TIME Magazine sucks, but you knew that.
In my Tumblr list I came upon a link to this TIME Magazine photo article, histrionically titled “The 10 Worst Things About The Worst Decade Ever.” I kid you not. Prompted by the kneejerk emotionalism of most of the replies I decided to look at it. I was not exactly “hit in the heart” or devastated or anything like that, because here is what events TIME chose to use to represent why the 2000’s are in their eyes the “worst decade ever!”
- The 2000 Election fuss, illustrated with some guy peering at a ballot card through a microscope. I know, I know, I clutched my pearls…
- The September 11, 2001 attack on our country by treacherous and evil Muslim terrorists. Yeah — number two, behind hanging chad guy.
- We invaded Afghanistan. Oh noes! We should have sent a sternly worded letter instead.
- We invaded Iraq. Oh noes! Now we don’t have that nice Saddam Hussein around to accuse Republicans of palling around with anymore! And he was so accommodating to the media, too, unlike the US military.
- The tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Yes, that sucked… but somehow TIME manages to make it sound like it wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for the US dragging everything down.
- Hurricane Katrina devastates New Orleans, which city is supposedly “so integral to America’s self-image.” Yeah, what would we do without cheap plastic beads, “show us your tits!”, drunken hordes of college students, the most hideous crack neighborhoods I have ever seen (and I grew up in Miami, famous for the, er, “quality” of its crack neighborhoods), and zydeco music? Well, they do have some nice restaurants, I’ll grant them that.
- The market melted down, which meant some people who were living beyond their means now aren’t. I know, it’s like my gut just twisted in compassion or something, ya know?
- Bernie Madoff gets sent to prison. Yeah, I would have thought the imprisonment of a crook who apparently bilked the entire Earth would be a good thing about the decade, but I don’t write for TIME.
- The American auto industry collapses. Oh but wait — didn’t the auto industry actually get shored up by Federal money so that they will still get to put out their “ugly, low quality cars with shameful gas mileage” only now the American taxpayer is paying to keep those workers on the assembly lines (or more probably, with their feet up in the break room doing the crossword puzzle at $75.00 per hour because no one wants to buy GM cars even with President Hopey McChangester’s backing)? Well yeah, that does suck now that I think about it.
- Guantanamo, where we treated those nice terrorists to “brutal” interrogation techniques like shouting and pouring water on their faces. It’s like America became Nazi Germany overnight!
I swear that’s the list. Visit the link to get the full treatment, because I can’t do it justice.
And here is what I said on Tumblr:
You know what? This list is just bullshit. For one thing, most of it was “Aw, a bunch of Americans lost some money!” Bernie fuckin’ Madoff goes to jail is one of the “worst things I’ ever”? OH WHAT BULLSHIT. And the Detroit car industry wasn’t, actually, allowed to fall apart but is instead shored up by government money, so what is TIME crying about there? Didn’t Obama save GM’s ass like they think government is supposed to do? And again with Katrina — “Waaah, our party town got wet, and mean old government” (they said “all levels of government” but you know they mean about EVIL GEORGE BOOOOSH and the Fed) “let babies and puppies drown!” What about the rest of the Gulf Coast that got pasted (by actually getting hit full on with a restrengthened hurricane, not brushed by a weakened Cat 3 and then brought down by a later collapse of the rotting, neglected levees) and have cleaned up with nary a complaint — or sobbing, overemotional tv coverage — from anyone? But Pass Christian didn’t have a Tipitina’s or a Cafe Du Monde, so screw ‘em.
Yeah, 9/11 sucked, but when it comes to “worst attacks ever” that devastated whole buildings and killed loads of people at once, has anyone at TIME heard of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? (I’ve got the 1940s on the white courtesy phone, TIME; they’d like to have a word with you about this “worst decade ever” thing.) Nice of them to mention the tsunami, but it looks kind of… out of place when paired with the DEVASTATION caused by some people losing homes to foreclosure that they shouldn’t have bought in the first place because they couldn’t effing afford them… And I love how TIME has arbitrarily decided that invading Afghanistan and Iraq is part of the “worst” things of the decade. You know, I’m sure it was from the Osama Bin Laden’s and Saddam Hussein’s viewpoint, but since when do we care what the enemy thinks? Oh, I forgot — NUANCE.
And then they have to go and put Guanatanamo in there. Oh oh oh! Guantanamo is the worst prison ever that prisoners of war have been kept in in the history of all mankind! Worse than Stalag 17! No — I’ve got it: worse than Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen combined! And making those nice Muslims that our mean, nasty soldiers scooped up just like so many innocent little bunny foofoos stay in our nasty, horrible, worse-than-anything-ever-in-the-universe prison at Guantanamo (which Obama still hasn’t closed! But that’s because Dick Cheney has one of his daughters in a secret dungeon prison!) is worse than the Bataan Death March!
Fuck you, TIME Magazine. I will never buy another of your rags (not that I’ve bought one in years), and if I still had my copies with the covers showing the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the time U2 was chosen best band in the galaxy or something, I’d rip them to shreds and send them to you with a copy of this post.
I usually use Tumblr for my silly Doctor Who natterings, but I couldn’t just let this nonsense pass. So you know, I guess a lot of people will unfollow me now. Oh, boo hoo! Fuck ‘em.
By Spud on Dec 15th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
Nice reply to Time, but a little rough around the edges. At least it was heartfelt. I would not call this decade the worst – the 70’s were fairly wretched, and there are still some folks living who would nominate the 30’s. I’m guessing the 1870’s was not too pretty either as the US built its way out of the Civil War and suffered through some serious economic depression(s). There may be another decade or two from the 19th century that was not pleasant, though my memory of history recedes over the years.
[Time(magazine) keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the abyss].
Ten Best Things from the Oughts
.
1. Two of my children were born (yeah, kinda selfish of me)
2. Cheap big screen TV’s in HD
3. Lord of the Rings trilogy – come on, by the time RotK was given an opening date you were already planning on seeing it that weekend, and by the end of it you already went through any napkins you had as you watched the tearful reunion of the Fellowship.
4. Rise of socialization via internet – from blogs to Facebook to Twitter, your circle of friends could grow far beyond family and people you bump into. Of course, flat screen relationships are not very deep
5. Peak Oil (2005) – people will have to learn to do with less, as cheap energy is a thing of the past. The ramp-up of commodities (fueled by the price of oil) caused the mortgage bubble to burst, and the yoho’s in Washington still can’t face the music and put our economic ship a’right as they let delinquent mortgages slide.
6. Credit Crisis – learning hard lessons in how we cannot continue to push off paying tomorrow for fleeting pleasure today
7. Post-9/11 – yeah, the attack was severe and many innocent lives were lost. The spirit of cooperation and patriotism had not been seen/felt since WWII, and it snapped many Americans out of their complacency.
8. Chicago Bears in the Super Bowl (yeah, kinda selfish of me, and look how they’ve sunk – well, I’m hoping for a better 2010)
9. Election of Obama – gee, we’re no longer racist since we elected a (semi)black President. Hopefully his single term will show most reasonable voters the folly of voting for a slick speechifier with a thin background/qualifications and maybe, just maybe, liberalism will suffer a deadly blow.
10. Election of Bush – history will show he was the right President for the time. I disliked his playing footsies with the libs and his propensity to let the deficit grow. He asked Americans for sacrifice following 9/11, yet after suffering through the dotcom collapse Americans spent and lived it up like drunken sailors. Some sacrifice …
Setting up Iraq as a Muslim democracy was the best gamble, in spite of the economic and political cost. He took the burden and is still suffering the effects of BDS after about a year out of office.
By Andrea Harris on Dec 16th, 2009 at 12:30 am
And it lasted for about five minutes. [Taco Bell Chihuahua voice] I think we need a bigger bomb. [/Taco Bell Chihuahua voice]
By yak on Dec 16th, 2009 at 3:03 am
So, Andrea, when are you gonna tell us what you really think of Time?
(Ducking for cover)
By nightfly on Dec 16th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
I am mildly surprised that bloggers didn’t make Time’s list of ten worst things. Wicked nasty pajama-clad basement-dwellers outdoing professional journalists! Gadzooks! All our circulation are belong to them, hahahahaha.
I suppose that may have been too transparently self-serving, even for Time Magazine.
By miriam on Dec 16th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
The decade 1910-1920 was no bed of roses either. The sacrifice of a a generation of young men in Europe was a needless catastrophe. May I also mention the flu which killed millions? My mother lost a sibling in that one.
By RB on Dec 16th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
And the end of the newsweekly as we know (i.e. US News and World Report going to monthly print addition and the massive changes at Newsweek) didn’t make the list about worst things about the decade.
Nor did the continuing failure to find the lost episodes of Dr. Who from the 1960’s!
By Andrea Harris on Dec 16th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Actually, the BBC threw a lot of the old Doctor Who master tapes (or whatever primitive medium they were recorded on; wax victrola cylinders?) out in the 70s — back then apparently it wasn’t the custom to consider master tapes of tv shows to be something worth saving. Though I have heard that here and there the odd copy exists — some fans filmed their television screens with those old-fashioned film cameras that don’t have sound, or something. On Wikipedia the episode listing gives a good recount of what episodes are still in existence and what form, and they are slowly concerting the remainder that they’ve found into dvds. For the rest, unfortunately, we only have the odd photo still…
Getting back to the TIME photos, something I forgot to bring up was how most of the photographs aren’t even that good. The one of Bernie Madoff looks like it was shot with a camera phone.
By Andrea Harris on Dec 16th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
They are POOPYHEADS and their grandmothers smelt of elderberries. I fart in their general direction!
By Oldcat on Dec 16th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Typical shallowness…the only decade I remember is the wurst evah!
By Anne B. on Dec 17th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
”(I’ve got the 1940s on the white courtesy phone, TIME; they’d like to have a word with you about this “worst decade ever” thing.)”
Amen, amen to that.
By JP Gibb on Dec 17th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Until the mid to late ’60s, the only real way for networks to record shows was Kinescope, basically puting a movie camera in front of a TV screen. (The Beeb held onto it longer in fact, mid to late ’80s) Even then, it was done more to provide a record to advertisers, to show they were getting what they paid for, than to keep the show for posterity. There’s a lot of history making television, on both sides of the pond, that either didn’t get recorded at all, or got pitched or taped over (NASA, I’m looking at you). Of course, if we ever do get FTL travel, we just need to get out far enough with a set of rabbit ears and a VCR.
By kc on Dec 17th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Somehow World War, the attempted extermination of whole populations by egotistical little farts, a flu epidemic that killed MILLIONS and worldwide Depression missed the cut.
Sure glad I’m not spending money on those dead trees anymore. Thanks for this post, Andrea, couldn’t have said it nearly so well.
And I like Spud’s Best, too!
By Zimriel on Dec 18th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
Anybody who ranks 2000-9 worse than 1930-9 is simply not to be taken seriously.
The “1910s” comment in this thread boils down to a nomination of the half-decade 1915-9. If we’re allowed to do that, then my nomination for worst half-decade ever is a tossup between 535-9 and 1345-9. (For many of the same reasons.)
By JonathanStrange on Dec 19th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
When I was a kid, without internet access (15 years ago), I’d read Time, Newsweek and other magazines, and basically think of them as the voices of moderation and objectivity. If what I read was completely contradictory to what I thought – say a speech or idea praised as brilliant or innovative when to me it was lame and obviously a failure – I’d just sigh and think, “Well, the experts and the majority have spoken.” Now, I often see journalism of the Time/Newsweek sort as the increasingly irrelevant propaganda of a media that no longer make conventional wisdom their sole property.
By Pretty Good Decade « Spudlets on Dec 22nd, 2009 at 12:03 am
[...] story about this decade being the worst decade “ever”, and I heard about it over at Andrea Harris’ place. Just so I don’t lose it, I gave my ten reasons for the oughts being a good decade, [...]
By Lenise on Dec 22nd, 2009 at 11:55 am
Wow. And to think of all the outstanding and intelligent journalism majors (who know a few basics about history, natch) who can’t get a job!
By ndh777 on Dec 28th, 2009 at 6:18 am
Just stumbled on this website and thank you! Through the pages of Google searches, yours was the only one that admitted that Time sucked and was just Liberal propaganda! All too true. But of course, isn’t it the duties of a Liberal magazine to make the years of a Republican president look bad? I would love to see an issue of 1999 and what they thought was so horrible about 1990-9. Oops! Democratic President Bill Clinton was in office for most of the decade, so everything was just peachy :] It’s sad that things are coming down to this. “You’re evil for voting against the guy because you don’t like his point of view, and you’re good for voting for him because he’s black.” That’s the worse thing about this decade to me and sadly, it will probably be on my list in 10 more years. :/ Look forward to some more posts Andrea!