Let’s end the week with Paul Krassner’s predictions for 2004. He has taken
the culture’s pulse for so long and with such accuracy that his prescience should surprise no one.
It’s a tough game, making predictions. He knows that as well as anybody, except for Our
Maximum Leader, who ought to be eating his words about
now for predicting we’d find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Colin Powell’s defense notwithstanding.
So Krassner has done a wise thing. He’s made his predictions wickedly amusing. Here are
some of them:
1. Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant will be cellmates.
2. Charles Manson will be
released on parole and announce that he’s looking forward to spending more time with his
family.
3. Fidel Castro will come out for term limits.
4. Wal-Mart will move its
corporate headquarters to China.
5. Saddam Hussein will be sentenced to a lifetime of
community service.
6. The stunt doubles for Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez will get
married.
7. The world’s tallest building, to be built at the site of the World Trade Center,
will be sponsored by the Target chain, whose corporate logo of a bulls-eye a few floors below the
spire will be visible for miles.
8. The Patriot Act will be expanded to include thought
crimes.
9. The ACLU and PETA will combine forces to fight for the civil liberties of all
animals.
10. Strom Thurmond will be tried posthumously for statutory rape.
11. Jesse
Jackson and Johnny Cochran will compete against each other in a national poetry slam.
12.
Bottled water will be imported from Mars.
13. Monica Lewinsky and Paris Hilton will enter
a convent and become nuns for a reality-tv series.
14. Sen. Joe Lieberman will convert to
Islam.
15. God will at last be given credit for creating evolution.
