Soundbite: Was This The Catch Aught-Aught Decade?

“So this Dec. 12, I mark a sad anniversary, and wonder, among so many other things, what “Catch-22’s” author would have had to say about President Obama’s accepting the Nobel Peace Prize shortly after ordering 30,000 more Americans to war.”

— Author Christopher Buckley marks the eighth anniversary of author Joseph Heller’s death by wondering what his friend would have made of the “tumultuous — to say the least — decade” that he “missed, or perhaps another way to put it, avoided.” Perhaps at the very least Heller could have given a name to what we are now calling the Aughts, but will likely (and hopefully) be defined by some future historian in a manner which reflects the seriousness and tumult of the last ten years. ‘Catch Aught-Aught’, while sort of accurate in its way, just doesn’t have the sort of ring to it that tends to stick, and stranger than fiction (which it certainly was) is merely too long.

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