No one would ever claim that 2017 was a slow news year. In fact, so much happened that events that seemed like a big deal at the time have already faded from our memories, crowded out by even bigger stories. When the very fabric of western democracy seems threatened, it’s hard to recall a simpler time – last spring – when everybody was all worked up about Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi advert.
Here then, are just some of the big stories you may have forgotten to remember from 2017.
Inaugural addresses are typically a time for memorable, hopeful rhetoric about the challenges facing the nation. John F Kennedy told Americans to: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Franklin D Roosevelt said: “The only thing we to have to fear is fear itself.” Donald J Trump, on the other hand, chose to deliver a scripted rant about what he called “American carnage”: “Rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge.”
When it finally came to an end, George W Bush – no orator himself – was reported to have said: “That was some weird shit.” It was, but there was much weirder to come – so much weirder that the speech now seems comparatively statesmanlike, as long as you don’t compare it with any other inaugural address ever.
Was that really this year? To be fair, all the voting does tend to get a bit blurred: the previous general election was only in 2015, and then there was that whole referendum thing the next summer. One could be forgiven for forgetting that last spring’s snap election was that recent. It’s not as if it was without incident. An overconfident Theresa May saw her healthy majority wiped out, Jeremy Corbyn turned a narrow defeat into a sort of victory, Nick Clegg lost his seat and Vince Cable got his back.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
