Just watched Montel. Talk about spin control! Someone had issused a warning about a week ago on this forum that this was going to happen. I just caught the last half hour but it looked like he had two people that were preparing for Y2K. One with a tug boat who said if y@k turned out to be a bump in the road then he would eat hios food and travel around on his boat. The guy sounded very reasonable. The other person was a women that said Y2K preparation was bringing their family together and if nothing happened them at least their family would be closer then it had been.

He had this Pultizer Prize winning journalist, Ellis Henican from Newsday who looked over at these people and said: "I can tell you that absolutely nothing will happen on Y2K." He said Y2k is a problem that was made up by computer programmers to make money. Montel asked him about Senator's Dodd and Bennent's report on Y2k and he dismisssed it saying that these guys were just politictions and they stradle the fence so they can always come out on the right side of any issue. The people concerned about Y2K were made to look like idiots. And then Henican said something very telling. He said what everybody needed to worry about is the fact that the FBI has just hired 500 new agents to deal with terrorist groups that were going to use Y2K as an excuse for performing terrorist acts.

They then had a raciest who believed that America is coming apart and predicts dire race problems in the next forty years. Montel kept trying to tie Y2K into the race problems but the guy said his thoughts had nothing to do with Y2K.

At the end of the show Henican said he did'nt want to cast aspersions on Montel's guests but he would portray them as part of the luntiac fringe. He said he might allow that Y2K may be a itty-bitty problem but he did'nt think Y2K should be the basis of a race war. the interesting thing about his statement was he was the only one who suggested that Y2K would be linked to a race war.

I wish these jerks would stop the happy face spin and using the militia groups as strawmen. Fix the f--king code. If it can'nt be fixed in time tell the American people so they can prepare. The more of this spin control I see the more I have to believe the gloom and doomers. We don'nt have a middle ground.

-- Watcher (anon@anon.com), March 30, 1999

Answers

Okay, Watcher. As a cmpt prgrmr, it can't be all fixed in time now. If it hasn't been fixed before the beginning of the year with only testing to go, they're SOL. We ALL know that fixing bugs creates more bugs. Especially when fixing systems with no source code...

So, prepare. If preparing means stocking up with a case of beer and nachos for the weekend or hiding out in the bomb shelter for 6 months, then so be it. It's your life. No one else can live it for you. No one else is going to stock up for you. When the SHTF, you are the only one to blame if it's TEOTWAWKI.

-- laura (no@mail.com), March 30, 1999.

It also didn't help the Y2Kers when the lady with the family of nine kept saying on 9/9/99 the satellites would fall out of the sky! All I can say is Montel knew how to pick his Y2K crew for maximum kook effect. Sad....although the guy with the boat sounded just fine...the spin turns on the tug boat..

-- Shelia (shelia@active-stream.com), March 30, 1999.

First he had a family, another woman, and the couple with the tugboat. The tugboat owner used to run a government emergency agency, and he said the government won't be able to handle y2k -- he said the government "commandeers" everything it needs to respond to an emergency, and that was why he would take to the sea. Montel began making fun of all of them almost right away and didn't let them speak without contant interruption.

The next guest wrote a book called "Nostradamus 1999" wherein he said that we may be hit by a large asteroid this year in September. Montel had a great deal of fun with this.

The next man was an economist (?) who assured us that y2k wasn't going to cause any problems. Flint and Mr. Decker at least give reasons WHY they think y2k won't be a ten -- this guy just gave assurances with no real reasons backing up his position.

The next man was the racist, who really didn't have a specific y2k agenda. He just wants an America of one race, preferably his. Montel pretty much let him hang himself.

What was odd was that the economist took on the racist, the y2k-ers having left the stage.

I don't know why Montel chose to do this subject. He clearly was pooh-pahing from the beginning. He did seem a bit apologetic to the y2k-ers at the end, because they weren't personally threats to him like the racist was.

-- Helen (sstaten@fullnet.net), March 30, 1999.

If anybody is interested in the email Joe Ryan sent to the Montel Show about the way his family was treated on the show. Check it out on the "prepare4y2k "web site. I must say he told them where the bear Sh*ts....

-- Capt D. (souza@ptialaska.net), March 30, 1999.