Looking Backwards: A 2002 Retrospective

by Ross Levine

Damn right we are. Just like Trent Lott and Strom Thurmond.

One doesn't have too dig too deep to find the lowlights of any 365-day spin around the sun. And this year has been no exception. Here are a few of my picks for the least laudable events of 2002:

I don't know about you, but in 2002 my email inbox was bombarded bya certain picture of our beloved leader gazing perplexedly at a chubby girl while clutching his storybook upside down. The girl in the picture holds her book correctly, but Dubya looks as if he's making a concerted effort to follow her example. Perhaps reading is as alien to him as grocery shopping was to Papa, but at least we didn't have to read Junior's lips to be reminded that that "Fool me once, shame on . . . shame on you. Fool me . . . can't get fooled again."

General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan made a few changes to his country's constitution this year. A great believer in democracy, he decided, in his words, that "our people were never emancipated from the yoke of despotism. I shall not allow them to be taken back to the era of sham democracy but to a true one." In order to accomplish this, however, the General needs to be a despot for a while, and has duly declared himself such.

As long as we're in that neck of the woods, let's not forget the inspirational leader of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov -- can't we just call him Sappy? -- who made known some of his ingenious plans for reviving national pride. For one, he intends to rename all the months of the year, with January earmarked to honor himself and April to honor his late but venerated mother, Gurbansoltan. In other words, soon Gurbansoltan showers will bring Kaplangyrsk flowers. And if that weren't enough, Sappy has decided to play around with time as well, issuing a decree that his countrymen can enjoy their adolescence until age 25, their youth to 37, and middle-age until a ripe-young 85. Alas, old age finally arrives from 85-97, but after that comes something known as Oguzkhan, which may just be Turkmeni for decrepitude, unless I'm just jaded by Senator Strom (please see #14 below).

Many organizations have a cardinal rule of one sort or another. But the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has a Cardinal Law and it goes like this: "When placing a priest with a record that encompasses rape, sexual abuse and pedophilia, place him in a position that guarantees unlimited access to children." Under these guidelines, the Archdiocese collected quite a bit of clinical proof that putting known child molesters with kids has no curative effect whatsoever; in fact, it may only serve to further compromise their self-control. In the beginning of the year, His Eminence was quite snooty about the whole affair, claiming he was more than capable of handling the crisis; the released documentation proves that he did indeed handle it, while his white-collared minions were concurrently handling their worshippers' offspring.

In late October, a group of Chechen separatists invaded a Moscow theater, taking nearly 800 hostages. The Russian government responded a few days later by using a mystery gas on terrorists and victims alike that left over a hundred dead and hundreds more seriously ill. The Russian authorities neglected to tell their medical establishment what gas was being used, they were not prepared outside the theater for mass casualties, they carried the afflicted in such a way that many swallowed their own tongues, and they loaded victims onto regular buses for the trip to the hospital, which probably contributed to the appalling number of DOAs. If the Russian government treats Chechnya anything like its own citizenry, one can perhaps comprehend what triggered the horrendous affair in the first place.

They say that a good villain makes for a good hero, but what's true in Hollywood does not necessarily hold forth in Washington. The Democratic Party was anything but heroic in 2002, and reached the apex of pusillanimousness with the Congressional vote to sanction war with Iraq, as well as its tackiness in the transformation of Paul Wellstone's burial into a disinterment for Walter Mondale. We don't see Republicans running about afraid to admit their party affiliation -- why then have Democrats behaved all year like members of a persecuted religious sect?

We've always been diehard fans of our indomitable Attorney General. That is, ever since he lost an election to a dead opponent and rescued a grateful nation -- and his own SS ("stuffed shirt," of course) image -- from the birthday-suited statuary in the Justice Department. But it was the serial sniper who gave John his greatest chance to shine. Our fearless General stood squarely before the Senate to steadfastly defend the privacy rights of gun buyers, whether they be Al Qaeda or just sharpshooters picking off our loved ones at Home Depot or Ponderosa Steakhouse. It's reassuring to know that while fair trials fade and FBI dossiers grow, nobody need worry about impingements on their freedom to murder.

Someone finally put Representative James "Beam Me Up" Traficant out of our misery, expelling him from the House and locking him away for corruption, tax fraud, racketeering and making his staff shovel manure at his Ohio horse farm. Like the Long Island shooter before him, Traficant opted to defend himself (perhaps he couldn't find a lawyer as sleazy as himself?), something he did successfully in 1983, when, as a sheriff, he went to trial on similar charges. In court, he put forth a roll of toilet paper as a metaphor for the government's case, cross-examined a friendly witness -- until he revealed that Traficant had once hired a hitman to kill a former girlfriend -- tortured the jury with his stuck-in-the-seventies wardrobe and the rest of us with his Chinchilla-esque toupee. Thank you Cochran, Allred, Bailey, et al. for not saving this diarrheic cannon from himself.

After scandal roiled the process that gave Salt Lake City the Winter Olympics in the first place, it reappeared at the games themselves when a French judge colluded with the Russkies to give their skating team the gold medal when the Canadian team clearly deserved it more. A controversy raged over how to amend the situation but, thankfully, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed of it, guaranteeing that the real winners eventually got their prize.

In Albion, the hapless royals were at it again, with revelations that an employee of Prince Charles was raped in 1989 by a male aide who got him drunk and violated him after he'd passed out. The employee also alleged that he'd witnessed a sexual encounter, most probably of a homosexual nature, between a royal and a servant that, were the parties ever named, might send the monarchy the way of apartheid. Add to this the burglary trial of Diana's butler, whom the Queen herself absolved at the eleventh hour with a bit of suspiciously timed evidence (she suddenly remembered he'd told her beforehand he was borrowing the late Princess' possessions). Yet another (no pun intended) anus horriblus for those wacky Windsors.

Hoping to get some help from the Japanese, North Korea's Kim Jong-il issued a mea culpa in September, admitting that his government had been party to the blatant kidnapping of Japanese nationals in the '70s and '80s for the purpose of securing individuals to teach North Korean spies. One minute the victim might be strolling a Japanese beach, the next he might be locked in a dark hold headed for the land where time stands still. If you think this alone demonstrates North Korean chutzpah, consider Jong-il's statement that eight of the victims had died "due to disease or natural disaster." Then again, one might suppose that in a state like North Korea, execution of those who might embarrass the government might be considered a natural process.

The Enron scandal heated up last August, with underling Michael Kopper entering a guilty plea with the feds that put bigger fish like Fastow and Lay in hotter water. Kopper's confession shed further light on all the En-raunch at the firm, especially the secret partnerships -- one named for Star Wars critter Chewbacca -- used to secretly funnel money from the company into Kopper and clan's personal coffers. Many pondered how these seemingly intelligent individuals could believe they'd get away with such unbridled avarice, but the revelation that Kopper was sharing his booty (again, no pun intended) with a man-friend indicated that perhaps he believed the government's "don't ask, don't tell" policy applied to grand larceny as well as military social etiquette.

Mike Tyson scored a momentary TKO in the headlines back in May when he informed a female reporter that he "normally doesn't do interviews with women unless [he] fornicate[s] with them." He then warned the stupefied journalist that she better be quiet unless she wanted him to demonstrate his point. Although surely some Jerry Springer-type ladies might not mind losing their virginity, if not an ear lobe, to the elfin-voiced brute, the incident was yet another indication that the man should probably consider another line of work. Like the priesthood!

The year came to a close on a somewhat facetious note, thanks to the antics of political vaude-villains Strom and Trent. The former, a national shrine believed to have fired the opening shot at Fort Sumter, was celebrating yet another centennial, a blotch of crimson lip gloss plastered to his ossified forehead like a fresh lobotomy scar. During the celebration, his colleague from Mississippi, whose own pileous accessory is second only to the aforementioned Traficant's, proclaimed that, had the honored guest won the Presidential election of 1948, we'd all have been a lot better off. When some interpreted Lott's comments to mean that he thought the Civil War had been a setback to the Confederacy, Lott claimed that his "poor choice of words" had perhaps given that impression. It's a good thing, then, that he hadn't chosen his words more carefully, or surely there would have been no doubt whatsoever that Lott is an unrepentant cultivator of the white camellia.

Of course, this short list does not nearly cover a whole year of faux pas amongst the panjandrums of the human race -- further kudos must go to Bush for having the temerity to pose for pictures with nine rescued miners while his administration cut funds for protecting them; to former Senator Jesse Helms, for delaying his retirement so long, and for suddenly coming to the conclusion that it is OK after all to help children afflicted with AIDS, even if some of them grow up to be flaming homosexuals; to Allen Greenspan, never the most charismatic fellow, who lowered his interest rate so much further; to the stock market, for proving that, despite the nauseating optimism of the '90s, the nation will always suffer from capitalistic arrhythmia; to Michael Jackson, for nearly conducting a Galileo-type experiment on his own putative offspring; and to Jerry Falwell, who leaves no year unsullied, and this time around claimed that the Prophet Muhammed was a terrorist which, I suppose, makes Falwell himself a sort of shoe-bombing pundit, always with an explosive foot in his maw. Happy New Year!

12 December 02