Everyone making decade's end lists (including the excerpted article below) are obliged to point out that the decade doesn't actually end until December 31, 2010. Which doesn't seem so weird this year, the 2000s still feeling pretty recent to most adults, and the fact that 10 isn't pronounced teen. But when you get to decades with actual names (Roaring '20s, Fabulous '50s, Swingin' '70s), it just seems stupid to count, say, 1980 as the last year of the 70s. It was, yes, yes we know. We just don't care.
But we have bigger things to worry about than rehashing the same argument we had 10 years ago for Y2K ('member that?). We've got an economy still in the crapper, unemployment off the charts, two (three?) wars, and a political chasm between right and left. We Americans have notoriously short memories, so it is these later things we'll remember about the 2000s, at least for a while. Oh no, we'll "never forget" 9/11, but it would do us well to remember that it did happen in this past decade, and that the previous administration only "kept us safe" for part of their 8-year reign of error.
I'll be honest though, I thought I'd be writing a slightly different column this year. Don't get me wrong, I never thought that Barack Obama winning the Presidency would fix everything. Economic turmoil rarely is fixed that quickly. And while I still support the President, it is through jaded, green colored lenses. For all of the slurs thrown at Obama (from day one, remember. . .no honeymoon allowed), he's pretty far from as liberal or progressive as I'd like him to be. I don't want him to use his all-Democratic government as a bludgeon like the conservatives of recent times did. But I'd sure as hell like to see him use it. Many of the ills of the 2001-2008 calendars have still not been corrected, and may never be addressed. And that may be the legacy of the decade. Well, that and whatever has been put in motion by it.
[Excerpt]
From Google to Gaga, a decade of miracle, wonder
A spate of stories and online postings heralding the end of the aughts -- "Worst decade ever," proclaims Time, "Goodbye (at last) to the Decade from Hell" -- has me in a retrospective mood.
To say that the years 2000 through 2009 have been an eventful 10 years is to state the obvious. But still. The rolling over of two digits on the odometer of years invites us to look back and consider all that's changed in our lives since we last argued about when new decades begin (pedants are quick to point out that it's technically not until Jan. 1 of years ending in 1, so we have another 12 months to prepare to look back on the first decade of the new millennium). . .
Read more at: Chicago Tribune
But we have bigger things to worry about than rehashing the same argument we had 10 years ago for Y2K ('member that?). We've got an economy still in the crapper, unemployment off the charts, two (three?) wars, and a political chasm between right and left. We Americans have notoriously short memories, so it is these later things we'll remember about the 2000s, at least for a while. Oh no, we'll "never forget" 9/11, but it would do us well to remember that it did happen in this past decade, and that the previous administration only "kept us safe" for part of their 8-year reign of error.
I'll be honest though, I thought I'd be writing a slightly different column this year. Don't get me wrong, I never thought that Barack Obama winning the Presidency would fix everything. Economic turmoil rarely is fixed that quickly. And while I still support the President, it is through jaded, green colored lenses. For all of the slurs thrown at Obama (from day one, remember. . .no honeymoon allowed), he's pretty far from as liberal or progressive as I'd like him to be. I don't want him to use his all-Democratic government as a bludgeon like the conservatives of recent times did. But I'd sure as hell like to see him use it. Many of the ills of the 2001-2008 calendars have still not been corrected, and may never be addressed. And that may be the legacy of the decade. Well, that and whatever has been put in motion by it.
[Excerpt]
From Google to Gaga, a decade of miracle, wonder
A spate of stories and online postings heralding the end of the aughts -- "Worst decade ever," proclaims Time, "Goodbye (at last) to the Decade from Hell" -- has me in a retrospective mood.
To say that the years 2000 through 2009 have been an eventful 10 years is to state the obvious. But still. The rolling over of two digits on the odometer of years invites us to look back and consider all that's changed in our lives since we last argued about when new decades begin (pedants are quick to point out that it's technically not until Jan. 1 of years ending in 1, so we have another 12 months to prepare to look back on the first decade of the new millennium). . .
Read more at: Chicago Tribune
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