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Yikes. I've Seen The Future and It Is Full Of.... Gigantic Penguins!
Is everyone done fighting over Christmas? I don’t follow these things closely. Did Santa see his shadow, or are we going to have six more weeks of Kwanzaa? Is Kris Kringle going on Mount Rushmore, or is he back to being as popular as Mike Vick at the New York Kennel Club? Never mind. Let’s move on. I’m all about the future now. Happy New Year!
New Year’s is a time for lists. This is the Internet. We love lists. There’s practically nothing but lists on here. But a New Year’s list is a very specific breed; not many mention whether Han shot first for a change. New Year’s lists are divided into two types:
1.People who have no intention of changing their behavior in any way outlining all the ways they’re going to change their behavior in every way.
2. Wild-eyed predictions about the future from persons who need a midnight visit from zombie Ted Williams wielding a clue-bat just to bang some sense into their heads about what’s happening right now, never mind the future.
That’s why we jump at the chance to take a crack (and make wisecracks) at the future. No one can hold up the “Citation Needed” sign about things that haven’t happened yet.
In the future, we’re all experts. We’re all slim and muscular and tidy, and have written the Great American Novel, too, if our New Year’s Resolutions are to be believed. New Year’s is a time to post the intellectual version of the FREE BEER TOMORROW sign.
Me? I’d much rather look at last year’s predictions than read this year’s. Let’s all become the Internet version of your mother-in-law, backseat driving all the way to 2011. Off to Google.
Here’s the first 2010 list I can find. Ugh, it’s a slideshow. I predict you won’t read it, so I’ll summarize. Here’s what Newsweek thought would happen in Politics in 2010:
10. Democrats Steal.
Well, they were right on the money about that one… (slight pause, refresh page) Oops, my mistake: Democrats Steal Texas Governor’s Mansion. If they did steal it, it’s kidnapping as well as grand theft, because Rick Perry is still sitting in it.
9. Obama Does Nada on Gay Rights.
I think he just signed off on the end of DADT, so we’re still batting zero here. Not sure if Newsweek gets any style points for Obama dithering a bit first.
8. Obama Gets 2nd Court Pick.
Hey, that’s sort of correct. Newsweek figured Diane Wood would replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2010. How wrong can you be and still be right?
7. Dodd Loses Seat.
Christopher Dodd is no longer a Senator. He didn’t lose. He didn’t run, while Newsweek wondered aloud: “…the only questions that remain are which Republican will soon occupy his seat…” Yeah, about that.
6. Florida Elects Senator Crist.
Crist lost to Rubio by 19%. Nineteen percent is a lot.
5. Palin Gets Her Talk Show.
Well, she did have a camera pointed at her on TV. Close enough.
4. Troubled California Stays Blue.
Fiorina and Whitman lost. Finally, something unequivocally correct, if obvious.
3. GOP Blocks Immigration Reform.
The lame duck Congress has passed everything it wanted short of zoning laws on Jupiter, so giving credit or (if you’re Newsweek) blame on this one to Republicans is a little odd. The last line in the article: “Come November, Hispanics will respond with energetic turnout, helping keep some House seats blue and further ensconcing themselves in the Democratic fold.” No entiendo.
2. GOP Ousts Reid.
Newsweek manages to get the outcome wrong while disparaging Republicans for even running a candidate against Reid, citing “…an unspoken gentleman’s agreement on Capitol Hill to avoid challenging party leaders.” If you believe there are gentlemen on Capitol Hill, you’re bound to get most everything wrong.
1. Pelosi Keeps The House.
Snicker. If I were Newsweek, I’d claim it was a typo, and was supposed to read: Pelosi Keeps House.
I’ll stick my neck out and make one prediction. A news magazine so wildly wrong about most everything, and if right, only right by accident, will likely fail, and be sold for one dollar more than it is worth.
Woops. I meant to write that in July.
But of course almost all predictions about the future tend to be more wishful thinking than gimlet-eyed assessments. You can tell what a Newsweek writer was devoutly praying for by the windmills they were tilting at. Their job, as they saw it, was to allow their readers to join them in their imaginary world, a world untroubled by uncomfortable things like Republicans and arithmetic.
I’m only human, so happy talk is all I want in my predictions for the New Year, too. Happy talk is different for everyone. If you’ve been hoarding dehydrated food and ammo for five years, the only thing that would make you happy is a top ten list of apocalypses about to happen. My family is living in a four-bedroom apocalypse with a leaky roof and no central heating, so I can’t get my jollies daydreaming about one. And I can’t even afford regular food, never mind the dehydrated kind, so I want lists of nothing but sunshine and ravioli, as Louis Prima used to call good times. I was born into the sunniest and most hopeful time in the last century, the 1950s. I demand flying cars and optimism, STAT. Let’s remember the greatest, wryest paean to 1950s hopeless hopeful hoping about the future ever set to music, I.G.Y. by Donald Fagen.
On that train of graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
(More leisure for artists everywhere)
A just machine to make big decisions
Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision
We'll be clean when their work is done
We'll be eternally free yes and eternally young
The IGY was the International Geophysical Year, a kind of nebulous, let's all be scientific together exercise from 1957 to 1958. It hoped that if we assembled all the guys who operated slide rules (then) like we text-message with our thumbs (now), it would function as an “apolitical, non-nationalistic, scientifically oriented entity,” and make a great leap forward in our understanding of the earth and its atmosphere.
Oh well. We’ve gone off the graphite and glitter rails over the earth and its atmosphere since then, but I sleep better knowing that after eighteen months of the scientific and diplomatic version of a college dorm room bull session, the governments of Argentina, Australia Belgium, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the USSR, Great Britain and the United States of America solemnly declared they wouldn't put nuclear weapons in Antarctica. Along those lines, I’ve also promised my wife not to get a job giving bikini waxes at the Playboy mansion.
Of course Donald Fagen didn’t mention that before the 90 minutes of undersea rail time, there’d be an additional 90 minutes of groping by a TSA employee holding the same credentials as a sanitation worker and wearing the same rubber gloves they used to frisk a leper ten minutes before. Likewise, Fagen must be forgiven for incorrectly envisioning the ascendance of a kind of robot to make all the big decisions for us. After all, Al Gore only lost the election by a few votes.
