|
| News | Sports |
Business | Opinions |
Columns | Entertainment |
| Science/Technology| Weather | Archives | E-mail Us |
Brooks Peterson
Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com
Monday, January 3, 2000
Things will be the same - only different
Don't know if you keep up with The New Republic, a journal of opinion I've been following for at least a couple of decades. It's rich fare for a provincial scribbler like me, but I do make an effort to keep up with it.
And now it has paid off: TNR, in this reader's opinion, has the absolutely definitive take on Y2K, the New Millennium, the turn of the century.
And you don't even have to open the magazine: The cover says it all. There, in a beautifully composed photo, we see three persons sharing what appears to be either a park bench or a bus stop. A couple - a man and woman of mature but not advanced years - are snoozing soundly, each leaning on the other to form a sort of isosceles triangle. A younger woman in some sort of sun dress, meanwhile, has her arms crossed and her head thrown back: not necessarily asleep yet, but certainly being courted by Morpheus.
When it comes to all the millennial issues with which we've been plagued for the last 18 months or so, I'm with them: Blissful obliviousness is the way to go.
Oh, all right, I'll grant you that the computer thing is a legitimate concern. (And why, dear hearts, is it a concern? Because the geniuses who ushered us into the Information Age unaccountably neglected to notice that the year 2000 would pose certain, ah, challenges for their creations.) As dependent as we are on computers, we have no choice but to ensure the pore things don't all swallow their hard drives.
As for the rest of it, though . . . give me a break.
Now, inasmuch as I am writing this well in advance of midnight Friday, it is conceivable that I will be proved wrong - that our entire civilization will implode, that our strategic reserves of designer coffee will be endangered, that modems will rise up against their owners, that cell phones will snap shut on their owners' ears . . .
The beauty part in that case, of course, is that you won't be reading this at all; hence I will not be held up to public opprobrium and scorn - at least, no more than usual.
However, let's assume, just for the sake of assuming, that I'm right. In light of the Apocalypse having materialized, what can we expect? In no particular order, and certainly with no claims to credibility, I offer these predictions (read: guesses):
CCISD Supt. Abelardo Saavedra and the members of his fractious school board will resolve their differences and march arm in arm to a brighter tomorrow; the City Council and the Nueces County Commissioners Court will reach agreement on the new police/sheriff's/constables' dispatch system, then proceed to agree to adopt a daring new metro-government scheme . . . wups. Ignore that: I was reading from the file of things that would happen if the Apocalypse did materialize. Never mind.
The traffic lights on Mesquite in the city's downtown bar - er, business district, will continue to resist every effort by city traffic engineers to synchronize them. Preservationists will join the fray on the side of the status quo, arguing that unsynchronized stoplights are accorded special protection by the state as historic artifacts.
Antique dealers driven out of downtown by the night-club onslaught will march on City Hall to demand financial assistance for relocation and rehabilitation. Representatives of certain local attorneys will circulate on the fringes of the demonstration, handing out business cards.
And what about the Really Big Picture?
Geraldo Rivera and the guy in the dopey fringed leather jacket will continue blathering about the O.J. Simpson murder case well into the new millennium; meanwhile, Simpson, like Inspector Javert in Les Miserables, will continue his dogged pursuit of the guilty parties.
Al Gore and Bill Bradley will finally put their woodenness and lack of spontaneity to a worthy use: taping a therapeutic video for general use by a sleep-deprived nation.
George W. Bush will emerge from a month-long sabbatical to announce that, having finished that Dean Acehson biography, he has mastered Spengler's "Decline of the West" - and understands some of it. John McCain will respond by biting Bush on the ankle.
See? It's just going to be business as usual. Nothing scary about that, is there?
Uh, hold on: Let me rephrase that . . .
(Peterson can be reached by phone at 886-3772, or by e-mail at petersonb@caller.com)
Brooks Peterson
| Talk about this column
| Other Columns | Home |
© 1999 Caller-Times Publishing Company Corpus Christi Caller Times, a
Scripps Howard newspaper.
All rights reserved.
|
 |
 |
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
|
