Top 10 Myths About the 1990s

April 5, 1994, 25 years ago: Kurt Cobain, the lead singer of the rock band Nirvana, shoots and kills himself at his home in Seattle. Like several other music personalities of renown, he was 27 years old.

This makes today as good a day as any to do this: Continuing a series that started with my piece on the 1950s, I move on to the 1st decade that I saw in its entirety with adult eyes.

Top 10 Myths About the 1990s

1. Nirvana was the most influential music act of the decade. Seriously? Plenty of acts were more influential. Including a couple of 1980s holdovers.

* Janet Jackson. Almost every dance performer since, male or female, has tried to copy her.

* Public Enemy. Their albums set the tone for hip-hop in the 1990s just as much as Guns N' Roses' did for hard rock.

* Boyz II Men. When you hear the words "'90s R&B," it's almost always referring to an act that is a pale copy of these guys.

* En Vogue. Or a pale copy of these ladies.

* Alanis Morissette. I might have said 4 Non Blondes, Linda Perry's then-band, but if you can think of a song of theirs other than "What's Up?" (a.k.a. "What's Going On"), then you know more about them than I do.

By the time Alanis came out with Jagged Little Pill on June 13, 1995, not only was Kurt Cobain dead, but Nirvana's grunge aesthetic was buried as well. Dave Grohl went on to form Foo Fighters, who sound very different. Pearl Jam moved away from that style as well.

Without Alanis, there's no Pink, no Kesha, no Ariana Grande, no Halsey. Christina Aguilera doesn't do Stripped. Taylor Swift probably remains a country singer.

Her lyrics and attitude influenced black women, too: Without Alanis, we might still have had Beyoncé, Ashanti, Nicki Minaj and Cardi B, but they would have sounded very different. (Bet you any money you like: If Alanis had gone into another line of work, Beyoncé would never have sung "If I Were a Boy.") Did she influence guys, too? Hell, without Alanis, we might have had a very different Eminem.

Alanis Morissette. She is not stupid,

and it was her influence that was contagious.

2. Seinfeld was the greatest TV show of all time. Or the greatest sitcom of all time. Or, at least, the greatest sitcom of the decade.

Left to Right: Michael Richards as Cosmo Kramer,

Jerry Seinfeld as his fictional counterpart,

Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Elaine Benes,

and Jason Alexander as George Costanza

In 2015, I wrote a post about episodes of that show that just wouldn't work today -- either through changes in technology that would change the story completely ("The Parking Garage," for example), or through changes in mores (a lot of episodes that mocked races, ethnicities, and even disabilities).

But that isn't the issue here. A lot of the show's humor doesn't hold up, either. Seriously, how was "The Pez Dispenser" funny? Some supposedly classic episodes were just plain stupid. "The Pony Remark."

Characters who should have been used only once got used too often: Uncle Leo, Kenny Bania, Jackie Chiles, Sue Ellen Mischke. Jerry's parents. George's parents. In contrast, we thankfully only saw Elaine's father and Kramer's mother once each, and we never saw Elaine's mother and Kramer's father, both of whom were presumed to be dead when the show began.

And, like so many other shows -- including, sadly, 2 other NBC sitcoms of the 1990s that were among my favorite shows of all time, Mad About You (originally pitched to viewers as "Seinfeld for married people") and Friends -- the show lasted too long.

In the last 2 seasons, 1996-97 and 1997-98, Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer became parodies of themselves. Each character's best traits receded into the background, and their worst traits got magnified. It was as if the show had become a Saturday Night Live sketch lampooning the show, only instead of 7 minutes, the episodes lasted 22 minutes, and some were damn near unwatchable. And this continued for 2 years until they wrapped it up, in one of the dumbest series finales ever.

3. Rudy Giuliani cleaned up New York City. This is a half-truth -- or maybe even a one-third-truth. It is true that his "broken-windows theory of policing" made a difference. But so did some measures instituted under the previous Mayor, David Dinkins, and his Police Commissioner, Ray Kelly, that were continued under Giuliani and his Commissioner, Bill Bratton.

Rudy Giuliani

Giuliani fired Bratton because he was getting too much of the credit. What Giuliani couldn't do was fire the man most responsible for the drop in crime in New York and every other major city: President Bill Clinton, who signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a bill that was written by Senator from Delaware and future Vice President Joe Biden. Among other things, it gave cities money with the stipulation that they use it to hire more, and more diverse, police officers.

Bill Bratton

Without "the Clinton Crime Bill," now so hated by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and those fools who want him to be President, America's big cities might still be the morasses of crime that they were in the 1970s and '80s. Instead, by the dawn of the 21st Century, most were livable again. Some, such as Detroit, tended to resist such efforts. But most were far better off.

"I feel your pain." He didn't just say it, he did something about it.

Now, in a literal sense, Giuliani did "clean up New York." The amount of trash on the streets went down tremendously. Unfortunately, his 1st 2 successors as Mayor, Michael Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio, have been less than fully receptive to keeping this going, and the trash level has gone back up a bit, although nowhere near what it was under John Lindsay, Abe Beame, Ed Koch and Dinkins.

4. O.J. Simpson was acquitted because the jury wanted to stick it to the police. Certainly, given the Los Angeles Police Department's behavior, particularly that of Detective Mark Furhman, that would have been an understandable thing to do -- if an improper one.

In hindsight, the evidence against O.J. is overwhelming. But the verdict that was announced on October 3, 1995 was correct: "Not Guilty." Why? Because a conviction can only be achieved if all 12 jurors are convinced that the prosecution has proven the defendant's guilt, as the saying goes, beyond a reasonable doubt.

As soon as prosecutor Christopher Darden put Fuhrman, who'd been part of the LAPD's investigative team at the murder scene, on the stand, the case against O.J. was blown. Fuhrman had tampered with evidence, and evidence of his racism was presented.

Moreover, if Fuhrman had not been put on the stand, the bloody gloves would never have been put into evidence, and we never would have found out that, for whatever reason, they didn't fit. That's reasonable doubt, right there. The leader of O.J.'s Dream Team, Johnnie Cochran, was right: "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."

While morally wrong, the verdict was legally correct.

5. The Republican Congress balanced the federal budget, not President Bill Clinton. This one is pure bullshit.

Clinton inherited a federal budget deficit of $255 billion. (In each of these cases, I'm rounding off to the nearest billion.) This was down from the previous year's record of $290 billion, but it still seemed like a number impossible to reduce to zero without cutting spending on things like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, environmental protection and education. You know, the things we need the federal government to spend money on.

Clinton had to raise taxes on people making $200,000 or more to get the deficit down. Why that figure? Because that was the salary of the President of the United States at the time. (Starting with George W. Bush in 2001, it's been twice that, $400,000.) In other words, Clinton decided that he couldn't ask anybody to make a sacrifice that he wasn't willing to make: In essence, he was saying, "If your taxes go up, so should mine."

His Fiscal Year 1995 budget, passed in 1994, left the deficit at $164 billion. It was now 64 percent of what it was. In other words, in just 2 years, he had cut 36 percent of the deficit. And he did this with not one single solitary vote from a Republican member of either house of Congress.

It wasn't all him, of course. His economic team, led by Secretary of the Treasury Lloyd Bentsen (the former Senator from Texas, nominated for Vice President in 1988), laid the groundwork. Various Democratic members of Congress, then holding majorities in both houses, had worked very hard on making Clinton's general priorities specific. But, with Clinton leading, the Democrats did it.

But Republicans lied about how much the tax hike would affect the general public, and won the 1994 Congressional elections. With Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House, and Bob Dole as Majority Leader of the Senate, they demanded steep spending cuts that would have devastated the poor and the middle class. This led to 2 government shutdowns, separated by a "continuing resolution" that kept the previous budget in place, at the end of 1995 and the beginning of 1996.

Left to right -- in physical position, not in policy:

Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton and Bob Dole 

Up to this point, Clinton's every move seemed to involve him saying, "Please, please, please accept this partial, half-loaf measure, so that I can look like I'm doing something, so that I can offend as few people as possible, and I can get re-elected, and I don't go down as a one-term failure like Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George Bush!"

This time, he dug in, and told Gingrich and Dole in the Oval Office, "I don't care if I go down to 5 percent in the approval ratings. If you want that budget signed, you're going to have to get someone else to sit in this chair!" A big statement, especially since Dole had already begun his campaign for 1996.

Clinton gambled that the American people would appreciate his toughness in standing up for their needs, and side with him against Gingrich, who'd been compared to the pre-redemption Ebenezer Scrooge, and Dole, who'd been called "the Darth Vader of American Politics" for his dark demeanor and quick but nasty wit.

Clinton won his gamble -- sort of. By seeing Dole win the Republican nomination, and then essentially making Gingrich appear to be Dole's partner in campaigning, rather than the actual Vice Presidential nominee, quarterback-turned-Congressman Jack Kemp, Clinton was able to win a personal landslide, but the Republicans kept control of both houses of Congress.

All this meant that, through 1995, '96 and '97, Clinton, Gingrich, Dole, and Dole's successor as Senate Minority Leader, Trent Lott, had to make compromise after compromise. But it worked: The Fiscal Year 1998 Budget had a surplus.

Let me spell out what that meant. In 2 years, with no Republican help at all, Clinton reduced the deficit by an average of 18 percent a year. In 3 years, with Republican "help," the deficit was reduced by an average of 21 percent per year. Does that sound like Republican control of Congress made a big difference? No, it doesn't.

It's also worth remembering that every budget submitted by Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush had a deficit higher than the one Reagan inherited from Democratic President Jimmy Carter in 1981, $79 billion; that Clinton's '95 Budget had a lower deficit, $164 billion, than 8 of the 12 Reagan and Bush budgets; and that Clinton's '98 Budget was the 1st of 4 in a row with a surplus.

Since then: Republican President George W. Bush eventually jacked the deficit up to $1.412 trillion; that Democratic President Barack Obama got it down to $438 billion, a reduction of 69 percent; and that Republican Donald Trump has gotten it back up to $984 billion, without the spending necessary to stave off a recession.

6. Cal Ripken's playing streak and the Mark McGwire vs. Sammy Sosa home run chase brought baseball back from the Strike of '94.

No question, Cal's pursuit of Lou Gehrig's record of 2,130 consecutive games played was a big story that got people paying attention to baseball in 1995. No question, "The Mac and Sammy Show" provided big headlines for the sport in 1998. But did they "bring baseball back," or "save baseball"?

Let's look at the attendance figures for 1994, before the Strike, and 1995, after it. Keep in mind: The Washington Nationals were still the Montreal Expos, and the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Tampa Bay Rays did not begin play until 1998. The numbers involved are the average attendance each team had per home game in those seasons.

And this was before Interleague Play, so Ripken's appearances would only have been in American League ballparks.

TEAM	1994	1995	% Difference
Baltimore Orioles	46,097	43,080	-7.0
Boston Red Sox	27,743	30,061	8.4
California Angels	24,010	24,289	1.2
Chicago White Sox	32,027	22,358	-43.2
Cleveland Indians	39,127	39,482	0.9
Detroit Tigers	20,427	16,402	-24.5
Kansas City Royals	23,739	17,183	-38.1
Milwaukee Brewers	22,650	15,114	-49.9
Minnesota Twins	23,704	14,690	-61.4
New York Yankees	29,500	23,414	-26.0
Oakland Athletics	22,159	16,312	-35.8
Seattle Mariners	25,052	22,471	-11.5
Texas Rangers	39,725	27,582	-44.0
Toronto Blue Jays	49,287	39,256	-25.6

So, baseball fandom took a pretty big hit -- including in Baltimore itself, Ripken's home city. So the idea that he and his streak "saved" baseball or "brought it back" is ludicrous.

What about Mac & Sammy? Interleague Play had arrived, but both of them played in the National League. Let's compare 1997, the season before McGwire hit 70 and Sosa hit 66, to the magic season that followed -- again, excepting Arizona and Tampa Bay, who only started in 1998:

TEAM	1997	1998	% Difference
Atlanta Braves	42,563	41,498	-2.6
Chicago Cubs	27,036	31,988	18.3
Cincinnati Reds	22,099	22,144	0.2
Colorado Rockies	48,067	46,806	-2.7
Florida Marlins	29,044	21,610	-74.4
Houston Astros	25,263	30,252	19.7
Los Angeles Dodgers	40,979	38,139	-7.4
Milwaukee Brewers	18,125	22,365	23.4
Montreal Expos	18,607	11,295	-64.7
New York Mets	21,916	28,246	28.9
Philadelphia Phillies	18,402	21,182	15.1
Pittsburgh Pirates	20,921	19,271	-8.6
San Diego Padres	25,794	31,555	22.3
San Francisco Giants	20,945	23,773	13.5
St. Louis Cardinals	32,772	38,971	18.9

It's worth pointing out that 1998 was the 1st season in the NL for the Milwaukee Brewers; the Montreal Expos were already in their "lame duck" period; and explanations for the 1993 expansion teams: The Colorado Rockies had moved from the 75,000-seat Mile High Stadium to the 50,000-seat Coors Field in 1995; and the ownership of the Florida Marlins had let so many players from their 1997 title go, and the team went from winning the World Series to losing 108 games.

And, of course, the increases of over 18 percent in both St. Louis and Chicago can be attributed to McGwire and Sosa, respectively.

But the Cubs' increase can also be attributed to their having made the Playoffs. Same with the big increases in Houston, San Diego and San Francisco. The Mets added Mike Piazza, and nearly made the Playoffs. Atlanta, Colorado, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh actually had drops, which can't easily be explained, especially since Atlanta made the Playoffs.

So, for every team except their own (and, for Sosa, we can even say, "including his own"), a case can be made that the chase for 62 homers didn't help much.

Now, let's put it all together, comparing each team's per-game home attendance from 1994, the Strike year, to that from 1998, "the best baseball season ever":

TEAM	1994	1998	% Difference
Anaheim Angels	24,010	31,102	29.5
Atlanta Braves	46,077	41,498	-11.0
Baltimore Orioles	46,097	45,488	-1.3
Boston Red Sox	27,743	28,937	4.3
Chicago Cubs	31,276	31,988	2.3
Chicago White Sox	32,027	16,965	-88.8
Cincinnati Reds	31,627	22,144	-42.8
Cleveland Indians	39,127	42,806	9.4
Colorado Rockies	57,570	46,806	-23.0
Detroit Tigers	20,427	17,400	-17.4
Florida Marlins	32,922	21,610	-52.3
Houston Astros	26,457	30,252	14.3
Kansas City Royals	23,739	18,686	-27.0
Los Angeles Dodgers	41,457	38,139	-8.7
Milwaukee Brewers	22,650	22,365	-1.3
Minnesota Twins	23,704	14,395	-64.7
Montreal Expos	24,543	11,295	-117.3
New York Mets	21,739	28,246	29.9
New York Yankees	29,500	36,416	23.4
Oakland Athletics	22,159	15,214	-45.6
Philadelphia Phillies	38,166	21,182	-80.2
Pittsburgh Pirates	20,042	19,271	-4.0
St. Louis Cardinals	32,841	38,971	18.7
San Diego Padres	16,735	31,555	88.6
San Francisco Giants	28,405	23,773	-19.5
Seattle Mariners	25,052	32,735	30.7
Texas Rangers	39,725	36,141	-9.9
Toronto Blue Jays	49,287	30,300	-62.7

So we have 10 teams gaining fans, and 18 teams losing fans. So if baseball was eventually "saved" or "brought back," it wasn't done by 1998, and it wasn't Cal Ripken, or the livelier ball, that did it.

7. The Yankees won their World Series because of steroids. This one is ridiculous. Let's look at the Yankees that have been accused:

* Alex Rodriguez. He didn't arrive until 2004, and only won 1, in 2009, right after he was first accused, so, clearly, he was being tested that year. He didn't fail any tests. In fact, he's never been publicly revealed to have failed a test. He confessed to having used before he was a Yankee, and the accusations after 2009 were well after. Whatever A-Rod took, it didn't help the Yankees win the 2009 World Series.

* Roger Clemens. He didn't arrive until 1999, so even if he were guilty, that still leaves the 1996 and 1998 titles in the clear. But, so far, he is the one player ever to get taken to court over it and beat the charge. He beat the charge because the evidence simply wasn't there. "Innocent until proven guilty," and no one has ever proven this charge. His other character flaws, while unacceptable, are not relevant to this particular discussion.

* Andy Pettitte. He said he used it briefly in 2002, to come back from an injury sooner. The Yankees did not win the Pennant in 2002. Compared to the bigger names, this is a misdemeanor.

* Gary Sheffield. He didn't arrive until 2004, and left after 2006. There were no Yankee Pennants in those seasons.

* Jason Giambi. He didn't arrive until 2002, and left after 2008. There was just 1 Yankee Pennant in that stretch, in 2003, and the Yankees lost the World Series.

But it goes further than that. The truth is, no team was hurt more by the use of performance-enhancing drugs than the Yankees. Not their own, but their postseason opponents':

* As far as I know, the 1995, 2000 and 2001 Seattle Mariners were clean, but former Yankee Jay Buhner sure "fits the steroid profile." It worked in 1995, but not in 2000 or 2001.

* Ivan Rodriguez, on the 1996, 1998 and 1999 Texas Rangers; on the 2003 Florida Marlins; and on the 2006 Detroit Tigers. With Texas, it didn't work; with Florida and Detroit, it did.

* Rafael Palmeiro and Brady Anderson, and possibly others, on the 1996 Baltimore Orioles. It didn't work. But if you throw in the 1997 AL Eastern Division race, it did.

* John Rocker on the 1999 Atlanta Braves. It didn't work.

* Mike Piazza and possibly others on the 2000 New York Mets. It didn't work.

* The aforementioned Jason Giambi, his brother Jeremy Giambi, and Miguel Tejada on the 2000 and 2001 Oakland Athletics. It didn't work.

* Matt Williams definitely, Luis Gonzalez probably, and maybe others on the 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks.

* As far as I know, the 2002 Anaheim Angels and the renamed 2005 Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim were clean. But if they did use, it worked.

* David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez (both caught), and several others (suspected), on the 2003-16 Boston Red Sox. It didn't work in the Division races of 2003, '04, '05, '06, '09, '10, '11, '12, '14, '15 and '16; or in the '03 AL Championship Series. It did work in the Division races of '07 and '13, and, most notably, in the '04 ALCS. (Whether it's still working for them since Ortiz' retirement is unclear, but, with a New England sports team and cheating, the records show that this is one area where guilt should be presumed.)

Now, as you can see, it failed as often as it succeeded. But it succeeded enough times to be glaring.

If anything the Yankees did from 1996 onward is "illegitimate," then what their opponents did is even more so.

8. Bill Clinton was impeached because he committed crimes. Bullshit. The Republicans had 55 members of the U.S. Senate. They needed 12 Democrats to make 67, a 2/3rds majority, to convict and remove Clinton, on the charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

They got 50 votes on obstruction of justice. They got 45 votes on perjury. In other words, given the evidence that was available to them, they couldn't even get a majority to agree that the charges had merit, even though they held the majority.

It is likely that a big chunk of those 45 Senators who voted "Guilty" on both counts knew that the evidence was ridiculous, but voted to convict anyway, simply because they hated Clinton.

They hated him for embarrassing them in 2 elections. And for being a Southern man who betrayed the South's conservative ways and became liberal. And for smoking pot. And for "dodging the draft." And for having a more interesting sex life than they did. (Certainly, it wasn't for the sex itself: Plenty of Republicans cheated on their wives.) And for marrying Hillary.

The only previous President to be impeached was Andrew Johnson. He was acquitted by 1 vote. One of the Republicans who voted to acquit him was James Grimes of Iowa, who agreed with Johnson's contention that the law he was charged with violating, the Tenure of Office Act, was unconstitutional, and that he should not be held by it. (In 1886, after Johnson's death, the Supreme Court ruled that the law was, in fact, unconstitutional.)

Grimes didn't like Johnson, but said, "I cannot agree to destroy the harmonious working of the Constitution for the sake of getting rid of an unacceptable President." Ten months later, Johnson left office, incredibly unpopular, and a failure. Grimes knew they were getting rid of him soon enough.

And he knew that hating a President was not enough of a reason to remove him from office. He knew there had to be evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the President had committed a crime. He respected this fact.

The Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives in late 1998 did not. Enough of the Republicans in the U.S. Senate in early 1999 did so that Clinton not only stayed in office for another 2 years, until the end of his 2nd term, but that most of his opponents looked like hyper-partisan fools.

9. Bill Clinton was offered Osama bin Laden on a silver platter, and he turned it down. This was one of the most insidious lies told by conservatives after the 9/11 attacks, as a way of making Clinton look responsible for the attacks and George W. Bush like a better President in comparison.

It is true that Clinton tried to kill bin Laden in mid-August 1998, in retaliation for the African embassy bombings a few days earlier. He even interrupted a "vacation" to do it. This was something Bush would not do 3 years later, when given a President's Daily Briefing titled "bin Laden determined to attack inside U.S."

Of course, there's a reason I put "vacation" in quotation marks: Clinton had just testified before Special Counsel Kenneth Starr in the matter of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, and had decided to get away from it all with Hillary and daughter Chelsea.

The scene of Chelsea holding hands with each of them as they walked to Marine One, the Presidential helicopter, quickly became iconic: She acted as a buffer between them, because, at that point, Hillary understandably wanted nothing to do with him. The reconciliation would be long and difficult, and Bill completely supporting Hillary's nascent political career helped.

August 18, 1998: Smiling, at least for the sake of the camera:

Bill and Chelsea. Not smiling: Hillary. Not sure about Buddy the dog.

But, in August 1998, Clinton launched the attack, and, according to intelligence sources, hurt bin Laden's strike capability, but didn't eliminate it; and missed the man himself by 2 hours. Still, it was the right thing to do.

Republicans and their conservative allies in the media, legitimate and otherwise, didn't see it that way. They said he was trying to distract people from his "crimes." They were more interested in investigating Bill Clinton's sex life than they were in upholding national security.

On October 12, 2000, the destroyer USS Cole was attacked by al-Qaeda. Clinton was then in the last few weeks of his Presidency, and was determined to get a final peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. He refused to retaliate: He thought that retaliating for the attack on the Cole would wreck the peace process.

This time, he gambled and lost: Yassir Arafat got everything he wanted, and still wanted "the right of return," and, for the Israeli delegates, that was a dealbreaker. Had Clinton told him this, and retaliated for the Cole, he would have gotten the same lousy result in the peace process, and it might have been enough to save Vice President Al Gore in the election a few days later. Instead, he lost the peace process, and Gore "lost" the election.

As Bush's pursuit of bin Laden after 9/11 seemed to become less and less important to him, and his war in Iraq more and more important, until he launched it, "won" it, and then lost the peace, conservatives -- including Fox News anchor Sean Hannity -- told the story about how, in 1996, before most Americans had even heard of Osama bin Laden and his group al-Qaeda, Sudan had "offered bin Laden on a silver platter," and Clinton had turned this offer down. Thus allowing the Khobar Towers attack of 1996, the embassy attacks of 1998, the Cole attack of 2000, and the 9/11 attacks of 2001.

If this were true, it would have made Clinton look like an absolute fool at best, and a near-traitor at worse.

It was not true. As the 9/11 Commission found out, and FactCheck.org repeated: bin Laden was in Sudan in April 1996, but nobody in America yet had any idea that he was going to try anything against us. Sudan was an international pariah, and it wanted to get back on America's good side. The Clinton Administration suggested deporting bin Laden back to his homeland, Saudi Arabia. But the Saudis refused to take him.

The Administration consulted with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who determined that there was, at that time, no legal basis for the U.S. to hold bin Laden. They knew he was a financier of terrorists, but had not yet directly done anything to harm American citizens. So if Clinton is to blame, so, too, was the FBI.

But the FBI has to obey the law, too, every bit as much as it has to uphold it. At the time, legally, there was nothing they could do, and nothing the American government could do, and therefore nothing that President Clinton could do. Hindsight is 2020, but if Sudan had "offered bin Laden on a silver platter," we couldn't have accepted the platter.

So Sudan simply expelled him from their country, and he ended up in Afghanistan, from which he ordered what became known as the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI, did not get an indictment for bin Laden until after the embassy attacks in August 1998. If bin Laden had been offered at that time, it would have been, legally and morally, a completely different story. But that didn't happen.

As Clinton later angrily said in an interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News, when Wallace compared his handling of bin Laden with Bush's, "I tried. They did not try." If you want to blame Clinton for not getting the job done, go ahead. If you want to blame him for not doing everything he could do, fine -- but cite the Cole part of the story. But if you blame him for not accepting the "silver platter," you're a goddamned liar.

And if you really want to blame a President for allowing the 9/11 attacks to happen, and you don't want it to be Bush, for ignoring the daily briefing of August 2001, then blame Ronald Reagan. He's the one who funded the Mujahideen rebels in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, and many of them, including bin Laden, became either al-Qaeda or Taliban.

If Ronald Reagan had never been President, the Berlin Wall would still have fallen, and the World Trade Center would not have.

10. After the hippie fashions of the late 1960s, and the even more ridiculous ones of the 1970s and the 1980s, the 1990s were an improvement when it came to fashion and hair.

I'm not so sure. This was the era when tattoos got out of control, and bodypiercing became all the rage.

Let me state for the record: I have no tattoos, and I have never pierced any part of my body. At least, not on purpose. Accidentally, that's another story.

Let me close with one last myth: The 1990s were the last good decade. After all, we had, for the majority of the decade, peace, prosperity, good sports, decent music, and a smart, cool President.

But are the 1990s the last good decade? So far, they are. But it doesn't have to stay that way. Actually, if Donald Trump is constitutionally removed from office before December 31, 2019, the 2010s would be redeemed. (UPDATE: He wasn't, but he was defeated in the 2020 election.)