It must be nice to live on William Safire's homeworld, where "the business headline of the year" was "Big Bounce to 15,000 Dow After Soft Landing."
That, of course, was one of the NYTer's predictions for 2008, made just about a year ago. I've previously questioned the wisdom or running this ill-starred column every year, but since Safire insists on doing it, the only explanation can be that his predictions are actually coming true, if only on Earth Two.
So how was the rest of Safire's year? Not bad. Israel and Palestine finally worked out that two-state deal, after not one but three highly improbably facilitating events. US troop levels in Iraq are down to "100,000 and dropping steadily." Two books no one here has ever heard of were sleeper hits. And There Will Be Blood justly won Best Picture (defeating not No Country for Old Men, which wasn't nominated, but four films that, on our planet, went entirely unrecognized).
Whether the rest of the news from Planet Safire is good or bad depends on where you stand on other important issues of the day. For instance, if you hate the iPhone, you'll be happy to know that it apparently does not exist, and that instead, "'pod push-back' by music customers threaten[ed] Apple�s dominance of digital music space." Somehow, even if that happened here, I seriously doubt that particularly coinage would catch on.
How'd the 2008 election turn out? Let's just say history wasn't exactly made. It seems John McCain and running-mate Mike Bloomberg defeated the Clinton-Obama ticket on the basis of "character" and a winning theme of "nobody's perfect" (in Safire's universe, those are somehow not contradictory). The big issue of the campaign was taxes, but the election actually hinged on "a debate blooper." So I guess Bizarro Clinton told her sniper fire story there too.
Finally, Safire's alternate universe readers were directed to "lose this list." If only they had the same online newspaper archives we have here!
