Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So Far) (8 page)

In another memorable legal event, a truck travels from Miami to Tallahassee carrying a cargo of eight hundred thousand tightly packed Miami-Dade County voters, every single one of whom testifies before Judge Sanders Sauls, who subsequently rules that his name can be rearranged to spell
UNDRESS A LASS.

As the month wears on, the Gore legal team suffers a series of setbacks, both in terms of court verdicts and hair days, but the vice president remains upbeat and confident, according to sources within his inner circle of strategists, which has shrunk to Gore and an imaginary kangaroo named “Mr. Woodles.” Gore insists that he “will not prolong the election unnecessarily”; he makes this statement at the formal dedication of the new fifty-story Tallahassee headquarters of the Al Gore Florida 2000 Election Lawsuit Institute.

Meanwhile, George W. Bush remains on his ranch, looking as presidential as he knows how. The ranch does not appear to have any plant or animal life; it's just a ranch where top Republicans sit around wearing ranch-style outfits and advising Bush on how to, as the governor puts it, “have a smooth transmission.” His first big job is to select his cabinet, which, according to a spokesperson, will be “very diverse, including Americans from every segment of the oil industry.” Bush is also briefed by foreign-policy experts, who show the governor a globe, then spend several hours explaining to him why the countries on the bottom don't fall off.

In vice-presidential candidate action, Joe Lieberman, wearing a fake beard, tiptoes back to his senate office. Dick Cheney is diagnosed with citrus canker.

As the deadline looms for picking state electors for the Electoral College, the Florida legislature meets in a controversial emergency session, where the Republican majority, in a move that Democrats charge is unconstitutional, votes to impeach Bill Clinton.

Finally, with all other legal options exhausted, the presidential election mess lands in the lap of the U.S. Supreme Court. After several minutes of deliberation, the court issues a unanimous ruling—hailed by legal scholars as well as the public—that Florida must be given back to Spain.

Spain immediately files an appeal.

And so the year staggers to its conclusion with the nation mired in a toxic swamp of public cynicism and corrosive partisan bitterness that could eat away the foundation of our democracy. And yet, even as earthbound humans wallow in petty squabbles over chads, something wonderful and hopeful is happening in the heavens: the crew of the space shuttle
Endeavour,
piloted by Tiger Woods, completes a major phase in the construction of the international space station—a place where, one day, scientists from around the world will work in harmony for the betterment of mankind.

Hours later, the station is shot down during a test of the U.S. missile defense system.

Happy New Year.

I
didn't write a “Year in Review” for 2001. I would have had to write it only a few weeks after 9/11, and at the time it didn't feel right to make jokes about the rest of the year and then either ignore the attacks or suddenly become serious. So I took that year off, although I have no doubt that many stupid things happened.

Speaking of stupid, let's move on to 2002…

I
f you had to pick one word to describe our national mood in 2002, that word would be “wary.” We went to sleep wary and we woke up wary. We wallowed in wariness. We were wabbits.

This was partly because bad things kept happening. But it was also because government officials kept issuing alarming, yet vague, warnings. “We have received reliable information,” an official would say, “that something bad might happen. We don't know what, or when, or where. But it is very, very bad. Also we are seeing the letter
E.
So we urge all citizens to continue leading normal lives, while remaining in a state of stark, butt-puckering terror. Tune in tomorrow and we'll see if we can't ratchet this thing up a notch or two.”

We were also wary of the stock market. One day it was up, the next day it was down, the next day after that it was way down. And as we watched our 401(k) plans decline from a retirement villa in France to a refrigerator carton in an alley, we heard the unceasing babble of the financial “experts,” the ones who have never yet failed to be wrong, speculating endlessly on whether the market had bottomed out:

And so on, day after wary day. We became even warier when we found out that some large corporations had essentially the same business ethics as Bonnie and Clyde. It got so bad that we even became wary of Martha Stewart, who hit her own personal bottom (we are speaking figuratively) during a June appearance on the CBS early-morning show. Martha was trying to chop some cabbage for a salad, and the show's host, Jane Clayson, kept pestering her about her alleged insider trading, and finally Martha emitted what was probably the most poignant quote from all of 2002: “I want to focus on my salad.”

In a way, Martha was speaking for the entire nation. We all wanted very much to focus on our salad in 2002. But it was impossible with so many things making us wary. In addition to being wary of terrorism and economic uncertainty, we were wary that our children would be abducted, that a sniper would shoot us, that Saddam Hussein would attack us, or that we would attack him. We were wary of asteroids, wary of wildfires, wary of floods, wary that
American Idol
was fixed, wary of fast food, wary of global warming, wary of Florida elections, wary of professional baseball, wary of the West Nile virus, wary that at any moment, some evil, vicious, sick, twisted mind with no regard for the norms of human decency would decide to make a sequel to
Scooby-Doo.

But, somehow, one wary day at a time, we got through 2002. Now we are poised to enter a new year, which, according to Wall Street analysts, will be 2003, so we would not bet on it. But before we move ahead to wherever we're going, let us take one last, wary look back at the year just completed, starting with…

JANUARY

…which begins on a hopeful note in Europe, as the nations of the European Union replace their individual currencies with the new “euro,” which is expected to boost the European economy by tricking clueless American tourists—who were just starting to figure out the old currencies—into leaving unintentionally gigantic tips. The euro is an immediate success in Paris, where an elderly Ohio couple orders two coffees at a Paris café and discovers, by the time they have settled the bill, that the waiter now owns their house.

But the economic news is not so good in the United States, where President George W. Bush and the Congress discover that the federal budget surplus, which only moments earlier had been trillions of dollars, is now…missing! Everybody looks high and low for it, but the darned thing is just GONE. Iraq is suspected.

In other executive action, the nation gets a scare when President Bush chokes on a pretzel, which is immediately wrestled to the floor by Secret Service agents. The president is unconscious for about thirty seconds, during which time Vice President Cheney appoints 173 federal judges.

But the big domestic issue is Homeland Insecurity, which is most noticeable at airports, where the Department of Transportation, having determined that every single 9/11 hijacker was a young male from a Middle Eastern country, has implemented a shrewd policy of hassling randomly selected elderly women.

Meanwhile, al-Qaeda fighters captured in Afghanistan are flown to the U.S. Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for detainment. This outrages various perpetually outraged human rights organizations, which issue a statement charging that the prisoners are being kept under inhumane conditions, including “a lack of even the most rudimentary volleyball equipment.”

In other terrorist news, American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh is hired as a marketing consultant by Major League Baseball.

On a positive military note, specially trained U.S. forces score a major victory when, after days of brutal fighting, they capture what is believed to be the headquarters of Enron, although they acknowledge that there are probably “many smaller Enron cells still operating throughout the nation.” The stock market drops 87 points.

Dave Thomas flips his last burger. In sports, Mike Tyson, appearing before the Nevada Athletic Commission to plead for a boxing license, expresses deep remorse for his past misbehavior, and informs the commissioners that if they turn him down he will have no option but to eat their children. The Department of Homeland Insecurity responds by placing the nation on a Code Fuchsia Alert (“Relatively High”).

Speaking of effective tactics, the month of…

FEBRUARY

…opens with a World Economic Forum meeting in New York City, where angry protesters, determined to rid the world of poverty, hunger, disease, and pollution, attack the obvious root cause of all these problems: The Gap. In other economic news, Argentina, seeking to avert bankruptcy, makes a payment of $27.42 toward its Visa bill, currently $48 billion.

In happier economic news, Americans enjoy the wacky and hilarious spectacle of Enron executives being sternly lectured about financial responsibility by members of the United States Congress. Meanwhile, President Bush, seeking to reassure Americans concerned about losing their retirement savings in the plunging stock market, proposes a bold series of federal initiatives designed to “develop nutritious, low-cost recipes using peanut butter.” The stock market drops 153 points.

In the War on Terrorism, security personnel at Chicago's O'Hare Airport wrestle would-be passenger Merline A. Grelpner, ninety-one, to the ground after an alert screener notices that she is carrying an object that is later confirmed, by the FBI, using spectrographic analysis, to be a pretzel. The Department of Homeland Insecurity places the nation on a Code Magenta Alert (“A Tad Higher Than Relatively High, But Not Totally High”).

In sports, the New England Patriots win the Super Bowl, thus using up all the sports luck that New England has been accumulating for decades and thereby guaranteeing that the Red Sox will not win the World Series for another 150 years.

But the big sporting event is the Winter Olympics, which brings thousands of athletes and spectators from around the world to Salt Lake City to celebrate the official Olympic theme: “A Salute to Metal Detectors.” The games go smoothly at first, except in the alpine events, where the competitors, their skis having been confiscated by airport security, must slide down the mountain on their butts. But the big scandal occurs in pairs figure skating, where the Canadian team clearly outskates the competition, only to see the gold medal awarded, in a judging decision that creates an international uproar, to…Iraq.

And speaking of international tension, in…

MARCH

…the situation worsens in the Middle East as Israeli tanks, following a series of Palestinian attacks, surround Yasser Arafat's headquarters, cutting off the electricity, telephone service, water, and pizza delivery. This is roughly the twenty-fifth time the Israelis have had Arafat surrounded, but the crafty leader persuades them to let him go by promising to take a shower, a pledge he immediately violates.

Meanwhile, the United States is treated to an amazing but absolutely true Homeland Insecurity development when, on March 11, a Florida flight school receives formal notification from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service that the INS has approved student visas for Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, both of whom are currently deceased, having hijacked airplanes and flown them into the World Trade Center exactly six months earlier. Stung by the intense criticism that follows, the INS director vows that the agency will implement tough new procedures for reviewing visa applications, “including, if necessary, actually reading the names.”

In other government action, Congress passes a campaign finance reform law, thus guaranteeing that, henceforth, politicians will not be influenced by money. Also, the sun will rise in the west. Meanwhile, the Whitewater investigation, which lasted six years and cost $70 million, finally comes to a close with the special prosecutor issuing a five-volume report concluding that Hillary Clinton “probably” dyes her hair.

In business news, investigators probing the Enron scandal finally track down the accounting firm of Arthur Andersen, which had sought to evade prosecution by changing its name to “Arthur Smith” and disguising its corporate headquarters with a gigantic red wig and sunglasses. Troops are sent to capture the firm, only to discover that the top auditors have escaped to…Iraq. The Department of Homeland Insecurity responds by ratcheting the nation up to a Code Ocher Alert (“Deeply Concerned”). The stock market drops 381 points.

On the religious front, the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston pays $23 million to a man who alleged that his parish priest, on more than a dozen occasions in the 1970s, exposed him to the soundtrack from
Grease,
and now he can't get it out of his head.

In entertainment news, the surprise TV hit is the
The Osbournes,
in which viewers follow the wacky antics of zonked-out rocker Ozzy Osbourne, played, in the performance of his career, by David Hasselhoff.

In the Academy Awards, the Oscar for best picture goes to
A Beautiful Mind,
the uplifting story of legendary mathematical genius John Nash, who received a Nobel Prize decades after his descent into insanity, caused by attempting to do his own income taxes. On the music front, the U.S. recording industry is buoyed by a report that fourteen-year-old Jason Plempitt of Knoxville, Tenn., went into a music store and actually purchased a CD, making him the first teenager in three years to pay money for a recording rather than download it for free from the Internet. The humiliated youngster quickly informs his classmates that his computer is broken.

On a sadder note, two beloved public figures pass away: Milton “Mr. Television” Berle, who was ninety-three, and Britain's Queen Mother Elizabeth, who was 247. They are laid to rest in identical dresses.

But there is little rest to be had in…

APRIL

…when Secretary of State Colin Powell travels to the Middle East to (1) restore peace to the troubled region and (2) receive a plaque from the Association of Troubled Middle East Travel Agencies honoring him for making the five-thousandth official U.S. peacekeeping trip. At the awards ceremony, Powell jokes: “We expect to get this thing resolved any day now,” which gets a big laugh, punctuated by mortar fire. On Powell's arrival back in Washington, President Bush hails the trip as “a major success,” noting that the secretary of state brought home “much of his original luggage.” The stock market drops 518 points.

In France, the first round of the presidential elections produces alarming evidence of a right-wing resurgence in the country when the second-place vote getter, finishing just behind incumbent Jacques Chirac, is Pat Buchanan.