Whew! Let's get this decade over with

From December 2009, which, ironically is not really the end of the decade, if you stop and figure it out ... but that's another column, I suppose.


I was trying to figure out how to delicately approach the subject when Time magazine did it for me. Did you see their cover story two weeks ago?

The Decade From Hell.

Yes, this one. The one about to end.

Time -- and others -- have collectively decided that the 10 years from Jan. 2000 to Dec. 2009 are "the most dispiriting and disillusioning decade Americans have lived through" since World War II. Others have called it the Decade of Broken Dreams or the Lost Decade.

I agree. I was halfway through a column of grinching and grumping (Note to self: New Year's resolution ought to be less grinching and grumping) about the past 10 years when Time reminded me of "what went down," as the kids say. Let me just throw out a few nouns, proper and otherwise, and see what memories they spark for you. (You can put this to music if you want, maybe Billie Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire.")

Y2K. U.S.S. Cole. Hanging chads. Bridgestone/Firestone tires. Chandra Levy. Elian Gonzalez. Concorde crash. Do you remember how many days the Florida recount went on, with the Supreme Court deliberating as well, before "W" was declared president? Thirty-six long days.

IPod. Steve Jobs. Osama Bin Laden. Shanksville, Penn. Kabul. Bunker busters. Al-Jezzera. Patriot Act. Anthrax. Harry Potter. Enron.

John Walker Lindh. Taliban. Daniel Pearl. Chechen terrorists/Russian theater. WorldCom. Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul.

Space Shuttle Columbia. Colin Powell. Shock and Awe. Martha Steward in "prison." CIA and WMDs. Mad-cow disease. Saddam found in a hole. John Kerry, Howard Dean.

Wardrobe malfunction. Abu Ghraib. Scott Peterson. Chechin terrorists/Russian school. Indonesia tsunami, 200,000 killed in a dozen countries. MySpace and Facebook. Peter Jackson and "Lord of the Rings." Madrid bombings. Gay marriage. Victor Yushencko poisoned for his politics. Ringtones. Swift Boats.

New pope. Steroids and sports. Katrina. FEMA. Dikes and levees. John Roberts. Avian flu. Amish school killing. Donald Rumsfeld. Benizir Bhutto assassinated. Virginia Tech shooting. Larry Craig. California wildfires. Sarah Palin. Stem cell research. Wii. Nancy Pelosi. Miramar monks. Botox. Michael Phelps.

Rod Blagojevich. Dow Jones drops 34 percent in one year, your retirement vaporized. Ahmadinejad. H1N1. Bailouts and stimulus.

And that's just the big stuff. Throw in stuff from Utah, your community, and that dang ingrown toenail of mine that won't go away and it has been a tough 10.

But I didn't need Time to tell me and neither did you. I knew it was the decade from Hell when I saw that "Big Brother" had been on TV for 11 seasons. I've not seen an episode, but I know enough to know that if that reality show is your reality, you're in big trouble.

I knew it when Pres. Bush opted for an all-out invasion of a non-threatening country -- led by a dictator, it's true -- rather than opting for a simple cyanide pill or the death-in-old-age option to dispose of the mad man.

I knew it was the decade from hell when I heard that 5 percent of deaths in the United States were from from heart attacks 40 years ago, but 35 percent of adult deaths are from heart attacks in 2009. Yikes.

I knew it before Time when I read that 15,000 people in the newspaper industry -- the Fourth Estate, watchdog of government, your source for well-rounded understanding of the day's events, you remember, don't you? -- lost more than 15,000 jobs in 2009.

I knew it when Tiger Woods -- new name "Cheetah" -- was named Athlete of the Decade the same month that it was revealed he had as many mistresses as there are holes at Pebble Beach. Somehow he thought birdies were chicks, it seems, and he needed a bag full. And the president of Nike, one of his major sponsors, tell us that in a dozen years, all this stuff we now see as a problem in his character will only be "a blip on the screen" of his legacy. Aah, that's nice. I feel much better about him as a role model now knowing what the future holds for him.

I knew it when I heard a deep thinker describing the national debt in terms of dollar amounts per American per year … since the birth of Christ.

Do we have reason to hope, though? A new year brings renewed possibilities, doesn't it?

Well, the stock market seems to have learned its lesson and is only half-crazy most weeks. Mortgage rates are good, if you can get one. The International Space Station has got to be working right -- seems like all they do is send up folks to repair it. And I think people have caught on to Brian David Mitchell -- yeah, he's faking it.

Lance Armstrong has not been found to be doing anything underhanded. The top three movies of 2009 -- again, according to Time magazine -- are rated G or PG. My wife is getting a computer for Christmas (Shhh!) and my library card has not been revoked.

So a salute to Time: May your 2019 December issue not have an "s" on the word "Decade."