On This Day Pre-Y2K
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January 20, 1999 Permalink
what is the purpose of the state of the union address? the incumbent has a captive audience to witness him enumerate, at great length, the sucesses of his administration.
and enumerate he did. but he had to mention y2k and at the same time not detract from his apparent successes and the ‘prosperous’ state of the union.
the offhanded way he introduced the y2k situation was amazing. it will be wriiten down in history books that president clinton asked for help from every level of government to, and i paraphrase, “make sure that y2k is a problem of the last century and not the crisis of the new.”
he was warning the country in a seemingly offhanded matter...but how does that sentence look in print?
we are indeed in deep s**t!!!
—ombre, comp.software.year-2000, 01/20/99
I see two possibilities as to why, in the State of the Union address, President Clinton chose to gloss over Y2k with humour that seemed to be designed to marginalize anyone who is truly concerned about the possibilities.
First, his advisors could be telling him that everything is basically, OK -- that with a little bit of work, we can still pull it off with no big problems at all.
-OR-
He could be of the opinion that it is already too late -- and is very concerned about the stability of the banking industry, etc. Maybe his advisors are telling him its too late already, and he’s trying to spin it so that he can contain and delay the problems as long as possible. Of course, he’d look pretty stupid talking about how serious it is now, because of the lighter approach from the past.
I don’t know which one scares me more.
—LaptopPop, comp.software.year-2000, 01/20/99
Clinton barely had three sentences to say on y2k. He said The government had already ASSURED that Social Security Checks would get sent out. (big applause) He said that Y2k was a big problem. And he said that We must make sure it gets solved so that it will be the last headache of this century and not the first one of the next.
THAT IS IS! NOTHING ELSE!
If you are still so freaking stupid as to believe there is any chance at all, you are manifestly deserving of what happens when the hammer comes down.
—Paul Milne, comp.software.year-2000, 01/20/99
