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MARGARET WARNER: Tonight, as in years past, we bring together our regular
NewsHour essayists for some end of the year reflections. They are Richard
Rodriguez of the Pacific News Service; Jim Fisher of the Kansas
City Star; New York author and writer Roger Rosenblatt; Los Angeles
author and writer Anne Taylor Fleming; and Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune. Welcome to you all, and let's start with you.
Anne, let's start with you. What, if anything, will the year 2000 be
remembered for?
ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: Well, I think probably the end of it certainly
has to be the election, and all of the contretemps that went on about
it. I think, though, probably also the economy; the beginning wobbles,
the dot-com sort of fail-out, the first thoughts that the cyberspace,
the whole revolution in the economy, isn't exactly what we thought.
That may be more lingering, in fact, than any thought about the election.
I think it will also be remembered for a, you know, an election of Al
Gore that didn't happen, sort of a collapsing campaign. And it might
also be filled with some real nostalgia for Bill Clinton. I think that
the country, while very ambivalent for him, is really gearing up to
miss him and his brain big time.
MARGARET WARNER: Roger, your thoughts about the year 2000.
ROGER ROSENBLATT: My guess is that it will be remembered for the Genome
Project and not just what the project did in terms of the predictive
value of medicine and human health and the data of what we're made of
but, in an odd way, the Genome Project encourages our recreation always
of mystery which interests me. In other words, every scientific discovery,
every major one, as this one clearly was, delimits mystery so that the
soul is called into question and other mysteries about the body. The
more data we have... even consciousness, now, can be accounted for,
but when that happens, the culture usually compensates. All the movies
that we've seen about talking to dead people or visits of aliens-- whether
they're silly or whether they're moving-- are, I believe, in some way
a reaction to the scientific delimiting of mysteries so we create mysteries
in other ways. So one of the things that interests me about this year
is that phenomenon and one of the things I think for which it will be
remembered is the Genome Project.
MARGARET WARNER: Clarence, your thoughts. Anywhere from politics and
the economy, to science and mystery.
CLARENCE PAGE: Yeah, there's so much, you know? Trying to remember this
year without remembering politics is like trying to ignore that elephant
in the room or that huge donkey. But you know, this year may be not
remembered for something that we're already starting to forget, which
is how this year started out, with a great deal of fear about how the
year was going to start out. Remember Y2K?
MARGARET WARNER: Y2K. ( Laughs )
CLARENCE PAGE: The breakdown, the meltdown? There was all the nervousness,
all the apocalyptic fear and loathing that just faded, just evaporated
when the year started out in quite a lovely fashion. I think what's
more significant is we will remember the year 2000 for being the year
2000, for being that marker between centuries. Compared to 1900, it
has been a great century of progress to quote the title of a great Chicago
World's Fair that occurred during this century. I saw a lot of hope.
You know, the economy was bustling along for most of the year. The crime
rate was down the lowest it's been in decades and continued to decline
this year. The teen pregnancy rates drained. All these seemingly intractable
problems, we started to get a handle on them. It seemed like there was
a sense of ease which, in a way, contributed to all the viciousness
of the fighting over the election and the post- election like, you know,
like the old saying about academic disputes that the fighting is so
vicious because the stakes are so small. In a way, there was a sense
underlying it all that we will listen to the Supreme Court even if we
don't agree with them.
MARGARET WARNER: Jim Fisher, your thoughts.
JIM FISHER: What struck me about 2000 was so few stories that actually
touched America. The Firestone/Bridgestone story is one that I had to
really wrack my mind to think of. What hit me was the absolute self-indulgence
of the media that took over the news and the airwaves, in early January
until mid-December we were absolutely bombarded -- not with the ordinary
voices of-- except on occasion-- of ordinary Americans, but the so-
called gas-bags or chattering class. It became, I think, almost self-
defeating in the sense that 50% of Americans refuse to exercise their
franchise to vote, and once we got to the end of the year in November,
I think many people were so turned off that I wonder if this isn't going
to rebound on the press, that this constant looking for scandal or some
way to hit you between the eyes isn't going to drive people away. And
I truly worry about not only newspapers but you see these tremendous
losses in the people watching television. I got so towards the end Loony
Tunes became my favorite show and my favorite politician was Foghorn
Leghorn.
MARGARET WARNER: Richard, to you; your thoughts about 2000 and what
stands out.
RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: I agree with Jim that there was... The glass may
be half- empty, in the sense that half of America didn't vote. But I've
been struck with the recreation of America that is going on around us.
Here in California we discovered sometime this year that the majority
population now is the minority population; that is, there is no majority
population. The country seems to anticipate this change. They're probably
a generation away. Participation in the census this year has been very
high, particularly among immigrant populations. That seems to me an
encouraging note. I've noted also that an African- American has been
named secretary of state. We don't even have a way of describing the
significance of the event because although I just called him an African-
American, Colin Powell describes himself in his own autobiography as
African, Caribbean, Indian, Anglo-Saxon, Scots-Irish, and we continue
to call him black. But clearly something new is forming in America,
appropriate to the new century. I noted, or rather, I've been hearing
from east coast twits of the Washington sort that the new President
can't speak English very well. But they haven't noted that this new
President speaks Spanish. That seems to me significant because so few
American Presidents have spoken a second language and that this new
incoming President is speaking Spanish at precisely the time that the
new Mexican President Vincente Fox is saying in English, or calling
in English, for the end of a border between north and south.
MARGARET WARNER: Anne, pick up on that point that Richard just makes.
Do you agree... Do you see that really our society is changing before
our eyes and, in some ways, for the better, even though they don't recognize
it?
ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: Yeah, I think it's a very good point. Maybe we're
more conscious of it out here in California where he and I both are.
I definitely feel it. And you can see it even in the culture of literature.
This year there was a wonderful book written by a young...Junta LaHare
-- of Indian distraction called the "Interpreter of Maladies"
-- wonderful new voices in literature that are immigrant voices. I think
it's sliding in in a way now that-- Richard is absolutely right-- that
we're almost unconscious of, but that there is an acceptance of it.
I feel it very definitely here in a very, very positive way. I think
we also should take note of Joseph Lieberman on the ticket. I mean,
that was a huge step forward. There was real thought... These much derided
chattering classes that we keep talking about, ourselves obviously excluded,
kept saying there was going to be an anti-Semitic backlash or they were
gearing up for one. It didn't happen. One of the nice things, I think,
back to the point that Jim made is I think the country is increasingly
so far ahead -- in its evolution, psychic, spiritual, moral-- of the
media and that they are working things out in ways that we're all speaking
to, that the media misses. They blow things up. They have dramas and
traumas, and everything is black and white. The country is making its
way in very positive ways, I think. The one thing I do think, though,
is that I do think that in terms of the glass half-empty right now that
there's a great deal of economic fear in the under classes, or what
passes for them, that we're going to have to face in the New Year. And
along with the positive, which is this evolution and the acceptance
of different people and different colors... And the fact that, you know,
any day in my life I turn on a station and people are speaking Spanish.
- and I now feel apologetic because I don't. I think that's a very positive
sign.
MARGARET WARNER: Roger, evolution and also apprehension?
ROGER ROSENBLATT: Well, I like the point about the media blowing things
out of proportion and Anne's point about people being ahead of it. Something
like that must be true because all of us will remember that, by far,
the greatest story of the year 2000 involved Uncle Lazaro, Marisleysis,
Elian, and the Fisherman. I miss the Fisherman so much. None of us has
mentioned the Elian Gonzalez story, yet it dominated the news seemingly
forever, and that was because some discrimination was made when everything
settled down between what was significant and what was insignificant.
Some of the things we might consider of importance, either evolutionary
or revolutionary, don't occur in this country. There's an ongoing story
of which this year was an instance in Africa-- we were watching an entire
continent die quite silently because it's a dog that doesn't bark. You're
not paying attention to that story. Or the remarkable story in Yugoslavia
where the people, yes again, the people inserted their "yes"
again, overthrew a tyrant, and established a democracy -- or on the
sad side, and the continuously difficult side, the Middle East which
comes together, comes apart. And all of these things are evolutionary
and fluctuate within a single year. You never know how they turn out.
But they do vie for the important story of the year.
MARGARET WARNER: Clarence, go back to the point that Richard and Anne
were making, since someone has to speak for the east and the Midwest
at least.
CLARENCE PAGE: Thank you. Especially of the Washington chattering classes.
MARGARET WARNER: Or twits, I think someone called us.
CLARENCE PAGE: We'll let that go by.
MARGARET WARNER: It's very cold here now, Clarence. We're all the chattering
class.
CLARENCE PAGE: That's right. Roger's part of the East Coast as well.
MARGARET WARNER: Do you think, in a very positive sense, that our country
really is making this evolution to a multiracial, multicultural, multiethnic
society without as much, perhaps, angst as sometimes we assume there
is.
CLARENCE PAGE: That's the way it's supposed to be. By the way, I'll
also add to the previous list. Ha Jin, Chinese American writer, won
the Pulitzer and the pen- Faulkner award this year. I mean, we can go
on and on. Yeah, you know, the funny thing about news, Margaret, is
that, you know, news is what happens when things aren't working the
way they're supposed to. ( Laughs ) When things are working the way
they're supposed to, it's not news. The exception is, of course, tragedies
like Roger mentioned. We don't have TV cameras in Africa covering that
tragedy there, often enough, anyway. We don't have cameras in the third
world often enough. However, we do find... The reason why stories like
Elian get such exaggerated play is because we're not at war right now.
We're not in a major depression. We're not in a state of national crisis.
So with this proliferation of 24-hour news channels, now, and all the
other media on the Web, et cetera, we have to really inflate news now
to get an audience. A new era is starting there, for better or for worse.
In some cases, I would agree for worse, but we're getting better. You
know, my colleague Jim Fisher mentioned earlier feeling great dismay
over the lower voter turnout. But let's look closer to that. Black turnout
this time hit a record and was actually higher than white turnout in
Florida and a number of other places, Illinois, and that's something
that is a cause for celebration. When people have a reason for participation
in a democratic society, they participate. I'll be delighted, Jim, to
bet you a Kansas city steak against a Chicago pizza when we get together
in four year-- deep dish-- when we get together four years from now,
I think we're going to see more participation because of the excitement
that was generated by this election.
MARGARET WARNER: So, Jim, do you think... Do you feel optimistic going
into 2001 or do you sense, also, the apprehension and the little anxiety
economically that Anne was talking about?
JIM FISHER: Well, I think the... It was a "blah" year in a
sense. If you take the politics and a couple of high-profile stories
away. I mean, most people that I've talked to seem to be just watching
and seeing what's going on. But as Anne said, the demise of some of
the dot-coms, which in effect means that people are seeking a niche
for themselves. You know, so they don't have to go to work for GM or
the "Kansas City Star," they want to do something on their
own. I ran into a story the other day that... I don't think most people
realize that there are people out there that are not dot-commers that
are seeking that kind of thing. This guy's name was Jim and he raises
pastured chickens. Now, if you don't know what pastured chickens are,
they're chickens raised on pastures and compared to what you buy in
the supermarket, they're steak to baloney. He's a dry waller, which
is not what you would call a high-tech profession.
MARGARET WARNER: What's a dry waller? You mean someone that puts up
dry wall?
JIM FISHER: He puts up dry wall, and he's doing very, very well selling
chicken. And he's driving... He's not going to drive Tyson or Purdue
out of business, but if you've ever eaten... That was probably my big
experience in the year 2000, was eating a pastured chicken, which tastes
like the ones grandma used to wring their necks in Pittsburg, Kansas,
in 1945.
MARGARET WARNER: So, Richard, I'll end with you. What wonderful experience
are you looking forward to in 2001? What do you think we ought to look
forward to?
RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: Well, I just remembered this year, at this time of
the year last year, we were so optimistic about-- and apprehensive--
about Y2K, about the future-- the technological future-- everyone was
buying into the market. We were being told by 20-year- olds that we
were heading into an economic future that had no precedent. And that,
don't worry, that this company or that company wasn't making a profit,
that was the old economy. Now we seem to be completely at the other
end of expectation. There is this pessimism on the part of those in
business and technology that maybe these companies are not worth very
much. It seems to me what's worrisome right now is that we don't know
how to moderate our feelings very well. It's appropriate almost to a
drug culture. One day we're on uppers, the other day we're on downers.
We begin the year on uppers talking about the great, great, great new
future. We ended the year on downers talking about the worthless stock.
It seems to me that what America seems to need right now is some calmer
way to proceed, a way that does not extend in such extremities all the
time. It's rather like having a teenaged son who keeps you awake at
night because before he goes to bed he talks to you about suicide. Then
he comes down the next morning and he's whistling and optimistic about
a football game he's going to. Somehow America has that adolescent quality
right now. And the thing that worries me most is that we have not found
some way to moderate our soul.
MARGARET WARNER: Well, Richard and all of you, thanks so much and happy
New Year.
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