A Flood of Emotions

The 1999 calendar arrived the other day. There was something wonderfully crisp and clear in all those unclaimed squares. Penultimate things have a certain magic: the last chance, the night before the big day, the near-end of a child’s countdown to 100, as the voice trills expectantly: “Ninety-niiine . . .”

It’s a hopeful kind of magic, though surprising in this case, considering what the near-end of this century was supposed to bring. Remember when the words “Nineteen Ninety-Nine” were code for The Future? Weren’t we going to be lounging in unitards while robots vacuumed the rumpus room, come 1999?

Instead, here we are, The Future almost upon us, and the kids in my un-vacuumed rumpus room are dressed in what appear to be the hip-huggers I wore in 1974, and channel surfing past what appears to be a bad simulation of that year’s biggest news event, the fall from grace of a U.S. president.

Where’s the magic in a future that’s happy just to rerun the past, just to save Pvt. Ryan in time for a little swing dancing and an hour at the driving range? Still, there’s this paradox: Though the big picture seems changeless, the year-to-year calendar crackles with new twists on old themes.

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Take the past year in California, where the theme has been, “If it rattles the public, you heard it here first.” The squares of the 1998 news calendar were checkered with West Coast angles: Brentwood’s Monica and the San Gabriel Valley’s Asian political campaign money, the Unabomber in the Sacramento courthouse and the Silicon Valley reaction to the Microsoft trials.

But below the surface, there were subtler, more influential developments: The deflation of wedge politics. The maturation of the Latino electorate. The estrangement of moderates and women in the Republican Party from its religious right, even in conservative strongholds like San Diego and Orange County. Little signs that the city of Los Angeles, long regarded as this suburban metropolis’ least livable suburb, is being quietly resurrected into something like a genuine city, with players who are taking a genuine interest in stepping up to the plate.

As the economy continued to pull away from the sour memory of recession, Californians felt bigger. It showed. The divisive Gov. Pete Wilson was succeeded by a Democrat who, whatever his flaws, appears bent on inclusiveness. Crime dropped. The prison industry, unchecked and unquestioned for years by a paranoid public, finally got a dose of much-needed scrutiny.

Aside from a burst of invective on the genuinely vexing question of bilingual education, the state’s on-again, off-again passion for immigrant-bashing began to wane. Celebrity worship also showed signs of losing luster as the lack of an NFL team and the onset of the basketball lockout awakened Southern California to the possibility of life without the distractions of millionaire athletes.

There was less interest in artifice. L.A. voters finally cast a ballot for better buses, and stopped thinking of a subway as the status symbol they had to have at any price. And there was more interest in connection. In Orange County, a 1998 Times survey found that the top priority of 74% of suburban homeowners was a community where they could stroll to the park or to some bustling Main Street--roughly triple the proportion that felt the ideal neighborhood should have a gate.

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This hunger for realness tended not to get picked up on by pundits. Probably the biggest story of the year was the disconnect between the supposedly momentous public events and the private reality of peoples’ lives. On the day Congress impeached Bill Clinton, legions of Californians blew it off and went Christmas shopping. Not because we’re shallow, as Beltway ideologues like to imagine, but because partisan politics have crossed into the realm of the unreal, and nothing is more boring than hype.

A personal theory is that Californians have a special expertise in seeing through allegedly apocalyptic situations. Let the rock-ribbed East insist that the coming presidential trial is all about “process” and “rules.” We know better. We spent a recession listening to the addictive rhetoric of rage that, for a while, seemed to be shaping society’s destiny.

Here’s what we learned: At some point, that rhetoric gets boring. Life improves; the hardliners go back to wherever hardliners come from. And after the mop-up, there comes a crisp, clear penultimate moment when the future will hang magically before you, full of what-has-been and what-will-come.

Shawn Hubler’s e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com.