Is it my imagination, or are there fewer “year in review” photo essays this year?
In years past, newspaper editors loved these features because you could prepare them in advance and then run them in December while practically the whole newsroom was out on vacation. But the few that made it into print this year conveyed little enthusiasm.
“Competitive cheer is popular yet dangerous,” said The New York Times. It was talking about cheerleading but sounded uncannily like my Depression-scarred grandmother warning that too much laughter leads to tears. (She really used to say that.) “War seemed to be everywhere,” said The Washington Post. Even inside the Post’s own newsroom! “These photographs,” said Time, “allow us to not only prepare for what is to come, but to imagine something better.” Happy New Year.
Maybe I’m projecting. I really didn’t care for 2024. It was the year when Donald Trump recaptured the presidency, when “Zionist” became a term of abuse, and when my favorite local seafood restaurant closed its doors after 79 years in business. The only good thing that happened was the reopening of Notre Dame in Paris, but that occurred too late for inclusion in the year-end photo essays. So did the passing of a genuinely good man, Jimmy Carter.
My own life, I should emphasize, went quite well in 2024, with no significant health problems, a happy family life, a satisfying work life, and more financial stability than I’ve been able to count on during the past decade. (Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be journalists.) Things did not, however, go well in the wider world.
I urged the Democrats to win back the working class, and they didn’t. This magazine, a long-standing supporter of Israel, urged Biden to halt the shipment of offensive weapons to Israel, and he didn’t—not even after the election. Vladimir Putin, on his second try, killed the inspirational dissident Alexei Navalny, and suffered no consequences. Antisemitism surged against both Jews and Arabs (who are Semites too). Brian Thompson, who was the chief executive of United Healthcare, but was also a human being with two teenage children, got shot to death, and his alleged killer was treated like a folk hero. There were 501 mass shootings this year, 39 of them at schools. Who wants to review all that? Not me.
Hollywood gave up on making good movies, with the result that amazingly few domestic films found their way onto critics’ “10 best” lists. The few that did were often stinkers like A Real Pain. A lot of people fussed over Wicked, but I have no appetite at the moment for a film that tells me a villain is really just a wounded victim. Did the other kids in Pretoria make fun of Elon Musk? I don’t give a crap.
The Los Angeles Times announced that its reporters’ work will henceforth be evaluated, publicly, by robots. The New York Times bid farewell to its best columnist, Paul Krugman. Civilian casualties increased 72 percent worldwide, the steepest rise in a decade, thanks to Israeli slaughter in Gaza and Russian slaughter in Ukraine. Climate change continued to lay waste to the planet, with 2024 dethroning 2023 as the hottest year on record. So many in America’s leadership class were too cowardly to endorse Kamala Harris that I had to update my initial tally. Alice Munro died, and was revealed to have been a pretty lousy human being.
But now you’ve got me doing it. I don’t want to remember 2024. I want it to be over. There’s a decent chance 2025 will be worse, but we have nothing to gain by clinging to its predecessor. Let midnight come, then let’s get on with it.