Even more than usual, there was a lot of nonsense in mainstream media this year--silly stories from Florida dominated while important local and world developments often went unremarked. Here's a sampling of the year's most overrated and underrated stories:

The Overrated

Presidential election mania, of course, ruled, and a number of tangents rose up to seize various moments: the Bradley and McCain campaigns, when neither ever had a chance of securing their parties' nominations; the Nader "spoiler" factor, when there were many other factors far more injurious to Gore's foundering campaign; Bush's "stupidity," a liberal conceit when Bush not only is--while no genius--as competent as most Americans would be, but is quite possibly dyslexic (Vanity Fair made a convincing case); the meager differences between Bush and Gore, when literally scores of issues on which they essentially agreed went unexamined; one or another Florida county's recount process, when the US Supreme Court never had any intention of letting Gore become President; and, of course, the extended infomercials called party conventions.

But easily the worst, most overrated story of the year was Elian Gonzales. Custody kidnappings happen ALL THE TIME. This one was different only because it involved--stop the presses!--CUBAN-AMERICANS WHO HATE CASTRO! Oh, for the column inches wasted on such idiocy...

Some Underrated Stories

* NASDAQ crash: For all the weeping over dotcoms, this was far more important--the most visible of many signs that the Wall Street party is over. What does that mean for the tens of millions of Americans without job security, health insurance, or safety nets? We never heard.

* National Missile Defense: We heard a bit, nationally, about the failed tests, but not about the hundreds of billions of dollars already spent, the extensive evidence that it will never work, the destabilizing impact NMD would have on the world, or, locally, Boeing's role as a primary NMD pork recipient.

* Paying Down the Debt: While Gore and Bush wrangled over how much of the $4.6 trillion federal budget surplus to devote to tax cuts or new spending, almost nobody reported that nearly half of it has already been taken off the table, without debate, in response to Wall Street's self- serving demands to pay down the national debt. This is the mother of all budget issues.

* Enforcement of Laws Gutted: In all the local media glee over the likely appeal court overturning of the Microsoft anti-trust verdict, few have noted that this effectively means the probable end of anti-trust law. If a clear-cut case of monopolistic practices like Microsoft can't be won, in the face of a small army of lobbyists and lawyers and a rapidly shifting market, no future prosecutions are likely to even be attempted. Similarly, while liberals went into paroxyms of panic over George W. Bush's pollution philosophies, few noticed that the Clinton/Gore Administration had already largely defunded the enforcement arms of the EPA and other agencies. Locke pulled the same trick in Washington state. The laws may still be on the books, but so what?

* Allenworld: Paul Allen's aggressive business diversification has included buying up much of South Lake Union and Union Square, but there's been much, much more. His dovetailing acquisitions and start-ups in media, sports, hi-tech, real estate, education, and various other sectors haven't even come close to being catalogued by a fawning local media. How much is too much?

* U.S.S. Cole: While the State Department and networks keep yelping, without any evidence, that Osama bin Laden was somehow responsible for the bombing of the USS Cole, both have downplayed evidence that the bomb components had been traced to the Yemeni government itself. Explosives used in the bombing are available only to governments, and were far more sophisticated than anything available on the black market. We also didn't hear that the bombing was, essentially, an act of war--committed by pan- Arabists against a ship on its way to enforce sanctions against Iraq that continue, without US media attention, to kill thousands of civilians, mostly children, each month.

* Middle East complexities: Invariably, in the latest wave of Palestinian protests, Palestinians were represented as a monolith "controlled" by Yassar Arafat--when Arafat's thuggish Palestinian Authority is nearly as reviled by many Palestinians as Barak or Netanyahu. The US media also gave its usual free pass to Israeli government policies that were deeply controversial in the rest of the world--airing far fewer critical voices than even media within Israel itself. Instead, not only was the Israeli government exempt from scrutiny, but so was the US government's self-annointed role as an "impartial" arbiter of the conflict. (This issue's "One Planet" column is a good example of what mainstream media could easily do, but chooses not to.)

Taliban: The world's most horrific human rights violations are occuring against 51% of Afghanistan's population--its women--while the world, and especially the US, watches benignly.

Border Militarization and INS Abuses: The US is in a state of war against anybody with a brown skin, as any comparison of the Canadian and Mexican borders will attest. The US seems to be working hard to prove the anarchist point that national borders themselves are an inherently totalitarian concept. Meanwhile, INS outrages against Mexican nationals and Chicanos alike are a major issue in Washington state, but our local media ignored it.

Et Cetera: Oh, there's lots more: global warming (and Clinton Administration intransigence), violations of the Voting Rights Act in Florida and elsewhere, consumer debt, declining civil liberties, the prison- industrial complex, Cuba's future, Korean reconciliation, Siberian deforestation, genetically engineered food, biopiracy...the list goes on. Seek out alternative media, and don't believe everything you read in 2001. Happy new year!