WE Blog

“O.J. actually got convicted of something. Gasoline hit $4 a gallon – and those were the good times. On several occasions, ‘Saturday Night Live’ was funny. There were a few days there in October when you could not completely rule out the possibility that the next Treasury secretary would be Joe the Plumber. Finally, and most weirdly, for the first time in history, the voters elected a president who – despite the skeptics who said such a thing would never happen in the United States – was neither a Bush NOR a Clinton.” That’s where the Miami Herald’s Dave Barry begins in his lengthy review of 2008.
This gem comes from July: “John McCain, at a strategy session at a golf resort, tells his top aides to prepare a list of potential running mates, stressing that he wants somebody ‘who is completely, brutally honest.’ Unfortunately, because of noise from a lawn mower, the aides think McCain said he wants somebody ‘who has competed in a beauty contest.’ This will lead to trouble down the road.”
November is remembered thusly: “Barack Obama, in a historic triumph, becomes the nation’s first black president since the second season of ‘24,’ setting off an ecstatically joyful and boisterous all-night celebration that at times threatens to spill out of the New York Times newsroom. Obama, following through on his promise to bring change to Washington, quickly begins assembling an administration consisting of a diverse group of renegade outsiders, ranging all the way from lawyers who attended Ivy League schools and then worked in the Clinton administration to lawyers who attended entirely different Ivy league schools and then worked in the Clinton administration.”