I happened to watch the Drew Carey show last night. On ABC at 8PM CDT.

It started off with one of the actors sitting on a barstool and talking about Y2K. It was kind of a skid about it. He is kind of the guy that always goes bananas and is really dumm. So in the skid of course they were making fun of Y2K. He ended up whispering something like "It's all a conspiracy... It's all a conspiracy... and the people responsible for Y2K are AAAA BBBB " At this point the picture broke away and the snow picture of a TV without reception came on briefly....

Even though they made fun and ridiculed Y2K I think this was positive. John Q public will have one more chance to have heard about Y2K... And if it is on Skids on TV now the Networks are ready to catch on....

Any opinions on this...?

-- Saint Francis (STFrancis@heaven.com), January 14, 1999

Answers

Yeah........it was pretty goofy to say the least. I suppose humour is a way of dealing with stressful situations and this was kind of funny if you understood Y2K and could clearly see that this was 'humour'. However, having said that, I think it was negative in that it helps to reinforce the DGI's beliefs that the only people that take Y2K seriously are wingnuts.

I'm noticing an abundance of media that is really making fun out of Y2K recently. An article in our local newspaper basically said that Y2K is nothing and the only reason we are hearing about it is because of millennium fever, the same type of emotional outbursts that happened in the year 999. Talk about poor reporting!

-- Craig (craig@ccinet.ab.ca), January 14, 1999.

C'mon -- it's not just "poor reporting." Much of it is corporate denial (a matter of policy) -- much of it is individual denial (a matter of psychology).

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), January 14, 1999.