About this time every year columnists, bloggers, and almost everybody else publish their lists of the 10 most important — to them — events of the last twelve months. I doubt if I have much to add to those earth-shaking happenings being covered by others. So instead of boring you with what I thought was important in 2014, this column will consist of ten things that did not happen.
- The Chicago Cubs did not win the national league pennant, and therefore did not play the Chicago White Sox in the World Series.
- The Mars probe did not find ancient civilizations peopled by creatures with great big heads and tiny legs.
- It was not revealed by the NSA that Santa Claus was a Russian undercover agent secretly spying on every American home that had a chimney.
- Walmart did not decide to pay its employees a living wage, saving hundreds of millions of dollars the rest of us had to cough up in government welfare programs.
- The diminishing arctic Polar Bear count was not attributed to the loss of beehives in Mexico.
- Fox News did not give up claiming to be fair and balanced in order to become fair and balanced.
- Sen. Inhofe did not decide that confronting climate change was more important than keeping millionaires afloat by investing in Oklahoma’s oil industry.
- Israel’s Prime Minister did not realize that the only long-term hope for the survival of his nation was a two-state solution, and thus did not begin to dismantle Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories
- America’s white High schoolers did not conclude that constantly being outranked by Asian and African students had something to do with the hours they wasted texting their friends.
- The Chicago Cubs fans did not give up believing that next year they would win the National League pennant and play the White Sox in the World Series.
