Comparing Past Decembers

There have been plenty of memorable Decembers over the years with Christmas and New Year's in the mix.  Let's see which one were the best....

December 1983 vs. December 1993 vs. December 2003

Winner:  1983--Easy choice here as 1993 was weak and 2003 was horrific.  The first Christmas I remember was 1983 and recall it being the one year we put the Christmas tree up in a different spot in the parents' living room.  And while I only remember one gift I got that year, it was a big one...the complete set of McDonald's pens featuring Ronald McDonald, Cheeseburger, Hamburglar, Big Mac, and Grimace.  New Year's was a bigger deal that year, however, as we picked up Irish Setter "Luke" from Albert Lea, a dog who stayed with us until his passing in December 1992.  It was also my first memory of Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, with special guest Culture Club singing their new hit "Karma Chameleon" which I loved then and still do, despite how uncool it now seems to be to say you were a fan of Culture Club.

December 1984 vs. December 1994 vs. December 2004

Winner:  1994--Close call between '84 and '94 here (2004 certainly wasn't a contender with Dick Clark having a stroke and not being able to do the New Year's countdown) but 1994 edges it out because of all the new country CDs I got for Christmas back on my first year as the owner of a CD player and what I consider country music's best year.

December 1985 vs. December 1995 vs. December 2005

Winner:  1985--Three solid contenders here but 1985 wins the series due to Christmas being on a Wednesday and giving me my first 16-day Christmas break, complete with new episodes of "MacGyver" and "The Fall Guy" to enjoy during my break.  It was my first year of baseball cards so I got a few baseball card-related gifts that Christmas for the first time.  I was also right on the precipice of early 1986 "Monsters" book obsession, reading the first couple in late 1985 before the fascination busted wide open very early into the new year.

December 1986 vs. December 1996 vs. December 2006

Winner:  1986--Three solid contenders last round and three flawed contenders this round.  But 1986 easily wins by default as I got a bunch of new baseball card sets this year along with a plastic pinball machine game that was a nice way to pass time and got a lot of use until one of the legs broke off.  In addition, Christmas was just a lot more fun at age 9 than it was at 19 or 29.

December 1987 vs. December 1997 vs. December 2007

Winner:  1997--This Christmas was a decidedly mixed bag as on December 26, 1997, I got my wisdom teeth removed, which was not exactly great for holiday season morale, but the discomfort from the oral surgery was easily surpassed by my most consequential Christmas gift of all-time, the Minnesota blue book, which featured precinct-level returns for the entire state of Minnesota from the 1996 election.  During my downtime after the surgery, I gathered and arranged data from Minnesota towns and townships into neat little charts, a tradition I've been following every election cycle since.  It never ceases to be exciting and fun, and I have my free-of-charge gift from Christmas 1997 to thank for it.

December 1988 vs. December 1998 vs. December 2008

Winner: 1988--This wasn't a spectacular Christmas and New Year's but I do have memories of my family visiting an aunt in southeast Minnesota the weekend before Christmas.  My most memorable gift was the battery-powered Capsela toy with gears contained in plastic bubbles that connect together like tinker toys, which I had gotten a taste of in the fifth-grade classroom.  I also remember watching the "Little House on the Prairie" Christmas special on Christmas Eve and the final episode of "Simon and Simon" on New Year's Eve.

December 1989 vs. December 1999 vs. December 2009

Winner: 1989--I have three really great choices here but there's no way I can choose anything other than the classic holiday season of 1989, the season where the epic MacGyver Christmas episode aired, and where I began my now 26-year tradition of watching it every Christmas Eve.  Beyond that, it was also the Christmas I got my own Nintendo along with the game that remains my favorite after all these years, Super Mario Bros. 2.   There was also some excitement about transitioning to a new a decade come New Year's, which was particularly prescient since 1990 ended up being the most consequential year of my childhood.

December 1990 vs. December 2000 vs. December 2010

Winner: 1990--There was some trepidation in the air during the holiday season of 1990 as my dad was out of work and had been for months, but he got a job early in 1991.  Still, it was a sparser Christmas than usual, although my mom was able to get her hands on a discount copy of the Nintendo game "Bubble Bobble", a childhood favorite, and my dad had scored some pair of cross country skis at an auction.  It was a snowier-than-average winter so they got some use in the months ahead.  I also remember cashing in on some free meal tickets at the Elks Club in Albert Lea my dad won somewhere the Friday before the Christmas, where I had some of the best burritos I ever recall having.  It wasn't a perfect December, but it happened in those formative years where the memories tend to shine brightest even decades later.

December 1991 vs. December 2001 vs. December 2011

Winner:  1991--Once again a childhood holiday season kicks the butt of its competition.  Christmas was on a Wednesday this year meaning a 2 1/2-week Christmas break, in this case the first where I was allowed to stay home alone.  I got a cross-section of favorable gifts including the final entries of my baseball card and Nintendo collections, as well as the maiden voyages for a new obsession with an atlas an almanac, the almanac providing me county returns from the 1984 and 1988 Presidential elections, setting the template for my lifelong obsession with regional politics.  There was one major dark side to December 1991 though....it was the end of MacGyver on Monday nights.  The series finale and a "lost episode" were still hanging out there for 1992, but MacGyver was replaced on the Monday evening schedule at the end of the month, which was certainly a wet blanket that kept me from enjoying the holiday season as much as I would have.

December 1992 vs. December 2002 vs. December 2012

Winner:  2012--Yikes.  Two horrific choices and one that wins by default.  Most second place choices and even some third place options in other groupings would have topped this one but since neither my dog nor my grandpa died in 2012 as they did in the other two years, it stands out as the pick of the litter in this bunch.   I was still crunching election data from Obama's re-election win in 2012 but beyond that my memories of the year are pretty sparse.

We still have five more months to get through on this little exercise.  There are some gems left but I expect more nondescript entries for dead-of-winter months like January and February moving forward.

Comparing Past Novembers

Amidst my one-minded obsession with devouring election return data following November 4, I forgot all about my monthly ritual of comparing the months a decade apart.  Now that I'm finally near an end with my election data collection, it's time to right the ship and retroactively rate previous months of November, which all too often were also defined by elections.

November 1983 vs. November 1993 vs. November 2003

Winner:  1993--The afterglow of my being asked out by a girl in my high school--and the flirtation that followed--really brought some sizzle in my life at a time when I had really been treading water otherwise.  I was past peak with her but didn't realize it at the time and it was a good feeling to be "wanted" by a girl who I felt the same about, a feeling I hadn't really experienced before.   I was also increasingly getting into country music at the time with the genre right at the apex of its creative renaissance, cranking out a lot of very interesting music that vastly exceeds the country music of today.

November 1984 vs. November 1994 vs. November 2004

Winner:   1994--There's no question that November 8, 1994--the night Newt Gingrich and his right-wing forces captured the U.S. Congress--was an ugly night, but if we're just going based on election outcomes neither 1984 nor 2004 was any better.  So setting elections aside, 1994 was by far the most exciting as I was in my best semester ever in high school, with an extended creative spurt that had me cranking out new action-adventure scripts for my would-be "Alex Burrows" series at a dizzying pace.  Beyond that I was immersed in a study hall where I found myself in the unusual role of alpha male and a flurry of young lasses vying for my affections.  It was extremely gratifying and coupled with my early purchases of country music CDs and the excitement (and ultimate bust) of the second "MacGyver" telefilm airing, November 1994 was one of my final spurts of enjoyment before I languished into an extended period of stagnation.

November 1985 vs. November 1995 vs. November 2005

Winner:  1985--There are no clear winners here but my growing obsession with the new TV series "MacGyver", which never ceased to be more awesome than anything I ever imagined could be on television, puts 1985 over the top.  Holdover TV favorites towards the end of their run--like "The Fall Guy" and "Hardcastle and McCormick"--overlapped with this era and made this one of my favorite TV periods.  Not really much else noteworthy going on at this time though, especially with baseball season now over.

November 1986 vs. November 1996 vs. November 2006

Winner:   2006--A fairly weak trio of choices here as none of these three set my world ablaze.  1996 will never be an option in any of these series as, month after month, it was one of the most miserable times of my life.  But 2006 at least started out with genuine excitement as Democrats were on the cusp of having a wave midterm election, taking out the Senate and House with a decisive sweep based on anti-Bush backlash.  But for the months of excitement leading up to the win, after it happened it was amazing how quickly the thrill dissipated....and for good reason as American politics is increasingly just an exercise in painful disappointment. 

November 1987 vs. November 1997 vs. November 2007

Winner:   1987--Kind of surprising looking back at how many Novembers were mediocre at best, and that certainly applies to my choices here.  But November 1987 was easily the pick of the litter as I was still enjoying the afterglow of the Minnesota Twins' World Series win, had a bunch of new "MacGyver" episodes to enjoy during the series' peak period, and have general fun memories of pinball machines and Godfather's Pizza Sunday mornings after church in the hometown, along with my weekly snack purchase that usually included either Good 'N' Fruity or Skinny Dippers at the downtown Sterling Drug.  Lingering good feelings about my fourth grade elementary crush also made November 1987 a generally good place in time in my life despite a general lack of marquee moments.

November 1988 vs. November 1998 vs. November 2008

Winner:  1988--There were high points and low points to all three of these, but in 1998 and 2008 the low points (grandfather's death, my mom's temporary serious leg injury) clouded out the upsides.  1988 was also a mixed bag as I got my first gut punch of a bad election night when George H.W. Bush walloped Michael Dukakis in the Presidential election, an outcome I didn't necessarily see coming, at least to the extent that the glowing red electoral map suggested.  On the bright side, the writers' strike-delayed TV season finally re-emerged, and of course I was most excited with the late November return of "MacGyver" in the season that would be its best.   Going without my usual fall TV ritual made its ultimate return that much more satisfying.  Fifth grade was my best year in school as well and I was really starting to find my footing by this time in the school year.

November 1989 vs. November 1999 vs. November 2009

Winner:  1989--A couple of solid choices here but 1989 wins in a slam-dunk.  We finally got the VCR working and I began to videotape my earliest "MacGyver" episodes.  I was watching the classic cartoon "Laff-a-Lympics" several mornings a week on the USA Cartoon Express.  I was at peak Nintendo obsession and playing it regularly at my grandma's place a month ahead of getting a system of my own.  But far and away the best memories of 1989 came from Thanksgiving weekend, the best Thanksgiving of my life that included a visit from my cousin from northern Minnesota, playing Super Mario Bros. 2 for the first time, enough snow to sled down, and a trip to the Burnsville Mall on Black Friday in its earliest incarnation.

November 1990 vs. November 2000 vs. November 2010

Winner:  2000--The same old conundrum when it comes to my best months of all time competing with each other in months ending with "0".  November 1990 was a fantastic month where I came of age in many ways and discovered or reconnected with long-standing passions.  But it paled in comparison to November 2000, the month where the closest and most exciting Presidential election in history played out at my most formative early adult years and sent my excitement for elections--already high--soaring to an entirely different level.  Even though I didn't like the election outcome, the thrill of an election that close--complete with access to results on the Internet to pick apart in the immediate aftermath for the first election of my life--had a profound effect on me then and now.

November 1991 vs. November 2001 vs. November 2011

Winner:  1991--Another grouping where the participants have hits and misses, but far and away the most memorable of my months was 1991 with the months starting out with the worst ice storm of my life followed by seven days of darkness when my family's power went out.  Although I hated (and would still hate today) the extended loss of electricity, there was a certain charm to those days of roughing it like the pioneers with nothing but flashlights and kerosene heaters.  When the lights came back on, I got some rough news that "MacGyver" was ending early amidst an abbreviated seventh season.  I knew it was the last season but didn't realize it would only be 13 episodes.  The month ended nicely though with my cousin visiting once again over Thanksgiving and us playing Super Nintendo for the first and only time over Thanksgiving weekend.

November 1992 vs. November 2002 vs. November 2012

Winner:  1992--There were two exciting things going on in November 1992.  Foremost was the Presidential election, the first election in my life where the Democrat (Bill Clinton) won.  Secondly, I was still binge-consuming MacGyver reruns from the USA cable network that my aunt was videotaping for me several per week.  It was a thrill revisiting all those classics, many of which I hadn't seen in several years.  I got most of those MacGyver shows recorded by the end of the month though and with the Presidential election over, I was about to run out of diversions to keep life interesting for me.

It's already December as I write this meaning I'll be back sooner than usual to review past Decembers, most likely a couple of weeks from now during Christmas weekend.

Eric Garner Died Because Of High Cigarette Taxes

For all the outrage--in many ways justifiable--in the past few years about police treatment of African Americans, it was very telling how silent the media and political class was about Eric Garner, a man surrounded by five NYC police officers who died when one of the cops put him in a chokehold.  The incident was caught completely on camera and fed into the national storyline perfectly of a police force using unnecessary force against an African American that resulted in his death.  So why was virtually nobody in the political class or the media talking about this case until the shocking failure of the grand jury to indict the offending officer forced them to?  Why did they instead preserve all their ink and outrage for the far more ambiguous Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Missouri?

Because if the Eric Garner incident gets a full public hearing, one of America's best-kept secrets is at risk of coming out--the mass formation of a new black market for cigarettes that came to fruition because of outrageously high taxes on tobacco which is turning thousands of people like Eric Garner into criminals and costing taxpayers millions of dollars in enforcement.  It's incredibly hard for anybody to explain why five New York City cops are bearing down on this nonviolent middle-aged man over selling loose cigarettes, and it's a conversation they never hoped they would have since it could threaten to disrupt the scores of billions of dollars worth of cigarette tax revenue that every level of government fancies itself entitled to.  The NYC police put Eric Garner to his death because the message came from above that tobacco tax collection is one of the highest priorities of law enforcement....and that everybody from NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio to Governor Andrew Cuomo to President Barack Obama wants to get their grubby paws on that cigarette tax cheddar.

So I have to give props for Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, somebody I rarely agree with, and to a bunch of commentators on Fox News, who I hardly ever agree with, for publicly pointing out that Eric Garner would be alive today if greedy politicians hadn't repeatedly preyed upon downscale (and often mentally ill) tobacco users for path-of-least-resistance blood revenue.  The sticker price for artificially expensive cigarettes is now so far removed from cigarettes' market value that an entire black market industry with thousands of players all over the country has turned it into the fastest-growing criminal enterprise on the globe.

And how has the left responded to Senator Paul and others making this point?  Very defensively....and the defensiveness speaks volumes about their desperation to silence this debate before it exposes their fraud.   Many of them were at the forefront of the broader culture war on smokers that goes back decades, and the centerpiece of that war was ever-rising cigarette taxes.  The instigators either didn't consider or didn't care about the pernicious consequences that would inevitably come when they priced a product consumed by 50 million Americans beyond their ability to afford.  And now that it's become clear that they have Eric Garner's blood all over their hands, they deem it inappropriate to discuss the topic and wish to focus exclusively on police brutality rather than the conditions that brought about the police brutality.

Given how lazy the media is and how short their attention span is, the instigators of the tobacco tax frenzy that led to Eric Garner's death just might get out of this without their secret being exposed at a widespread level.  They better hope they do as the tobacco taxers show absolutely no indication of seeking alternative means of collecting the revenue needed to keep the nation's lights on.  Several states have increased their cigarette tax--sometimes dramatically--in the last couple of years.  In just the past few months, the city of Philadelphia raised cigarette taxes dramatically to pay off the school district's deficit.  And President Obama proposed another $1 a pack federal cigarette tax hike last year to pay for universal preschool. 

Government is doubling down on mortgaging the nation's financial future on wildly overpriced cigarettes.  That will not come without consequence.  Eric Garner is thus far the highest-profile "consequence" of gluttonous tobacco tax policy, but it seems pretty safe to say he won't be the last.