TO BE OR NOT TO BE...WHATEVER

By Roger Rosenblatt

If the character of a year is composed of issues and statistics, 1996 looks all right. The money was good, workers got jobs, there was peace in our time. Problems too big for government to handle were acknowledged as such or reduced to manageable size in local pockets. Bill Clinton discovered America, and America discovered in Clinton a repository for a political centrism unimaginative yet safe.

The only things missing in the year were nobility, honor, beauty, moral action and a sense of how to live in the world. But even in America one can't have everything.

Enter Hamlet, mirthless, disheveled and on cue, at the year's end in a Kenneth Branagh movie that resurrected the melancholy, not-quite-corny figure yet again and plunked him in the middle of the aging New World. Here was the eternal young man, immensely gifted and born to high expectations, who had an overwhelming moral problem and either did not know what to do or did and could not do it. His inaction would never have been as poignant had he not been encumbered with the wild idea that a person should do whatever is nobler in the mind.

He tromped about his country, which he no longer recognized, was of it and out of it at the same time, feigned this and that, and intuited the presence of a monstrous lie while harboring only a suspicion of the truth.

He was a royal pain in the ass, a walking conscience, the sort of brooding spirit people need but do not want around. He could not have come to America at a better time.

The year 1996 was mainly notable for what did not happen. At the beginning of the year the U.S. government did not happen. The Republican revolution did not happen. The Whitewater scandal did not bring the President down. Fifteen U.S. Senators did not run for re-election. Colin Powell did not run for the presidency. America did not get involved in a larger war in Bosnia and did not intervene in Burundi, Liberia, Zaire or Sudan. No fuss arose about the illegal fund-raising practices of the Democrats. No fury erupted when it was revealed that Swiss bankers kept Nazi loot stolen from Holocaust victims.

Richard Jewell was not the Atlanta bomber. The cause of the explosion of TWA Flight 800 was not determined. A senior executive at Texaco was found not to have referred to African-American employees as "niggers," as had been reported. The burning of black churches in the South was found not to have been the work of organized bigots, as had been reported. The arrest of a militia group in Montana did not end in a shoot-out.

The Cleveland Browns did not remain in Cleveland. Tiger Woods did not remain an amateur golfer. Mike Tyson did not beat Evander Holyfield. The Chicago Bulls did not lose the N.B.A. championship. The New York Yankees did not not win the World Series.

Last winter everybody talked about the weather but no one did a thing about it.

There was no great movie of the year, no great play, no great fashion statement (no new look, no new old look), no great new television show. There was no major work of fiction, and the novel that drew the most attention was purportedly written by no one, who, when he fessed up to being someone, contended that his subterfuge did not matter.

Tobacco companies took several hard hits, but it did not matter. Richard Kluger's Ashes to Ashes, a comprehensive condemnation of the industry, was published. Liggett and Meyers settled a lawsuit--the first time ever for a tobacco company. A former Brown & Williamson executive turned whistle-blower. The life of Victor Crawford, a former tobacco lobbyist, came to an end from cancer of the throat after he used his final years valiantly lecturing about the evils of smoking. Science proved the direct link between smoking and lung cancer. The end result of such events was that smoking increased among children and young adults.

Liquor advertising sought to return to television; it was said not to matter.

Things that were said to matter included a couple of sexual- harassment cases involving a six-year-old boy in Lexington, North Carolina, and a seven-year-old boy in New York City. Both were accused of harassing girls in their grade by touching and/or kissing them. The seven-year-old kisser's straightforward defense--"because I like her"--was deemed porous.

"I loved you ever, but it is no matter," Hamlet tells Laertes, suggesting that they live in a world where nothing matters.

The celebrated personalities of the year came and went and blurred into one another. Boris Yeltsin became Ted Kaczynski became Princess Di became all three doing the macarena. While one faintly struggled to discern Rene Russo from Sandra Bullock and Michael Eisner from Michael Ovitz, Madonna singled herself out by producing a child. Setting a high financial standard for single motherhood, she exulted, "This is the greatest miracle of my life"--a cry not generally echoed in parts of the country where 48% of the children were born to single mothers. Rosie O'Donnell threw her a baby shower, her pediatrician was madam Heidi Fleiss's father, and her progeny-provider was her personal trainer, who, while deprived of the privileges of Mr. Madonnahood, posed for photos in hopes of a modeling career. Not to be outshone, Michael Jackson also got pregnant.

Hillary was seen but not heard. Roseanne, Rush Limbaugh, Al Sharpton, Joey Buttafuoco and William Bennett were also not heard. Thanks to the continued ministrations of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a few more people were no longer seen or heard. Calvin Klein was not dressed.

Looming above the year's other personalities like a dazed Colossus was the personality of the past quarter-century, O.J. Simpson, along with his enlarging retinue of lawyers, prosecutors, agents, accusers, defenders, police, forensic experts, talk-show hosts and Faye Resnick. Most of the media decided that there was nothing more important for the public to know about--not Russia, not China, not Iran, not much of the U.S.--than O.J. Those with an interest in history could note that America's involvement with O.J. was nearing the length of its involvement in World War II, which was not covered as thoroughly.

Over the din of his civil trial and the competing dins of the year--the Jackie O. auction, the John Jr. wedding, the royal divorce, Kathie Lee's weeping over sweatshops, the thrice-a-week movie openings, the newer-than-new all-news channels, the introduction of McDonald's Arch Deluxe to North America--rose the word of the decade: whatever.

Bob Dole said the word frequently, though he was not the first prominent official to use it. A few years ago, George Bush praised the Czech Republic's Vaclav Havel for "living or dying, whatever, for freedom." Nothing that memorable was said last year. The candidates talked about a "bridge" to here and there. The President's most quoted remark concerned his observation of an archaeological find, that it was "a good-looking mummy. I'd like to date that mummy."

Honor was not mentioned in public. Presidential adviser Dick Morris resigned his post when his life among the prostitutes surfaced. Shortly afterward, so did his literary life. Random House advanced him $2.5 million to write a book about the Clinton White House, but Morris forgot to tell the President about the contract; thus in effect he was paid to eavesdrop on the Oval Office, not unlike Richard Nixon. He was rewarded with a breakfast at the New Yorker magazine, where journalists, ad salespeople and academicians convened to certify his good fortune, popularity, newsworthiness, bankability, celebrity, whatever.

"To be or not to be." Whatever.

It was a very good year for Broadway to revive Chicago--the musical about people who get away with murder.

A young man came to trial for shooting another young man to death after a taping of the Jenny Jones Show. The topic of the show was secret admirers, and the guest, misled to assume that his admirer was a woman, discovered in front of the live audience that it was not. Humiliated and apparently deranged, he later shot the admirer. On the witness stand the opaque Ms. Jones told the jury that she had no idea how her show was produced but was certain they had done nothing wrong.

Elsewhere in television the question was raised as to whether linear structure itself mattered. A much sought-after consultant, Douglas Rushkoff, advised television executives that the programming of the future would consist of "predeconstructed" shows like Beavis and Butt-head, in which the principals are intentionally distanced from their own programs. The ideal would be to remove oneself from experience while engaging in experience and to make experience deliberately fleeting. The structure of the sitcom Seinfeld continued to depend on dozens of fast-moving, bite-size scenes that simulate the effect of surfing while remaining within a single coherent situation, thus pre-empting the viewer's urge to switch channels. Attention spans remained brief. Control remained remote.

"For in the fatness of these pursy times/ Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg," says Hamlet to Gertrude. Pursy means short-winded, in poor condition.

The key to understanding Hamlet is that he could not and did not wish to feel part of "this harsh world," yet he had to operate in it. He retreated to soliloquies in which he could talk honestly to no one near him and speak his mind into space.

Last year more than ever lesser Hamlets parked themselves behind personal computers. The previous year was the first in which the total amount of dollars spent on personal computers exceeded that spent on television sets; the total amount of E-mail exceeded that of surface mail; the total volume of traffic on telephone lines exceeded that of voice traffic. Last year's average PC had more computing power than the 1988 Cray computer. A Ford Taurus had more computing power than the lunar-landing module.

A national tendency toward individuality, independence or seclusion, depending on one's point of view, took hold in a widening variety of activities and businesses. (The trend was initially detected by such different observers as Harvard professor Robert Putnam, who called it bowling alone, and Faith Popcorn, who called it cocooning.) Book publishing was done at home, as well as graphic design, data analysis, all forms of consulting and repair services. The necessity of intermediaries was further removed in such areas as shopping, banking and real estate. Independent rock-'n'-roll record producers competed from their home offices with big-label corporations. People were encouraged to distance themselves from other people; the First National Bank in Chicago charged customers $3 for using a human teller rather than an automated one. In an unusual display of self-reliance, Chicago Bulls forward Dennis Rodman married himself.

Communities became virtual communities; living with one another meant living in touch with one another; the American impulse to create civic associations that so impressed Tocqueville as the central feature of democracy now made its home in cyberspace, which imposed a new class system on the old. Over the disintegrated boundaries of time and space, chess players found fellow chess players, militia groups new members, religions converts, husbands wives, teenagers sex.

In all this there were a few events of the year that touched people's better natures. Moments of silence occurred for Barbara Jordan, Cardinal Bernardin, Joseph Mitchell, James Rouse, George Burns, Claudette Colbert, Ella Fitzgerald and others of value whose deaths recalled what was valuable. At Ella's death the radio played the songs she graced, like Cole Porter's In the Still of the Night, and for a while a voice filled the air that hit every note on the note, sang words that meant something and infused heartbreak with joy.

The downing of TWA Flight 800 brought Americans monumental and collective grief, stopped the meaningless noise for a moment and reduced the isolation. On the beaches of Long Island, near where the plane plunged into the Atlantic, citizens from all backgrounds walked solemnly among the washed-up detritus of the crash--the serving trays, eyeglasses, baseball caps and sweaters--and would not swim in the sorrowful ocean.

Yet even that moment was soon overtaken by the hyped and sodden Summer Olympics in Atlanta, in which heroism and tragedy were defined by a small female gymnast with a twisted ankle.

In late November the New York Times reported the presence of "angst" among the city's important people because the closed-for-repairs Russian Tea Room, a restaurant designed to bring back the glory of the Czars, might never reopen.

"How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,/ Seems to me all the uses of this world," says Hamlet to himself.

Hamlet endures as a character because he is the embodiment of the unsatisfied soul. He is irritating and threatening, a scold, a drag. He is the relentless accuser and reproacher, who cries, "O shame! Where is thy blush?" But he is also part of the people he confronts; he is that "noble and most sovereign reason" within them too, which is why his unnerving presence among them eventually overthrows the status quo and winds up revolutionizing their world.

The status quo in 1996 was supposed to effect a sort of second Era of Good Feelings--a replication of the rich and peaceful eight years of James Monroe's presidency (1816-24). John Quincy Adams, who succeeded Monroe, referred to the era as "the golden age of this republic."

As history proved, the surface self-satisfaction of those years turned out to be just that. Agrarians, like today's lower middle class and working poor, would soon demand greater access to government, complain of the too-close relationship between government and business, rail against monopolies, seek improved public education and generally strive to become a more integral part of America. By listening to their grievances, Andrew Jackson, beaten badly in the election of 1824, was hoisted to the White House four years later on nothing more specific than his boisterous belief in the dignity of the ordinary citizen.

In this second Era of Good Feelings, who knew what player might be waiting in the wings? In an interview with pbs's Jim Lehrer, Newt Gingrich, rising from the dead and re-elected House majority leader, compared himself to Jackson.

For the present, America in 1996 was the answer to every college essay question: it was not what it appeared. Pleased to be living more comfortably than it had in quite a while, it was, under the skin, uncomfortable with its comfort. It was not itself. In spite of the evident prosperity, most people understood there was something rotten in Denmark. Whatever. Along with moderate politics went moderate will, moderate standards of conduct, moderate rage. The country might turn its head away from certain unpleasant, blatant facts, but it knew that it had done nothing about poverty, nothing about persistent racism, nothing for education, for its homeless or for its deserted children, rich and poor. Neither had it indicated that it would use its newly unrivaled power to keep mass murder down in the rest of the world.

It needed Hamlet. It needed a noble person for an ignoble time--someone who kept his eyes on the significant, honorable and right. What was missing in 1996 was not the shimmering personality or the magnificent event or the spectacular work of art; it was the old absurd and necessary dream of the perfectible society. In its place was merely the dream of escape, which Hamlet had too. The difference was that Hamlet made his escape only after he achieved his purpose.

The year ended with NASA planning a manned flight to Mars. People looked forward to it.