Former US president Bill Clinton has been in the news recently; for some reason or other, he has co-written a novel with prolific author Bill Patterson, and I'm absolutely sure that novel had absolutely no ghost-writers or other authors besides those two despite the fact that Clinton is not an experienced author and Patterson publishes like half a dozen books a year.
I'm struck that the Bill Clinton presidency was something that started happening twenty-five freaking years ago. That means there are many active people on the internet, and indeed perhaps many reading this very article, are too young to remember the '90s - if they were even alive during that decade at all. Thus, I had the idea of maybe doing a series of articles on some of the most absurd, horrific, and iconic events of the decade, at least in terms of the United States. In no particular order, here's what I've come up so far as far as article titles.
- Genetic Material: The Clinton/Lewinsky Affair
- Can't We All Just Get Along? Rodney King and Race Riots
- Hell Hath No Fury: Nancy Kerrigan vs. Tonya Harding
- The Lonely Luddite, Ted Kaczynski
- The False Messiah vs. The Feds: David Koresh and Friends
- Hell Hath No Fury 2: Amy Fisher vs. Mary Jo Buttafuoco
- Cult Dot Com: Heaven's Gate and the Internet
- OK NO: The Oklahoma City Federal Building Bombing
- Prelude to 9/11: The Yemen, World Trade Center, and USS Cole Bombings
Okay, to be fair, maybe the '90s weren't literally the worst decade in American history. But I suppose that the combination of my adolescence and coming-of-age combined with the continued rise of 24-hour cable news channels and then, eventually, the Internet helped make the concept of the media circus what it is today.
Are you old enough to remember the '90s? Did any of the above jog any memories to you? Or are you so blissfully young that none of this is familiar to you?