Bush Administration but a hooded man with his testicles hooked to electrical wires still wasn't as offensive as Janet Jackson's breast.
Former president Ronald Reagan passes on and America endures a solid week of Hollywood fiction as the man is mythologized for legendary powers he never possessed. Most people bought it hook, line and sinker proving P.T. Barnum correct. George Orwell's grave is smug as a bug.
George W. Bush is enthroned after Ohio was contested for a short time by a wax museum model, John Kerry. Bush goes down in history as the only two-term president never elected by popular vote.
In December a huge earthquake destroys the coastlines of many Asian countries by sending a tsunami wave crashing into land and killing 200,000 people. It can't get any worse…
Until next week when the decade ends in this column.
Johnny's kid's book, First Tracks, is available at Gene Taylor's, Short Sport and Amazon. E-mail: snomasokist@msn.com
I'm no different. Without taking the time to look at our mistakes, how will we ever be able to repeat them over and over? But instead of looking back at the year, I figure I have an entire decade of insanity to examine. Without further ado:
The decade started like so many in history. The economy was rolling along. The national debt was a national surplus. The president wasn't under so much pressure that he could easily find time for a pizza party here and there.
Our computers purred on despite Y2K and because of the fact that we spent more than $900 billion to prevent it from sending us back to 1900. But then we had an election and ruined it all by rejecting peace and prosperity and trading it all in for…
Actually, we traded it for months of trying to figure out exactly whom we were trading for. Then the Supreme Court voted along party lines to install the next ruler of the United States, Dick Cheney! This wouldn't end well, especially the party lines thing.
Eight months later while reading his dog-eared copy of “My Pet Goat” to children ravenous for an education, George W. Bush was informed that Dick Cheney had ordered all the planes in the U.S. to land and for him not to worry because we wouldn't want him to walk out of class and leave those kids behind. So he didn't.
September 11, 2001 became the most overused marketing slogan of the decade, which is as great a tragedy as the attack itself. It isn't used to sell fast food but as a rallying cry to start wars of choice. Shameful.
Enron, the seventh largest corporation in America, crashed as if to warn us all that the house of cards we were living in was well…a house of cards. We didn't pay any attention and President J.C. Penney told us to keep shopping. So we did and bought more cards for the house.
Enron CEO Ken Lay came to Aspen/Snowmass, dressed a bum he killed in a $1,000 suit to fake his own death, and flew straight to Barbados where he is now sipping margaritas.
The year 2002 was a chance to find out how easy it would be to persuade the gullible nation to attack a country that had never done anything to us. It worked excellently and George Orwell smugly smiled from the grave. In Congress, Republican representatives changed the name of French kissing to Freedom tonguing, then stuck theirs out at the world.
In March of 2003, President Clint Eastwood stared into the camera and called the bluff of the Hussein clan, telling Saddam and his two boys to get out of town by noon. Then he started “shock and awe,” which proved once again why America lost in Vietnam.
No one in Iraq was shocked or awed. Instead they fought back and we're still there spending our money and losing our kids. Republicans would later change the name of the Iraq War to “Obama's Quagmire.”
President Truman appeared on an aircraft carrier to hold up a newspaper proclaiming “Dewey Defeats Truman.” Actually, President G.I. Joe landed his very own toy plane to proclaim “Mission Accomplished.” Whew! Were Americans ever happy that was over.
He then went on to break the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, National Guard and the French Legion. Republicans immediately changed the name to Freedom Legion.
In California, voters recalled the duly elected governor and installed an actor. Like all California actors that go into government, he spent California's entire budget on hot tubs full of Playboy models. California teeters still.
A CIA agent accused of spying on America's enemies and patriotically defending the country is hunted down and exposed by the office of the vice-president. I. Scooter Libby is convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in the case that reaches into the Bush White House but is never pursued due to the spinelessness of the Democratic Party.
The year 2004 begins with Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction proving that a split second of a woman's breast on television is infinitely worse than an erection that lasts four hours. More 20 million men taking Cialis and watching the Super Bowl all said the same thing, “I think it moved.”
In April, a bunch of yahoos were caught torturing Iraqi captives. No one responsible for these crimes was prosecuted but a couple of low-level grunts were tried and tossed in jail for show. The torture scandal became one of the biggest of the Bush Administration but a hooded man with his testicles hooked to electrical wires still wasn't as offensive as Janet Jackson's breast.
Former president Ronald Reagan passes on and America endures a solid week of Hollywood fiction as the man is mythologized for legendary powers he never possessed. Most people bought it hook, line and sinker proving P.T. Barnum correct. George Orwell's grave is smug as a bug.
George W. Bush is enthroned after Ohio was contested for a short time by a wax museum model, John Kerry. Bush goes down in history as the only two-term president never elected by popular vote.
In December a huge earthquake destroys the coastlines of many Asian countries by sending a tsunami wave crashing into land and killing 200,000 people. It can't get any worse…
Until next week when the decade ends in this column.
Johnny's kid's book, First Tracks, is available at Gene Taylor's, Short Sport and Amazon. E-mail: snomasokist@msn.com
