T A B L E_.T A L K

What are you actually complaining about when you object to something being "mainstream"? Parse words in the Media area of Table Talk

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Search barnesandnoble.com for the good, the bad, and the ugly news about Y2K
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R E C E N T L Y

Out's liquid lunch, Lolita vs. Humbert and other marvels of media madness
By Susan Lehman
(12/23/98)

Mementos from the pre-millennium
By Steve Erickson
Dredging the 1998 archives of art, pop culture and politics reveals a private cultural canon
(12/23/98)

And a little scumbag shall lead them
By James Poniewozik
Did a sex-mad tabloid media hijack the public discourse in 1998? We should be so lucky
(12/22/98)

Cool on global warming
By Susan Lehman
Is it a conflict of interest for a Newsweek editor to rally anti-environmentalists?
(12/17/98)

Mickey Mouse scandal grips nation
By Gary Krist
Darlene voted out of Mousketeers on straight party lines -- charged with doing really, really bad things
(12/16/98)

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BROWSE THE
UNDER THE COVERS
ARCHIVE

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BROWSE THE
MEDIA CIRCUS
ARCHIVE

___the world is ending
_______-- LET'S GET TO KNOW OUR NEIGHBORS!

As Y2K approaches, the Utne Reader advocates the book group to end all book groups.

 
BY JAMES PONIEWOZIK | Late last year, Minneapolis made its second major contribution to the literature of millennial apocalypse as the alternative-media digest Utne Reader issued its "Y2K Citizen's Action Guide." The 120-page pamphlet (also online) was mailed to Utne's subscribership in November and hit newsstands last week. Determinedly erring on the side of preparing for the worst, it's a sort of practical progressive's guide to disaster prep for computer-related disaster.

Judicious expenditures in the name of safety have always appealed to us white-collar liberal-artsies, who -- from our imported road cocoons to our long-lived soy beverages to our boutique name-brand flashlights -- have really been preparing for a global meltdown for decades; so it's not surprising to find Utne weighing in early. What's most interesting about the guide is that it proves no crisis is so universal or horrifying that it cannot be used to advance a magazine's editorial philosophy -- here, Utne's long-standing strident communitarianism.

Dismissing head-for-the-hills survivalism, the magazine instead agrees with Y2K efforts like the Cassandra Project (many of whose articles the guide reprints), that tight-knit neighborhood groups will be the key to readiness. And the guide notes, not without self-satisfaction, that that approach is basically Utne's own grass-roots progressivism writ apocalyptic. "As we prepare for Y2K, something surprising and unexpected and quite wonderful is going to happen," writes editor Eric Utne:

We're going to get to know our neighbors. Possibly for the first time in our lives, we will begin to know what it means to live in real community ...

Y2K is the excuse we've been waiting for to stop making so many compromises in how we know we should, and want to, live our lives. Y2K is our opportunity to stop our polluting and wasteful practices, and start living more sustainable, environmentally friendly lives. Y2K is the conversational gambit that can lead to discussions that begin to knit webs of affiliation, care, and mutual support.

In other words, those of you who have been politely but firmly saying thanks-but-no-thanks to the food co-op members up the street inviting you for a cup of Cranberry Zinger and like-minded discussion of home schooling had better change your tunes before the riot hits.

Now, the Reader and its subscribers clearly are hardly wishing for global cataclysm. (Hey, it takes heavy machinery to make those Nile Spice soup cups.) Still, there's a definite note of self-congratulation throughout: "People who have been working their entire lives for political, social and cultural change immediately see its transformational potential. A common response among this group is, 'This is what I came here for,' or 'I've been waiting my entire life for this.'"

That might seem oddly sanguine to those of us who instead selfishly wait our entire lives for, say, a comfortable retirement free of Year-Zero-style field labor. However well-intended, it's simply bad form to hail a possible global disaster as a plug for your social agenda. If Utne really wants to involve "people who are not like ourselves," it might be more, er, neighborly not to crow, "Finally, here's our chance to make you short-sighted bastards end your corrupt way of life!" -- or to dismiss the unenlightened practice of "paying others to keep lawbreakers behind bars" (though mob justice does have a way of bringing people together). And the guide's insistence that we'll remake society by struggling through Y2K together overlooks a few basic arguments. Our last great common societal struggle, the Great Depression and World War II, was something of a leftie collectivist's ideal while it lasted -- but then we celebrated with a binge of individualism and consumption that has yet to end. Oh, and didn't collectivist reliance -- i.e., interlinked computer and economic networks -- get us in the shit in the first place?

N E X T_ P A G E | Plenty of dried food on the 6 o'clock news this year

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