Die 90’s, Die

I'’ve always idolized Dennis Hopper. Even though I was born seven years after the release of Easy Rider,
that movie, in which Hopper starred and directed, made me, a Pakistani born in Chicago, want to buy a
Harley, slap Steppenwolf the album in my walkman and Steppenwolf the book in my back pack, and
simply ride America. A brown Kerouac, if you will. Peter Fonda’'s character was always too detached for
me, aloof in an uneasy way. But Hopper embodied the essence of what I always thought America
was...wildly complex, maniacal in its expanse.

In 1998, Dennis Hopper played the president in a Puff Daddy video.
The decline of the 90’'s, a phenomenon that started, from what I can fathom, with the suicide of Kurt
Cobain, reached its horrible pinnacle in 1998. To those of you who dismiss the 70’'s as the decade that
taste forgot, I urge you to travel to Times Square and study the tourists. Gaze, then, upon the much
maligned but grudgingly accepted Disneyfication of the space and smile at King Rudolpho’s infantry, aka
the NYPD. Enter the Virgin behemoth store and find 13 million copies of N’Sync’s Christmas album and not
one Guns bootleg.

Indeed, 1998 was so stylistically challenged that it required an actual revival of disco from the hated
seventies. All of a sudden, Gloria Gaynor performances were on MTV, and Studio 54 was the subject of a
hyped but spectacularly disastrous movie. Then, not content with tackiness only a couple of decades old,
1998 had to travel to the 40'’s to dig up the rotting corpse of swing.
Bland rock came of age once the revivals faded. Groups like Marcy’s Playground, Bare Naked Ladies, and
Matchbox 20 epitomized one-hit wonder with their catchy tunes, meaningless lyrics and compulsory
Rolling Stone/Spin cover. As far as I can see, their sole cosmic signifigance is to provide fodder for lite
FM stations well into the next decade.
Perhaps this is just a bump on the road to millennial bliss, a purging of this century’s worst cultural
occurrences so that 2000 can begin with a cool bang. So what if Marilyn Manson is the lone torch bearer
for rock. So what if hip-hop was reduced to sampling the theme from Night Court.

Maybe, as Billy
Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins has said, some years are just plain boring.
Ah, but there is more, isn’t there? 1998 leaves us with what comedians call Tailgate ‘'98, and what Tom
Brokaw refers to as the White House in Crisis. No need to delve into the sordid details of the Starr report,
eh, no need to call into question the lunacy of spending almost 40 million dollars and eight years to prove
a man had an affair. Too politically charged for a non-political rant.
However, what terrifies me is the apathy this scandal has highlighted in this country. By all accounts,
three-quarters of the American people believe that the matter has gone too far . Mid-term congressional
elections soundly reject Republican impeachment fancies and has driven Newt Gingrich, whose Contract
with America was a harbinger of the nation’s burgeoning indifference (in 1994, incidentally, the year
Cobain died), out of politics.
But House Judiciary chairman Henry Hyde likens the scandal to the concentration camps at Auschwitz.

No one raises an eyebrow. Gingrich'’s successor as Speaker admits to infidelity and is quietly shown the
door. No one pounces on the hypocrisy. And so a man who is elected twice to office is impeached and
the nation sits idly by, twiddling its collective thumb.
Complacency and the accompanying fear of disruption to the status quo are the true legacies of 1998
and, indeed, the 90’s'. 1999 doesn'’t appear a candidate to buck the trend, as politicians have already
decided that it will be remembered for impeachment hearings in the Senate that the American people do
not want. It seems as though the gentlemen who made an appearance at Easy Rider’s infamous end are
now running the country and no one is willing, though infinitely able, to do anything about it.

All is not lost, however. I mean, the Spice Girls almost broke up.

Almost.