The 2000s
The celebration of the start of a new century, a new millennium was haunted by Y2K. Companies and organizations spent billions to have their computers upgraded to avoid a massive shutdown of computers worldwide caused by the changing of the digital year from 99 to 00. It turned out to be a small problem that affected very few businesses but marked the decade as one devoted to all things digital.
It was old-fashioned paper ballots that caused one of the most disputed presidential elections in American history in November 2000. When the election came down to less than 1000 votes in Florida, Democratic candidate Al Gore requested a manual recount. At some point during the recount, Florida’s secretary of state halted the recount, spurring various lawsuits by those supporting Gore. The case ended up in the Supreme Court, where the Republican-dominated court voted that a full recount was unnecessary and that George W. Bush should be declared the winner of the election. Gore v. Bush was arguably the most important and politically influenced decision ever rendered by the court.
At 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001, hijackers flew a commercial airplane into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. A few minutes later, another hijacked plane hit the south tower. Both towers eventually crashed to the ground, leaving nearly 3,000 people dead. It was the most deadly assault on the United States in history. Another plane flew into the Pentagon and a fourth, headed for the Capitol building, was brought down by its passengers in rural Pennsylvania.
The attacks launched the so-called War on Terror (mostly aimed at Islamic extremists), which has altered the role of the U.S. in the world, limited the freedoms of Americans in this country, and led the country into two wars in the Middle East. A month after Sept. 11, the U.S. began an assault on Afghanistan after its Talban-run government refused to hand over al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was believed to be the mastermind behind the WTC attacks. In 2004, the U.S. invaded Iraq, believing the country had “weapons of mass destruction.” That information was false, but the invasion led to the death of longtime dictator Saddam Hussein. The wars have left almost 7,000 U.S. soldiers dead and over 50,000 wounded, along with the death of hundreds of thousands of Afghanis and Iraqis.
Two of the worst natural disasters in recent years took place during the decade. On Dec. 26, 2004, an earthquake under the Indian Ocean caused a tsunami that left over 230,000 dead in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand. In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, causing the failure of the levee system in the area and leading to the destruction of much of the city. The poorly handled disaster response by the federal government greatly damaged an already wobbling Bush Administration. About 1800 people died as the hurricane swept across the southern delta region.
On Nov. 4, 2008, Barack Obama, a U.S. senator from Illinois, became the first African American to be elected president of the United States. This historic event offered a glimmer of hope after a year of one of the worse financial collapses in the country’s history, caused by the bank industry questionable packaging of troubled home mortgage loans and selling them to other financial institutions. When home prices started to fall, so did many banks and the stock market, resulting in about 9 million Americans losing their jobs. Millions across the country lost their home because the amount they owed on their loan was many times more what the house was now worth.The housing crisis was felt across all aspect of the economy.
The way we communicate was drastically altered in the decade by the increasing use of cell phones, led by the introduction of the iPhone by Apple in 2007 and the explosion of on-line social networking, led by the creation of Facebook in 2004. In the decade, texting replaced e-mail as the most popular means of digital communication, especially among young people, and has only grown more popular since, as has another texting service, Twitter, started in 2006.
The most popular movies of the 2000s included James Cameron’s “Avatar” (2009), which took 3D technology to another level and established all-time records for ticket sales, Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy and the re-emergence of longtime movie star Clint Eastwood as an important filmmaker, with critical and box office successes “Mystic River” (2003) and “Million Dollar Baby” (2004).
Reality shows completely dominated television, while viewership for traditional comedies and dramas continued to drop. Most popular were audience participation shows such as “Survivor,” “American Idol” and “Dancing with the Stars,” along with shows featuring rich, spoiled “housewives,” real estate agents, pawn shop owners, bounty hunters and people desperate to lose weight. About the only dramas that remained on television involved solving crimes.
The music industry continued its collapse as a business as more and more teens managed to find music for free or through cheap downloads, all but killing off CD sales. Female pop singers, led by Beyonce, Fergie, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga and assorted “American Idol” winners, dominated the pop charts, while hip-hop (including Eminem and 50 Cent) continued to be a popular genre. Alternative rock continued to gain in popularity, including the groups Radiohead and the White Stripes. One of the biggest stories in popular music was the death of 50-year-old Michael Jackson, under mysterious circumstances, in 2009.
The biggest story in the book publishing industry was the explosion of young adult fiction—focusing on fantasy stories—led by J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter”series and Stephanie Meyer’s “Twilight” series. Among the serious fiction written during the decade were “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak, “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy and “The Amazing Adventure of Kavalier & Clay” by Michael Chabon.