The year is dying, going out like an old man who whispers words that may sound like gibberish but are actually the reflections of a life fading to black. Die quietly old year; we are more interested in the next one. You will be remembered in all the media recaps, but your passing will not be mourned. You represent dreams not realized and promises unfulfilled. Like every other year that has passed, you symbolize our failure to solve so many hurts, so many cruelties — Iraq, Darfur and all the places on the map where only the killing fields prosper. We curse you 2007 and only time will make us silly and sentimental about you. You can rejoice that someday you will be celebrated on VH1 with shots of Britney, Lindsay and Paris as your sorry idea of celebrity.
It is not that you were any worse than other years. We damn you because you were so much the same. Your soundtrack was almost unintelligible. Has music ever been in a sorrier state? All the technological improvements — iPods, Bose speakers — but what to play on them? It is as if we spent $15,000 to install a kitchen and then used our time to make hamburgers. Oh, you say that is exactly what some affluent people do? Maybe we are all taking cues from the film and TV industry, which is in an equally sad state.
Remember that slogan, "Movies are better than ever?" No one dare repeat it in ’07. There were the endless sequels that didn’t deserve to be made in the first place — Will Smith saves the world again, the teen sex comedies that get dirtier but aren’t funny, the slasher flicks that are a kind of pornography of killing. There are no real stars anymore, just Dolby sound, giant screens and a parade of digital tricks to keep a jaded public from getting bored.
The writers’ strike should have paralyzed the creativity of TV, except there wasn’t much creativity to begin with. The suits who run the industry used the strike as an excuse to expand the wasteland of reality TV, a parade of hapless, screaming, idiot contestants trying to change their lives — "The Jerry Springer Show" with a pot of gold at the end — second-rate celebrities trying to dance and teenagers trying to become instant "idols" who then thankfully fade into oblivion to make room for the next group trying for cheesy show biz immortality.
In ’07 we had the endless television debates with candidates tripping over one another to pander to a public whose judgment must be questioned after electing George W. Bush to two terms. The war in Iraq is already slipping from the public mind even while Americans and Iraqis continue to die. The mantra for the war in ’07 has become "the surge is working." But if it is, then why is there no end in sight?
Even while we talk of leaving, millions are poured into the building of an American embassy that is almost as decadent as one of Saddam’s palaces.
The candidates in the Party of Abraham Lincoln fuss over who is the real Christian and whether the Mexicans who care for our kids and tend our lawns will actually turn out to murder us in our beds.
America’s national pastime has been exposed as a sewer of drug abuse, the game’s records tainted like meat left out in the noonday sun. Singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" during the seventh-inning stretch seems like a childish anachronism, when even the Cracker Jack seems laced with HGH.
In Philadelphia, oh murderous year we are happy to see you come to an end. Statistics show the homicide rate is finally going down and, for that, and the end of the Street administration, we are infinitely grateful.
The building of casinos is still debated, but in the end they will be built and in neighborhoods guaranteed to maximize profits. When city government is essentially a vagrant looking for any handout, you take the gambling profits and run. You know what we said as kids, "beggars can’t be choosy."
The saga of Joey Vento vs. the Human Relations Commission continued. No matter how ignorant Joey’s sign, I defend his right to be ignorant. The commission is turning Joey into a free-speech martyr. He will get more than his allotted 15 minutes of fame, sell more steaks (even to non-English speaking immigrants), and will be able to wear enough bling to make an NBA player proud.
Farewell 2007. Don’t let the door hit you in the fanny on the way out.
