Will's Good Idea for the Week of 9/13/26

Good morning, Stroock's Book's reader(s), such as you are, and happy Sunday. 

We got in another Judaism yesterday. Fun fact: when Rosh Hoshana falls on shabbat, one does not blow the shofar. Why? Dunno. Our new synagogue had police, and cards on all chairs showing evacuation routs in case of an 'emergency', meaning Stabby shows up. We like the rabbi very much. Good sermon with which we agreed. The violence committed by Israelis in Judea and Samaria is unacceptable. The sooner Smotrich and Ben Gvir are out of government, the better. 

After services, we got bagels. You don't get more Jewy than that. 

It's 9/11 week here at Stroock's Books, so lets get to it. But first, we need to talk about the 90s, which ended that morning. 

During the 90s, not much happened. The greatest show of the 90s was Seinfeld, the post-modern show about nothing. See also Friends, about six young people in Manhattan who don't have to worry about war, depression, lock downs, etc etc. Which was apropos. 

Rock fragmented and began to die. Country music crossed over. By the mid 90s, 1970s retro fashion was all the rage and Disco suddenly didn't suck. Daytime talks shows became trash where people aired their family arguments on TV. The gays were out and about. Movies were shot in this weird gray/green/yellow color template.

The Cold War was over. The USSR was gone. No more nuclear angst. It was the end of history, they said. The stock market rose and rose and everyone knew who Alan Greenspan was, the Maestro, in Bob Woodward's parlance. In 1998 the country tore itself apart over the Clinton/Lewinsky affair. The 2000 election was between two Southern Baby Boomers who agreed the Feds should start a prescription drug program and argued over whose was better. 

Actually there'd been a lot of talk about Y2K and all the world's computer's melting when the clock turned from 1999 to 2000. True to the decade, nothing happened. 

People forget now, but there'd been a lot of worry about  end-of-the-world millennium doomsday terrorism throughout 1999. See the FBI's Project Megiddo.  When 2000 came and went without an attack, we figured terrorism was a thing of the past. Bin Laden had been trying to get our attention all decade, Khobar Towers, USS Cole, but the US just wasn't interested. 

America was fat, dumb, and happy. Our point is there wasn't a lot going on. 

Here's a clip from the Regis and Kelly Ripa show broadcast on 9/11. It's so appropriate to the age and moment. Regis and Kelly were a popular morning show. This was a light, airy and fun show mostly for moms who've gotten the kids off to school. Kelly Ripa was your standard pretty enough in a normal way host that women could relate too. Regis was actually a huge deal at the time. He hosted Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, which was a huge success when it started in 1999. After years of trash and smut on TV, Millionaire was a family friendly breath of fresh air, and Regis came across as a warm and outgoing host who wanted contestants to win. 

Remember, when the first plane hit most people figured it was an accident. Not until the second plane hit, did we know.  That's certainly the case here with Regis and Kelly.  In fact, when they saw live footage of the second building aflame, Regis speculated that the plane fuselage exploded in the first building and 'jumped' over to the second. Then one of the producers comes on screen. 'I guess it's being reported that a second plane hit the other tower.' The TV audience gasped, and the 90s ended. 

That's enough of that, for now. 

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 9/13/26.

It's time to write World War 1990: Thatcher's War's epilogue chapter. Anyone got any characters from Ireland they need to know about?