December 2000, marked the end of Election Day in the United States.
Most election years, it gets done, more or less, on the first Tuesday of November; by dawn, we know who the next President of the United States is. The 2000 race between Vice President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush was a special one. An especially close one, one whose results are still discussed and debated to this day. They even made an HBO Film out of it, actually shot in Tallahassee, the state capital of Florida, where the main controversy was centered.
Many of my friends and teachers - then and now - were true blue Democrats. My family was and is mostly Republican. What I remember from then is this: the news pundits at the time erroneously called Florida for Gore before all ballots were in, then had to call it for Bush, then had to admit it was too close to call; Gore conceded to Bush personally, then retracted it; initial recounts narrowed the margin but still in Bush's favor. I also remember the photos of volunteers closely scrutinizing a ballot to differentiate a Legitimate vote from dimples or hanging Chads. You have to remember, too, though: I was eleven years old, whatever news I was getting was filtered through the biases of those around me...and by sketch comedy shows. Each side accused the other of conspiring to "steal" the election, which we would later see echoed in the 2016 and 2020 elections. Recounts were demanded county by county, including my own Broward and neighboring Miami-Dade, both pretty heavy on Democrats. There was the Brook Brothers riot, where well-tailored Republicans got nasty in a campaign of harassment against independent vote counters in Miami-Dade (I remember that, too, and how suspiciously those vote counters were greeted - one of the three wasn't independent at all but a Democrat). Finally, the US Supreme Court made its historic decision in Bush's favor on December 12, 2000, a decision which people still scrutinize and object to.
It was a circus. It was thought the 2000 Presidential Election might help us to move on from the Monica Lewinsky scandal and impeachment proceedings - certainly that was why President Clinton was kept at a distance from the Gore campaign. And yeah, I guess in one sense we did move on, but just from one scandal to the next. People said they were sick of the story, but they kept tuning in, and the news cycle kept pumping us with every detail, some vague and contradictory, making things seem more or less sinister than they might actually have been. Politics became sports: we weren't electing leaders or representatives, but supporting our team! News became entertainment, not uncovering the truth but presenting a new twist to the tale, tune in, buy now! Where's our sense of reality? Where's our sense of shame? Where's our sense?
When national news made us sick, tired, and depressed, here's what the multiplex could offer:
