Sept.23, 2001
WELCOME TO REALITY AGAIN
Oh Cthulhu, how we have been through this all before. Do you remember back in the late 60’s when there was all that nonsense about violence on television and the movies and then the reaction hit and out came Dirty Harry and A Clockwork Orange?
And then there was the phoney-as-a-three-dollar-bill energy crisis of Jimmy (The Chicken) Carter and all of the utter nonsense about how people were going to have to sit in cold houses wearing sweaters with their lights off and ride on buses. Remember how long that bull lasted?
Oh, and then there was the laughable moment ten years ago when some idiot editorial writers said that conspicuous consumption was going out of style. Yeah, right dumb dumb!
So now we are seeing it all again. Amidst all the boo hoo hooing about the poor airplane fodder in New York, the morons in the media seem to have learned nothing about American culture. I mean some absolute FOOL of an old fart was on television talking about how people were not going to have as much fun as they used to. Yeah, sure. And how comics were not going to pick on the politicians as much. Well, maybe Jay Leno has a bug in his chin, but there are some great jokes going around about George W. not being able to do anything because he is too busy going to prayer meetings and making speeches. In fact I just saw a wonderful cartoon T shirt yesterday with his picture on it and a quote from Rommel in WW2 that went “Stop him from praying and persuade him to shoot!”
Oh yeah, comics are just going to give politicians a pass. Yeah, and they will keep an audience too. Sure! Oh, and another good one.
The economy is going to suffer from this. Not with the government pouring billions and billions and maybe trillions into creating redundancy in everything from power grids to bridges, to say nothing of completely upgrading the military. We are going to be stinking rich before this is all over.
Oh, one more thing to remember when you hear mass generalizations. Last Friday night there was that telethon to raise money for Satan knows how it will be wasted? The ratings said 60 million people watched it. That means that in the US, 220 million people had other things to do.
So relax. We are not going to be poor. We are not going to give up ANY of our civil liberties (historically the courts become quite activist in protecting them in these situations). There are going to be good explosive movies out. The video games will become even more violent (oh, the manufacturers may be a bit weird right now, but in a couple of months an independent will make a new one and the wall with come down again). Yeah, flying may be more of a hassle for a bit until the masses come back and then the sheer numbers of travelers will put an end to the security extremes. But nothing is going to really change and those of us who have heard it all before know that.