Tumultuous 2000s are getting their close-up
NatGeo special looks at decade of 9/11, iPhone, Obama
When it comes to analyzing the first decade of the 21st century, one of the first questions is what to call it: The Aughts? The Zeros? The Double- Ohs?
National Geographic Channel sticks with the basics in the title of its two-night special The
2000s: A New Reality, starting Sunday, narrated by Rob Lowe.
“‘The Aughts’ sound a little too European Union for my tastes. ‘The Zeros’ sounds too pejorative. It’s really hard, but when you look at the title, it really is ‘The 2000s,’ ” says Lowe, who starred in two dramas during the decade, The West
Wing and Brothers & Sisters. Finding events to fill the fourhour special was not a problem in a decade that featured the BushGore election of 2000; the 9/11 attacks and wars that followed; the introduction of the iPod and iPhone; and the election of the nation’s first African-American president, Barack Obama.
“Every single one of them continues to play out, particularly 9/11. We entered a life where ... we’re sort of always on some version of a war footing,” Lowe says.
The decade also saw the rise of reality TV; blockbuster movie franchises, such as Harry Potter; and Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction” with Justin Timberlake.
Lowe, who will star in the upcoming Fox comedy The Grinder, sees a change in living as a significant element of the decade.
“I think it’s the speed at which the world began to move, whether that’s the embracing of the 24hour news cycle or the way that people accepted the Internet in such large numbers or the rise of the smartphone and all of us being interconnected,” he says.
The special features a variety of interview subjects, including former vice president Dick Cheney, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, American Idol’s Randy Jackson, director Michael Moore, Fox News Channel host Bill O’Reilly, U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, journalist Dan Rather and pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger. Lowe, an executive producer of
The 2000s who narrated and produced similar specials focusing on the 1980s and 1990s, says it’s not too early to examine a decade that ended just five years ago.
“I had questioned it until I saw the stories we would be dealing with,” he says. “What’s more exciting, interesting and compelling: something that really is history, that happened and we’ve almost forgotten about, or something that happened fairly recently and we’re still dealing with it?”