“Ring out the old, ring in the new” is a joy­ful way to start the New Year, and I shall sym­bol­i­cal­ly trum­pet it when the pros­ec­co cork pops at mid­night. But based on past form, I’ve decid­ed to tem­per my hopes for 2023 by bear­ing in mind it’s the child of a year with a lot of lessons we’ll prob­a­bly have to learn all over again.

That 2023 does not include “mid-terms” is a rea­son for opti­mism in and of itself, although I admit I’m still not clear whether the results of 2022 cer­ti­fied that the MAGA mob is in its death throes, or the world as Amer­i­cans think they knew it is about to end.

In the spir­it of a “new begin­ning”, I’m going to try to believe that 2022 hav­ing pro­duced two ‘COP’ sum­mits, one on glob­al warm­ing and the oth­er on bio­di­ver­si­ty, our “lit­tle blue mar­ble” still has a chance.
Then again, my late 2022 hope was that after the “mid-terms” the chat­ter­ing and clat­ter­ing class­es of Amer­i­can jour­nal­ism would apply their intel­lect and atten­tion to what erst­while lead­ers are doing in the here and now. Instead, it looks like that will be sub­sumed under screeds of ver­biage spec­u­lat­ing on who will, could, should or should not run for pres­i­dent in two years time. And with or with­out whom, of course.
It’s appar­ent­ly manda­to­ry to note how old Joe Biden will be if he runs, and at the end of his sec­ond term, if he wins and lives that long. That’s pre­sum­ably to let us know the writer knows basic arith­metic, and thinks we don’t.

                       IT’LL BE EVERYONE ELSE’S FAULT 

On the per­son­al plus-side, that’s poten­tial­ly “ageism”, which makes 2023 my best shot at jump­ing on the vic­tim­hood wag­on. With a bit of luck maybe I could ride all the way to what­ev­er being a vic­tim is sup­posed to mer­it. Except first I have to fig­ure what kind of vic­tim I could be. So far, I’m fail­ing miserably.
My first — and as far as I can remem­ber only — “vic­tim­i­sa­tion” was being teased about my last name. My par­ents put paid to that by doing what par­ents are sup­posed to do, teach me how to deal with it. Is it too much to hope 2023 will be the year it’s chic to claim to be a vic­tim because prop­er par­ent­ing deprived me of easy victimhood?
If not, the “Har­ry and Meghan” saga will no doubt pro­vide many more breath­less­ly over-writ­ten exam­ples of things to whinge about, whether they’re mean­ing­ful, jus­ti­fied or, as has so far been pret­ty much the case thus far, not.

                           BUCK PASSING

The lat­est fail­ure in the fan­ta­sy world of cryp­to-cur­ren­cy means I won’t have to be embar­rassed in 2023 by still not being able to pro­vide a cogent expla­na­tion of what it is. Judg­ing by the extreme fluc­tu­a­tions of its alleged val­ue, there’s good rea­son to con­clude the peo­ple who invest­ed in it couldn’t either.
Maybe – and I know I’m stretch­ing here — there’s also a chance 2023 will gen­er­ate a more seri­ous look at the it-should-be-obvi­ous-by-now fact that not every under-30 Wunderkind’s idea will make you a bil­lion­aire. That’s espe­cial­ly true if it’s endorsed by any celebri­ty whose finan­cial wiz­ardry is lim­it­ed to get­ting some­one to pay them a lot of mon­ey to pre­tend to have it.
I feel the shame­less buzz of schaden­freude already.
There’s also some good news/bad news ahead. By all guess­es, edu­cat­ed and oth­er­wise, Vladimir Putin will con­tin­ue to be on hand in 2023 to blame for gas prices, food prices, wild stock mar­ket fluc­tu­a­tions, reces­sion, infla­tion, flight delays and any oth­er cri­sis or prob­lem short of dandruff.
And if all that fails to fill enough col­umn inch­es and min­utes of air time, both of which will be in increas­ing­ly short sup­ply cour­tesy of cut­backs, cor­po­rate merg­ers and takeovers in the name of prof­it at the expense of pub­lic ser­vice, no doubt His Trump­ness will linger on as the pun­dits’ gift that keeps on giving.

                        A PEDANT’S HOPE…

Dare one trust that keep­ing up with the news in 2023 will be made slight­ly more bear­able by broad­cast out­lets insist­ing cor­re­spon­dents use gram­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect Eng­lish? As entry lev­el, they could include verbs in sen­tences, refrain from say­ing “you know” and “I mean”, and refuse to put any­one on air who starts or ends a sen­tence or answers a ques­tion with “Absolute­ly”.
Print media could do its part by ban­ning “tox­ic” except as relat­ed to chem­i­cals, “game-chang­er” oth­er than in sports sto­ries, and all ref­er­ences to Wor­dle. Both print and broad­cast could also con­sult a The­saurus for alter­na­tives to “empow­er”.
Please.
To pro­vide relief from my afore­men­tioned bêtes-noir, for 2023 I pro­pose set­ting up an Oliv­er Twist – as in “Please sir, I want some more” — rating.
A shin­ing exam­ple of one that would mer­it three “Oliv­ers” is this head­line from one of Britain’s “comics”, as the tabloids there are known: “Star Wars fans amazed after spot­ting ‘lightsaber’ on Mars in new NASA footage”.
It has the added poten­tial val­ue of pro­vok­ing the usu­al sus­pects into calls for not just a clean-up on, but a ban from humans ever set­ting foot on Mars. The conun­drum will escape the “I’m‑offended-what’s‑the-issue” types, and amuse the rest of us.
And on that cheery note…
I WISH YOU A HAPPY, HEALTHY AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR, AND THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY PERCH.

 Com­ments are wel­comed. Click CONTACT on the site header.
To receive e‑mail alerts to new posts, Click SIGN-UP on the header.

 

 

 

 

 

 

.