Retro Radioactive

I am a fan of radio personality Howard Stern.
I was listening to the show today and, of course, they were dealing
with some familiar topics. Two comedians were having a feud with each other and
Howard suggested that they bring them both onto the show for a reconciliation to
which Robin (Howard's co-host) replied, "The chances of getting them here
are about the same as getting Bush and Saddam around a peace table."
Throughout the show, there were references to the "current troubled
times" and commercials spoke of the "slow economy"- all of the
doom and gloom stuff you hear anytime you turn on the TV or radio these days.

The thing is, the comedians involved in the dispute were Andrew Dice
Clay  and Sam Kinneson, "Bush" was George Herbert Walker Bush and
the peace talks would have concerned Operation Desert Storm. This was a
"Best Of" show from October of 1990- thirteen years ago yet it could
have been something I was listening to live.

13 years ago, the world situation was pretty close to what it is now.
However, there was not all the panic and despair that we see around us now. I
suppose this difference could be attributed to the trauma of 09/11 but we also
consider that, this decade and some change ago, the Internet had not really
taken off. There was one cable news channel and most folks did not have
it.  We had not endured Bill Clinton as President with all of the
accompanying scandal. It was a different world

Funny, isn't it, how the world can stay so much the same and yet be so
different at the same time? It is interesting how change can have such an impact
yet be so cosmetic. For me, listening to this show was like having a crystal
ball from 1990 to the present and smugly knowing what was going to happen next.
I saw the death of one of the comedians, the resolution to the war, a new
technology that would knit the globe together and horrible tragedy that would
tear it apart. I saw a boom economy where they could not shovel money out fast
enough. I saw everything coming full circle.

I am going to save today's Howard Stern show and hide it safely away. I am
also going to make a note to myself to listen to it in 13 years. I intend to
scientifically and irrefutably prove that, someday, we will look back on all
this and laugh.

posted by The Pendragon at 3/13/2003 06:51:00 PM