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’Net Junkie Shawn "Speedy" Lopes |
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the worst ideasIt would be interesting to know just what kind of response the people at Time magazine expected for its informal "worst ever" poll in 2000. By asking its readers what they thought were the absolute worst ideas of the millennium, the venerable periodical had unleashed an avalanche of entries rehashing the biggest blunders, half-cocked plans and ridiculous concepts of our time. With precisely 2,329,199 readers responding to its query, Time's number-crunching wizzes must have been overwhelmed by the staggering amount of data it had to sift through.
At www.time.com/time/time100/worstideas.html, you'll find that 8.12 percent of those polled thought Prohibition was an absolute mess, while nearly as many (7.82) voted for Geraldo Rivera's infamous 1986 TV special "The Mystery of Al Capone's Vault" as one of recent history's biggest goofs. You may recall the overhyped broadcast in which Rivera promised to uncover the secrets of the notorious gangster but instead produced a couple of empty whiskey bottles and heaps of dirt. With 60 million Americans tuning in, it earned the highest-ever rating for a syndicated TV special, though I'll bet by the time Geraldo signed off that night, each viewer felt more cheated than the IRS during Capone's reign.
A whopping 7.62 percent of the more than 2 million respondents view telemarketing as a bane to society (no argument here), and 6.88 feel the same way about "The Jerry Springer Show," cheating transvestite dwarves and all. Other top vote-getters include that teensy programming decision that led to the Y2K Bug (the poll was conducted in 2000, after all), Spandex in plus sizes, the Ugandan space program, Michael Jackson's marriage to Lisa Marie Presley, the Treaty of Versailles, the Titanic, spray-on hair, breast implants and psychic hot lines (didn't anyone in Dionne Warwick's Psychic Friends Network foresee failure in their future?).
Just bubbling under are Milli Vanilli's Grammy ("Girl, you know it's ... girl, you know it's ... girl, you know it's ..."), AstroTurf, mood rings, leisure suits, thong underwear for men, the DeLorean, infomercials and Muzak. For Time's post-millenium edition, I'd like to add the XFL, Honolulu's van cam program, reality shows and last-minute columns on "worst-ever" polls.
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’Net Junkie drops every Monday.
Contact Shawn "Speedy" Lopes at slopes@starbulletin.com.
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