The Gimlet Eye - the term 'it's the nineties' means different things now - Column

National Review, July 15, 1996 by John Bloom

WHAT are people talking about when they say, "Well, you know, it's the Nineties"?

I have no idea what this means.

I mean, what do they expect me to say? "It is not. It's the Sixties"?

There was a movie out with a poster calling it "A Love Story for the Nineties."

Well, I hope it's for the Nineties, because the goldang movie came out in 1994. Even if you're doing the Kenneth Branagh version of Oedipus, it should be for the Nineties.

There have been a lot of things for the Nineties -- cars for the Nineties, computer software for the Nineties, sweat socks for the Nineties.

Are there really this many people into numerology? Has everyone turned into a New Age rock-worshippin loonie who thinks that when the date goes from December 31, 1989, to January 1, 1990, something in the sky moves and we go into a different mind zone or something?

And what the hell does "The Nineties" mean? We've had three years with a Republican, three with a Democrat. We had two years with a bad economy, two years with a recovering economy, and two years with whatever-you-call this-while-someone-tries-to-figure-out-a-name-for-it. We had homeless people the whole time. We had the same bad TV shows over and over again. We had one real war, but it was over so quick we forgot about it. We had two years of Communism in Russia and two years without Communism, and then two years where they couldn't make up their minds.

In other words, what the hell are the Nineties, and what do people mean when they say that? (My personal favorite is "the Woman of the Nineties." For all I know, that means a lesbian.) And I get the impression, when people say "You need this new CD Player For the Nineties," that what they're really saying is that it's better than something you could buy in the Eighties.

But that's not really the way people say it on the street. They always shrug when they say it, like, "Oh, well, you know, it's the Nineties." If you say "It's a Nineties Thing," a lot of people mean, "It's all screwed up, we'll never fix it, and they're all crooks anyway."

So which is it? Does The Nineties mean new and different and special and modern? Or does it mean crummy and cynical and broken-down and stupid?

It can't be both things, right? And if it is both things, why do we say The Nineties at all? Why does it matter what the number of the year is? Why don't we just say "Today"?

Am I thinking about this too much? I don't think so. First of all, if we are gonna get into numerology, why don't we think bigger than ten-year increments? After all, we're four years away from a thousand-year change. Why aren't we saying, "Well, it's one of those end-of-the-millennium things. Gutenberg had a great ride while he lasted, don't ya think?" I bet you we don't even have much of a celebration of the Year 2000, except for the fundamentalists who think the world is gonna explode, and the New Agers who think we'll be transported to Oz or tuned into cubic-zirconium bracelets.

But if you can be transported into a media frenzy by the simple movement from 1989 to 1990, shouldn't they already be renting rotogravure plants all over North America for this? They must think something will happen, or at least that it's important that we realize that it's 2,000 years after the birth of Christ --even the people who don't believe in Christ. In fact, I'm sure most of the media by then will be calling it the year 2000 C.E., which means "Common Era." To which I say, if they're gonna change it, couldn't they come up with something a little more snazzy? "Common Era." It sounds like a lazy teenager's name for it. "I guess I'll lie here on the couch today -- it's just another day in the Common Era."

So anyhow, the idea of the year 2000 got me to wondering what they did to celebrate the year 1000. After all, if you're into numbers, the celebration for the first thousand should be a bigger deal than the second thousand years.

In fact, why don't we ever talk about the first thousand years after Christ? Most of us act like history started in 1776. Some of us are willing to go back to 1619, or 1607. People in England go back to 1066. But when it comes to those first thousand years, we just don't think about it. (I won't even mention the years before Christ. For the last ten years, they've been trying to get all the Greek and Roman writers kicked out of the college curriculum.)

BUT the people who were living in the year 1000, they had to think about it. And if they did, they probably thought:

Wow! A lotta water under the bridge. A thousand years ago, the Romans were killing the Christians. Then seven hundred years ago a Roman emperor became a Christian. Then six hundred years ago the Romans started killing the non-Christians. Then about three hundred years ago the Romans and the Greeks divided up into two different Christian churches. The Goths came out of nowhere and took over half of Europe. The Huns came out of nowhere and went back to nowhere. We had the Avars, the Bulgars, the Persians, we probably had five million people die in various wars. We had nine or ten plagues, we had the Franks take over everything under Charlemagne. There was that time when North Africa was the center of civilization. We had religious wars, land wars, family wars, wars with barbarians. In fact, so much has happened, and so many empires have come and gone, and everything is so totally changed, that it makes you grateful to live in the modern year 1000, when everything is finally settled and peaceful, and whatever you are -- a Persian or a Khazar or a Roman or a Bulgar tribesman -- at least you're safe from having your whole civilization destroyed. In fact, let's plant a little marker here on the square of Ctesiphon, the most famous city in the East, and a thousand years from now all the citizens of Ctesiphon will remember us and know that we made it all possible.