Why newspaper reporters are cynics
By BILL DUNCAN Admittedly, there are some strange goings on in the world today. Earthquakes, tsunamis, severe storms and prophecies about the end of the world coming in the year 2012, based on an ancient Mayan calendar. One of my doomsday readers sent me a 47-page document exploring the mystery of 2012 with a recommendation I go see Mel Gibson’s movie, “Apocalypto,” a horror film about this Mayan prophecy. The kind soul that sent me the 47 pages also sent me a list of ten signs of this happening, noting the following: The Haiti earthquake, the preparation of an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the new world order, the global financial crisis, friction between the U.S. and Israel, China’s growing economic and military might, the collapse of global currency, national ID initiatives, U.S. national debt and finally inflation. Sounds like the bad news TV commentators give us nightly. Sorry folks, but I can’t buy into this doomsday philosophy. There is just too much to live for. My sainted mother would say what you worry about the most never happens, so maybe I should join the handwringers. Instead, I think I will trust in the Nicene Creed I learned in catechism, the one that if you read the long version ends with the words, “the world to come.” Besides, if you lived in Southern California in the 1960s and read my byline, I am the infidel who kept the world twirling thus far. I was a reporter in the 1960s working in California for the Long Beach Press-Telegram when a Long Beach preacher worked his congregation into believing they were the chosen few and led them out to the Anza-Borrego desert near San Diego to be taken up in the Rapture. My editor thought this would be headline news, so he sent me to the beam-up site to report the event. The Anza-Borrego Desert, is just that, a desert. The rendezvous with destiny was to take place at dawn, so the pilgrims gathered on the desert floor, built a large bonfire against the cold desert night, but I was refused permission to join them and had to wait in my car alongside the road. Like the apostles of whom it is said, the spirit was willing but the flesh is weak, I fell asleep and when I awoke the chosen few were still earthbound and packing up to leave. Dawn had come and the passover was evident. No one would talk. I drove to the nearest telephone, called my city desk with my report and was commanded to return to a place still standing called Long Beach, Calif. I was greeted with a newspaper story in print with only the newspaper’s masthead and a second coming headline that read: The World Came to an End Today, under my byline. The rest of the newspaper was blank pages. So it came to pass that I never missed a deadline. I went home and promptly slept in a comfortable bed. Meanwhile back at the newspaper, life went on and the next Sunday, I was assigned to attend the church where the end of the world was first predicted. The minister had placed an ad during the week saying he would reveal why the Rapture was denied his followers. That Sunday I sat in the back pew and heard the preacher say an infidel, sent by the devil had been among the chosen few in the desert. Because of this, the Rapture could not happen but the preacher had been promised a later departure time. He concluded with something I think I had heard before, “this time it would not be announced and his followers would know neither the time nor the place.” From all the Halleluiahs that were said, I figured I must have been the infidel to whom the preacher referred. If I stick around long enough, maybe the earth will be safe through January 2013. After all, folks the world held together despite the predictions of Y2K. Perhaps this new prediction is like one cartoonist described it, the Mayan stone carver simply ran out of space while chiseling his calendar and stopped at the winter solstice Dec. 21, 2012 — doomsday. (Bill Duncan can be reached at bduncan@nrtoday.com or by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470)
The Elderstatesman