Wednesday, June 24, 1998

Doomsday -- at the top of the hour

By Bob Greene

COLUMBUS, Ohio ---- In the airport on the way here, they were changing the Doomsday Clock.

Not in the airport itself, but on the television monitors that were suspended from the ceiling at just about every gate. Travelers couldn't miss it; on one of those CNN sub-networks, this one targeted at air travelers, a physicist from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists pushed the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock five minutes closer to midnight. When he had finished, the clock read 11:51.

This was no small thing. The Doomsday Clock, created in 1947, has since its inception been intended to tell the world how close it is moving to nuclear annihilation. The atomic scientists are people who ought to know -- and in response to nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, and "the failure of the nuclear powers to significantly reduce their huge arsenals," the clock was being advanced toward nuclear midnight.

In the airport, travelers sipped from cans of soda pop, munched on cinnamon buns, read the sports pages and talked on cellular phones. On the TV screen -- on every TV screen in the concourse -- the Doomsday Clock was adjusted in an unhappy direction; in the airport, a song by Wu-Tang Clan bled out of a young man's Walkman earphones, and a teen-age girl read an article about what the future might hold for the remaining Spice Girls.

Whistling past the graveyard?

Not really. The graveyard is brightly lit these days, the graveyard is lined with concession stands and gift shops. The graveyard is made less ominous because of cheery tunes coming out of the ceiling -- the graveyard has no fences, no gates, the bad news of the world is delivered everywhere, right along with brain-soothing diversions and harmless fun. Doomsday Clock? There are days when Americans can be excused for thinking the Doomsday Clock is ticking all the time, in every town and neighborhood. It's not their fault.

When the Doomsday Clock was created in 1947, this was a very different country. No television, certainly no 24-hour news channels; the Doomsday Clock appeared on the cover of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (it still does), and it was quite a potent symbol. Like all news, it existed in a vacuum of sorts -- in its own precinct of darkness and doubt. You might visit, but you could soon leave.

Today? News -- and most news is, by definition, bad -- is a constant uninvited guest, the most unpleasant man who stayed for the longest dinner ever known. You don't make an appointment to visit the Walter Cronkite news at the end of the workday, or to study the evening paper as you take your suit jacket off and relax in your easy chair as the sun goes down; news is like weather now, it's part of the atmosphere, it finds you whether or not you want to be found -- news is music, grating, discordant music, piped into your ears regardless of what your wishes may be.

This in itself is new -- this new we-subscribe-to-you, you-don't-subscribe-to-us incarnation on the part of the news companies. The Doomsday Clock is heading toward midnight? Don't be too hard on the airport travelers for not snapping to attention -- on that same day they had already heard about schoolyard armed violence, about the funeral of a man who was dragged to his death because of the color of his skin, about a couple charged with putting the body of their 16-month-old daughter in a pot of battery acid, about NATO planning a show of force in the skies over Albania and Macedonia.

Every day is doomsday, or so the public is led to believe. The news of the world may always have been depressing, but it mostly lived in its own enclaves -- you visited it, it didn't visit you. Once in a great while news so terrible would occur that everyone stopped in their tracks, everyone seemed to be made aware of it at once. That is what separated big news from small news -- the biggest news, the worst news, went out and found its audience.

All news does that now. The technology allows it, and the news companies make sure the technology is well utilized. Doomsday Clock? Everyone's wristwatch might as well be a Doomsday Clock -- the doomsday message is that regular, that routine. You can count on it -- you can set your watch by it. The people in the airport paid scant notice as the hand of the Doomsday Clock was moved. Minutes later, the baseball scores came on.

Chicago Tribune