Originally published 1999.

Traditionally, I am not a big fan of high school journalists writing angry columns. I usually go for laughs or a straight-forward news type story, but all this millennium talk justifies such a piece

First of all, the millennium hype is exactly that, hype.

Whatever Wall Street ad-wizard came up with the idea for every company, corporation, and organization on the planet to base their entire marketing scheme around the end of a calendar year is probably raking in some fat cash right now.

But I can deal with that. Greed, marketing, and profit are the fundamentals of our all-so-democratic capitalistic society. It’s been like that since the robber-barons of the mid-1800s

However, at least what they did had a tangible result: Rockefeller brought us Standard Oil, and Carnegie provided us with steel. The end of the millennium has only brought us cheesy F-Shirts and close-out gimmicks.

The worst of the problem lies in the simple fact that it is not the end of the millennium. Though I am not the first to point out this glaring fault in this year’s popular culture, none of my comrades’ voices have been heard loud enough. Except, maybe Jerry Seinfeld.

It is a simple fact in life that all matters of great social significance come down to a lesson learned or farce undertaken in either an episode of “Seinfeld” or “The Simpsons”

In honor of the Chanukah season, today, we look at Mr. Seinfeld. In an episode of his classic sitcom, Newman, Jerry’s antagonist and obese lower neighbor, plans a blowout bash for the end of the millennium. His party, dubbed the Newmanium, is planned for Dec. 31, 1999, the same date as this year’s New Year’s celebration.

However, Jerry and the others pointed out the error in Newman’s ways. Since there was no year zero, we began counting the years at one, like most people begin counting. Therefore, this is the 1999th year, making 2000 the 2000th year in record- ed history. Since each millennium consists of 1000 years, then only after the completion of 2000 full years would the millennium actually be over.

Considering this, Dec. 31, 1999, is not the dawn of the new millennium, but simply any regular old New Year’s celebration. Much like Dec. 31, 1998, or Dec. 31, 1997, and so on, and so on.

Unfortunately, only a sparse percentage of the US. and world population is aware of this minor detail. A near panic-like hysteria ensued.

The millennium is everywhere. From a cheesy Jennifer Lopez tune, to the title of the penultimate pop culture vultures, the Backstreet Boys’, newest album. However, there is no point in any of this hype.

Even worse are the psychos who think the world is doomed to end at the close of this, the second millennium. There are many clinical analyses to disprove their paranoia, but among other things tainting the truth of such fears is the sheer fact that it is not the end of the millennium.

I suppose it is rather untimely with only a handful of days left to be bringing up this glaring fault in mass media.