Y2KX

Of course, the proper name for the year is MMX. 2010. The Year We Make Contact, or some such rubbish. Start the countdown clock for the Mayan Calendar hoaxes.

I remember where I was ten years ago.

I was a member of the working media, assigned to sit at the “bunker” of the state of Alabama’s Emergency Operations Center, as all the authorities and grand-high Poohbah muckety-mucks gathered to observe — well, as it turned out, nothing.

Many of us had sounded the alarm that there was nothing to be alarmed about, but we were drowned out with the Millennial Panic that was Y2K. (Which, in another fit of ill-informed irony, wasn’t even the start of the Millennium, which began in 2001.)

Team Coverage of Nothing

I remember the news accounts leading up to that day. For months, the national media had a field day recounting doomsday scenarios for what would happen when internal clocks got thrown for a loop. The news media and the late-night comics had their way with the state of Alabama in particular. While private businesses, state and local governments were throwing budgets to the wind to corral this “Y2K bug,” companies and particularly municipalities in the Heart of Dixie weren’t following Chicken Little’s lead.

At one point in mid-1999, there was a wire story indicating that if Alabama tripled its Y2K preparedness spending, it would still rank last among the states. Of course, it was followed with dire predictions about what would happen, and the obligatory jokes about how Alabama didn’t have enough technology anyway, and was still coping with Y1K compliance…

…yet I don’t remember a single story after-the-fact about how Alabama didn’t waste billions of dollars preventing Dutch Tulip Blight, or the oncoming stampedes of Jackalopes. Funny how that happens.

Personal Impact

Because of Y2K, I spent that New Year’s Eve away from my fiance. She was at her apartment, and I was in Clanton at “Ground Zero” for “live coverage” of an “event” that was less than a zero. (By the time in was midnight in Alabama, more than a dozen time zones had already made it safely across the threshold. I think that would make it cease to be ‘news’ at that point.)

As it happens, I was able to pass a coded message to my now wife, in clear defiance of FCC guidelines about using the public airwaves for personal communication. My wife’s name, Brenda, happened to be the same as our lead female anchor. So when I punched the name in the sentence “Happy New Year, Brenda… I’ll be back to see you soon” none were the wiser.

Still, it sucked to be away on a nothing assignment.

Panic Feeds the Needy

There always needs to be a scare of some type, because there is a healthy percentage of the public that doesn’t feel Important unless it is seen to be caring about Big Important Things. Usually, when Big Important Things have to do with personal issues or matters of faith, they don’t have an impact. But when enough people use their panic about Big Important Things to  spur government action, they can be very adamant about saving the world with expensive remedies.

Afterward, they can call their prescription a grand success. After all, there was no Tulip Blight, and nary a Jackalope footprint in the snow.

Have a happy and blessed 2010. Make a resolution to keep things in perspective.