Past 10 years should be known as 'Snafu Decade'

BY ERIN K. O'NEILL

It started with the doomsday predictions of Y2K. Why were we ever so stupid to think that our computers being set to the wrong date would lead to the fall of Western civilization?

And then came the never-ending presidential election. September 11, 2001. The Enron scandal. Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The war on a noun (terrorism). The Indian Ocean tsunami. The Harry Potter phenomenon. Fox News. Global warming. Movies about the global warming-induced apocalypse. The stock market crash. The burst of the housing bubble. The demise of the journalism industry …

I could continue. Maybe it’s because the only other decade I’m old enough to remember in full was the '90s — in which the most controversial occurrence was the president's affair in the Oval Office with someone who was not his wife — but the happenings in the first decade of the 21st century seem surreal. We bombed the moon. Seriously.

Which leads to the dilemma at hand today: What do we call this hypnologic decade? I was reminded this weekend by The New York Times that we, as a culture, have yet to bestow this decade a moniker: “You know the rules — coin a pithy, reductive phrase that somehow encapsulates the multitude of events, trends, triumphs and calamities of the past 10 years,” the New York Times wrote. For example: The Roaring Twenties, which I think is the only decade where one name stuck.

I have a suggestion: the Snafu Decade. The word “snafu” is a military acronym, standing for "situation normal, all fouled up," and is said to have originated during World War II. That "snafu" is a military term is also really appropriate, since much of the political upheaval in this current decade has been about war and the military. Since 2001, we have lived in a constant state of war that has no foreseeable end.

Nowadays, in more common parlance, it means “a badly confused or ridiculously muddled situation,” which I think perfectly embodies the public mood of the past decade. Not to mention, all those strange goings on I listed at the top have been rather snafu-like.

Looking at the past 10 years has seemed like a very bizarre dream, using whatever amount of hindsight I can muster while technically inside in the decade. Or it's seemed like a Salvador Dali painting, where objects are placed so out of context and in defiance of many of the laws of physics that they transcend any concept of “normal.”

This is a surreal dichotomy, where perceptions of everyday life are colored by the insanity of events outside it. My life — going to school, working for the Missourian and seeing my family at Thanksgiving — is situation normal. It’s everything else that’s all fouled up.

Forty-three days until 2010. Long live the Snafu Decade!

Erin K. O'Neill is a former assistant director of photography and current page designer for the Missourian. She is also a master's degree candidate at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Published in the Columbia Missourian on Wednesday, November 18, 2009.

Health care reform compromises hinder women's access to elective abortions

BY ERIN K. O'NEILL

There was cheering in the bar on Saturday night among my friends when word came via iPhone that health care reform had passed in the U.S. House of Representatives. I run with a predominantly liberal and young crowd, soon to be seeking media jobs that hardly exist anymore and even fewer with benefits. Health care reform is important.

“The bill that the House has produced will provide stability and security for Americans who have insurance; quality, affordable options for those who don't; and lower costs for American families and American businesses,” President Barack Obama said in the Rose Garden Saturday. “This bill is change that the American people urgently need.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Which is why I was so very disappointed to read about the “compromise” on abortion rights that made it in late Saturday: suddenly, the Hyde Amendment ban on using federal funds for abortion, a very legal medical procedure, was not enough to mollify “pro-life” politicians (Democrat and Republican) in the House.

For one thing, I take issue with the term “pro-life.”  It sets up the false dichotomy that if you are in favor of abortion rights for women, you are in some way “pro-death.” That’s ridiculous and unfair.

But I digress: the addition to H.R.3200, also called “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009,” made Saturday would stop federal subsidies for health insurance plans that cover elective abortions. This goes much further than the intent of the Hyde Amendment, and would most likely have the most effect on low- and middle-income women.

Should America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 be signed into law with these provisions, it will put an even larger burden on women seeking abortions. Private health insurance companies, wanting their insurance plans to be eligible for the federal subsidies, will eliminate elective abortion coverage from their plans. The government-run insurance plans, to be created by the legislation, would not be able to cover elective abortions at all (even though people who purchase health insurance through the public option would be paying premiums just like in private insurance).

The supposed solution to this is that women will pay, out of pocket, for “riders” to specifically cover abortions. This is absurd. No woman expects to have an abortion; there is a reason it’s called an unplanned pregnancy. Even if such a rider becomes available from private insurance companies, I opine that it would be prohibitively expensive because so few women would actually purchase it. This supposed solution is essentially worthless.

I have written before that denying federal funds to help women pay for abortions is unfair — it penalizes women who are already economically vulnerable and denies them access to a medical procedure the Supreme Court has ruled they have every right to have. But the so-called compromises of  H.R.3200 are beyond the pale. They have the potential to limit not only women on Medicare’s access to abortion, but women who pay for their own insurance or are covered through their employers.

Obama is right: America needs health care reform. But this cost is unfair to women.

Erin K. O'Neill is a former assistant director of photography and current page designer for the Missourian. She is a master's degree candidate at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Published in the Columbia Missourian on November 11, 2009.

Why we sweat the small stuff

BY ERIN K. O'NEILL

My mom frequently says that I was born to worry: She calls me a “stress monkey” every time I call to complain about school.

I think my mother enjoys telling people about my worrying ways. She recently said that one of her friends no longer inquires about my health but simply asks what I am freaking out about this week. It’s usually something to do with the next assignment that I just don’t think I can finish on time and still get a good grade and thus maintain course to graduation, etc.

I’m fairly certain that everyone has something to worry about, be it money, children, health, terrorism, global warming or the sun’s inevitable expansion and engulfment of the Earth.

And no matter what, it’s probably not all that good for you to worry. My constant worry about failing out of graduate school and ruining my life — which currently manifests itself as insomnia, forgetfulness and a pathological immunity to any deadline — is probably shaving years off my life.

And I am not the only one worrying: According to the National Institutes of Health, 40 million Americans over 18 will meet the criteria for an anxiety disorder each year.

So, why do humans worry?  Like most quirks of the brain, it goes back about 1.8 million years ago to the Pleistocene Epoch and our evolutionary ancestors — early members of the genus Homo — who began evolving bigger brains capable of more complex risk assessment and long-term planning. There’s a conflict in the brain’s priorities: automatically maintaining alertness in case of immediate danger versus thoughtfully analyzing risks. In everyday life, humans need both systems of risk assessment to survive. It’s the mundane version of the “fight or flight” response:  Should you run from danger or stand up and fight it?

By this standard, however, I should be much more terrified of, say, an immediate and physical danger such as getting into a fatal car accident than I am of more abstract dangers such as writing a terrible paper for class. But yes, it is the abstract that I worry about, no matter how bad a driver I really am.

Worry is the space between the unknown and the fear of not having the ability to deal or cope with the unknown.

"It is what humans do with simple fear once it reaches the part of their brain called the cerebral cortex. We make fear complex, adding anticipation, memory, imagination and emotion," Edward M. Hallowell wrote in a "Psychology Today" article titled "Fighting Life's 'What Ifs.'"

Thinking intently about fear doesn’t seem like such a good idea, and I am inclined to say that it is not. The wisdom of the ages certainly doesn’t think worry is positive.

“Worry gives a small thing a big shadow,” a Swedish proverb states.

Mark Twain said, “I’ve seen many troubles in my time, only half of which ever came true.”

And Benjamin Franklin said, “Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.”

“It is what it is,” my mother tells me over the phone.

And after 10 minutes of spewing my worries and insecurities and phobias about graduate school, I usually say, “What? Me? Worried? No way, Mom.”

Erin K. O'Neill is a former assistant director of photography and current page designer for the Missourian. She is also a master's degree candidate at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Published in the Columbia Missourian on Wednesday, November 4, 2009.