Since it's about time for new predictions and a new year, I figured this would be a good time to revisit what I said would happen in 2009, and just how close I was to reality. Here's merely a sampling of what your favorite amateur sage said would happen, and what actually did...
AB.com Prediction #1 - "The Obama White House will have some sort of major scandal early on. This won't be tied to anything that Barry does directly, it'll be another of those "guilt by association" deals they keep trying to tag him with. But this time, it'll be serious, and he'll have to tell somebody high profile to kick rocks."
See, What Had Happened Was - Haha. World, meet Van Jones. Van Jones, meet Monster.com.
Net Result - 100% Accurate
AB.com Prediction #2 - "One very high profile Black Republican will have a falling out with the party and publicly switch sides."
See, What Had Happened Was - I was pretty far off on this one. I misunderestimated the GOP's pull on a certain segment of Negro America. Not only did these folks not turn on the GOP, despite month after month of racially charged incidents, they seem actually more emboldened in their opposition to The Beige One.
Net Result - Dead Wrong. But I guarantee Mike Steele will have a come-to-Jesus moment sometime in the next calendar year.
AB.com Prediction #3 - "The economy will stabilize. The plan of rebuilding infrastructure will cost a lot, but will also pay off, provided The Administration finds some concrete way to stop all the construction gigs from going to illegal aliens. Several American retail institutions will go belly up. The Dow will stabilize by mid-year. Your 401K will still be tear-inducing."
See, What Had Happened Was - The economy actually did stabilize, and the Dow's actually pushing 11K again, just months after dipping near 6,500. Most leading economic indicators say the recession is over, but the only one people actually care about, unemployment, continues to grow. This could either be the forebearer of a jobless recovery, or a double dip recession come 2010.
Net Result - Hit And Miss.
AB.com Prediction #4- "A high-profile Fortune 500 company will
catch Obamania and name a black woman CEO."
See, What Had Happened Was - Thank you Xerox, and thank you Ursula Burns.
Net Result - 100% Accurate.
AB.com Prediction #5 - "The North Carolina Tarheels will go undefeated and easily win the NCAA Basketball Championship in Detroit. The Pittsburgh Steelers will win Super Bowl XLIII, making Mike Tomlin only the second black coach to do so. Oklahoma's Blake Griffin will be the #1 pick in the 2009 NBA Draft. He'll be headed to Washington. I won't care one bit."
See, What Had Happened Was - Check. Check. And Check. Griffin didn't end up in DC, and yeah, I prolly woulda cared if he did.
Net Result - 90% Accurate.
AB.com Prediction #6 - "Rap music sales will continue to plummet. High profile acts like Eminem, 50 Cent, TI, and even Jay-Z will drop albums that are commercial flops."
See, What Had Happened Was - Eminem and 50's albums both tanked. Jay-Z actually had a career comeback, and TI did decent numbers before heading to the clink. Still, all in all, it wasn't a banner year for cRap music by any means.
Net Result - 50% Accurate.
AB.com Prediction #7 - "Disturbed by the lack of blacks on network TV, the NAACP will again mount a campaign to force the Big Four to put more faces of color on air and behind the camera. It will prove futile."
See, What Had Happened Was - The NAACP obviously had better things to do this year, so this issue went unaddressed. While there still isn't a single black-themed show on any of the 4 major networks, black folks still have the reality show game on lock, and now we've expanded into talk shows and cable sitcoms. Win-win-loss.
Net Result - 50% Accurate.
AB.com Prediction #8 - "Somebody who isn't supposed to become pregnant will. Somebody who isn't supposed to get that person pregnant will."
See, What Had Happened Was - Uh, I don't even know what this actually meant in retrospect.
Net Result - Dead Wrong. I guess.
Question: Am I pretty good at this predictions stuff or what?
