What went wrong? We shouldn't be nearly so screwed up right now.

We Americans never put enough stock in The Fall.

You know . . . Adam, Eve, serpent, apple, exile, mayhem, suffering, death.

WE NEVER PUT ENOUGH FAITH in mankind's ability to screw up, be dumb, grow obtuse, get distracted, misplace our priorities and not work and play well with others. Tomorrow is always another day; the New Jerusalem is always one scientific breakthrough and one measure of enlightenment away. And what's amazing is that, throughout our history, it's been some of the best and brightest American minds that haven't been able to discern the skunk hiding out in the Sweetness and Light aisle.

If you don't believe me, I'll sell you a round-trip ticket from New York to Los Angeles on the guided-missile flight of your choice -- coast to coast in 30 minutes or less. I've heard the landings can be a bit rough, though.

Personally, I prefer the transcontinental high-speed tubes, myself.

WHAT MADNESS am I speaking, you may be asking. It's not really madness, per se, it's just that I have been reading descriptions of what it's like in 2007.

Trouble is, these descriptions were written in 1956 and early 1957 by national and Omaha luminaries, soothsaying compiled by the management of what would become the city's third television station and sealed in the cornerstone of the new KETV studios then going up at 27th and Douglas. And this fall, on the 50th anniversary of Channel 7's taking the airwaves, current management popped the top on the cornerstone and brought the rosy forecasts face to face with the cold, hard facts of life.

In the real 2007.

I WONDER how the spiffy 1957-model portable television fared the 50 years it sat in its Lucite box in the concrete box in the studio wall.

Probably better than most of the predictions, being that vacuum tubes and resistors, capacitors and transformers don't have to worry about The Fall. Or forgetting about the true scope of its reality, or that paradise will remain lost until kingdom come. Here's a sampling of what we were supposed to be like now:

Mari Sandoz. author

With the vast increase in population, particularly semi-urban, the problem of long-range travel had to be solved, made swift and made safe. By the dawn of 2007 this has been well-started, with the fatalities held down to not over one for every ten million passengers carried in the transcontinental high speed tubes. Already passengers from either coast can reach Omaha in less than an hour. Soon the inter-continental tubes will be carrying passengers to Europe and to the blossoming regions of the new Asia with the same dispatch.


Morris E. Jacobs, Bozell & Jacobs advertising

Guided missile passenger flights will be carrying passengers from New York to Los Angeles in 30 minutes. Omaha's Airport Commission will be studying financing for a missile landing field near the city so that Omahans may journey to either coast by missile.

Atom-powered public transportation.

(snip)

Central heating plants will control all public sidewalks in the city. Snow will automatically be melted, and pedestrians will walk within a "box" of heated air.

(snip)

Life expectancy will be increased to 90 years -- as science finds cures for cancer and most forms of heart disease. Complete cure for cancer.

Education will be free and compulsary [sic] through college, and nearly half of America's young people will continue with graduate studies.


The Rev. Carl M. Reinert, S.J.,
president, The Creighton University

Speaking as a clergyman may I dare to predict that after passing through a decade or so of ultra materialistic living we Americans will once again set our sights on things of higher worth and will come to appreciate the greater worth of spiritual values and, though we may find it necessary to defend our position at the cost of many lives, there will stand among us as monuments to our sacred beliefs ancient and new edifices of worship, proclaiming to all who may threaten our borders that it is still God in whom we trust and His Son in whom we find our promise of salvation.

At the turn of the century we will yet be America the beautiful, America the land of progress, America the stronghold of culture -- the United States of America, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

OH, ABOUT THAT . . .

From Entertainmentwise:

Britney Spears is set to outrage the Catholic Church Madonna-style with a raunchy new photo shoot.

The pop wreck has posed for a series of confession-themed pics - like the one below - for new album, Blackout.

Clad in saucy fishnets, Brit is shown posing provocatively in a confessional box as a handsome priest looks on.

An insider reveals to British tabloid The Daily Mirror that in another "very naughty" shot the singer sits on the priests lap.