A 'New Yorker' cover from July sparked heated debates, but not much else.

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

They seemed so important at the time, didn't they? The issues over which much ink was spilled, many talking heads blathered, and, in some cases, congressional committees were convened. But as we prepare to turn the calendar page, what seemed monumental then has all the significance of a Dennis Kucinich stump speech in retrospect.

So before they completely fade from memory, let's take a look back on some of the top "non-troversies" of 2008:

-Was Chinese Olympic gymnast He Kexin 14, or was she 16? And did anybody really think the same country that puts lead paint on our children's toys was going to come clean about this? America needed to let this gold medal loss go, and just relive the Olympic magic with another Michael Phelps commercial.

-The New Yorker runs a cover caricature of Barack and Michelle Obama as dangerous radicals -- an attempt at satire that displayed the wit and sophistication of an Ivy League sorority pledge at an all-you-can-drink cosmopolitan bar. Some readers said the drawing was offensive; some said it was too clever for its own good. And 99 percent of America said: "What's The New Yorker?"

-In Hollywood, thousands of Starbucks employees ... I mean, actors, dithered over an on-again, off-again strike vote in hopes of bring the country to its knees by depriving us of new episodes of The Mentalist. But on a positive note, the Actors Guild performed the David Copperfieldian, near-impossible trick of making the Writers Guild look savvy and reasonable.

-Oil speculators! It's their fault! They're the ones who ran up the price of oil to ... what, about $36 a barrel? Those lease deals on a new Hummer are starting to look real attractive right about now.

-Hillary Clinton crying at a campaign stop was either her showing real emotion, and therefore she was too soft to be president, or her being manipulative, and therefore was too devious to be president. Either way, she quite literally could not win. But through Barack Obama's Wish Fulfillment Program, she'll still be the one taking those 3 a.m. phone calls, after all.

-The winner of the Brett Favre/Aaron Rodgers brouhaha in Green Bay? Chad Pennington in Miami.

And the No. 1 "non-troversy" of 2008?

How dare Jeremiah Wright say the nasty, hurtful things in the privacy of a black church that men of God like Pat Robertson, John Hagee and the late Jerry Falwell said in public? Barack Obama denounces Wright, comes across as a "rational" black man, then delivers a historic speech on race in America and ends up in the White House. The whole thing worked out so well, I have a feeling somewhere Wright and Obama are secretly sharing a cigar, swapping one of those "terrorist fist jabs" Fox News warned us about, and saying to each other, "We got 'em, baby. We got 'em."

Hard to believe that so much almost important stuff just about happened this year. If 2009 is anything like 2008, we can look forward to many hyperbolic moments hardly worth the cable news space they fill.

Completely disregarding the war on Kwanzaa, may I wish everyone Happy Holidays and a great New Year.

The great thing about working with NPR — and, really, there's like a MILLION of 'em — is all the cool stuff I get to do for the public. Meet the president. Hang out at the National Finals Rodeo in Vegas. Drink a $10,000 martini. But since most of that was for radio, I haven't often gotten to share the full experience with you, the people.

Well, now I've got this great blog where they let me do whatever I want all the time. Seriously. Whatever I want. So, I thought I'd share some pix of the cool stuff I do every other day. Unfortunately, most of the pix I take are with my iPhone camera, and, despite the fact that all things Apple are better than a permanent foot massage, the iPhones take really crappy pictures:

 

Really crappy.

Anyway...

Last week I attended a very cool book signing at the Santa Monica Museum of Art hosted by National Book Award winner Dr. Josh Kun (he's the guy in the overexposed shirt on the left). Dr. Josh (along with Roger Bennett) is the co-author of the new book And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Our Vinyl: The Jewish Past as Told by the Records We Have Loved and Lost.

I know you're thinking: "That's cool?"

It is when Dr. Josh plays "Name That Tune" with Jewish music with Leonard Nimoy (Nimoy is to the right, but there's, like, something reflecting all up in his grill.) Yes, that Leonard Nimoy, who — in addition to being a Mr. Spock — is also a human vault of Jewish history. And the night is even cooler when Leonard Nimoy is naming tunes like Eartha Kitt's rendition of "Ki M'Tzion," and Diana Ross and the Supremes and the Temptations blowing out a Fiddler on the Roof medley (not to Leonard's liking). There were also some mambo-spiced Jewish tunes, Korean comedian Jon Yune giving "Cantor of Shabbos" his best shot ... and music by some real cantors, too, who apparently cleaned up during the Holy Days.

But the night wasn't just about laughs. It was a historical tour of a people trying to keep their faith and their traditions relevant in the ever-changing music scene. It was funny, yeah, but it was touching and a little heartbreaking in spots and amazingly universal — the gap between Yiddish music and "race" music being surprisingly narrow.

The book itself is a great read. And the event was seriously the most entertaining evening of "Name That Tune" involving Jewish music and a star of Star Trek I'd ever attended.

Manny Pacquiao throws a right at Oscar De La Hoya during the fourth round of their welterweight boxing match in Las Vegas on Saturday.

Jae C. Hong/AP

Las Vegas, like the rest of the country, is doing a post-Money Party detox. And, sure, you could make that point with a bunch of dry stats, like the fact that Nevada's foreclosure rate is one of the highest in the nation.

But I prefer a more personal evaluation — comparing Vegas from one fight night to another: the Oscar De La Hoya-Floyd Mayweather match I attended in May of 2007 and the De La Hoya-Manny Pacquiao bout this past Saturday night.

How hard Vegas has been hit up was immediately evident when I was able to book a room on the Strip for half-off, last minute on a Saturday night. Speaking of half: My flight out of beautiful downtown Burbank, Calif., was only half full, and half of those folks were connectors headed on beyond Vegas.

McCarran Airport was as empty as Ford Field during the fourth quarter of a Detroit Lions game.

Now, a good indicator of the busy-ness of Vegas: how long the cab lines are. The one outside the airport was nonexistent.

I stopped by my hotel, where, finally, there was a line — for check-in. That probably had more to do with the obvious cutbacks at the front desk.

Throughout the hotel, free drink coupons and reduced admissions passes were being handed out as liberally as bailout packages in Washington.

The casino floor itself was a little slow but lively. Certainly not as subdued as when I was there just after 9/11. And most of the folks I talked with — cab drivers, casino hosts — agreed that things were bad, but not awful.

But this was a fight night. Back in 2007, tickets for De La Hoya-Mayweather sold out in a couple of hours. For De La Hoya-Pacquiao, I could have reserved a couple of eleventh-hour tickets for face value.

Instead — let's say that in the interest of investigative journalism, I procured some tickets from a gentleman outside the arena at a quadruple discount that put me right on the floor.

The sweet science is best observed close enough that one can see the sweat ejected from a head on the receiving end of a hot jab.

There were a lot of hot jabs Saturday night.

So, compared with a year and a half ago, is Vegas hurting? Very much so. And as a Vegas-phile, seeing the city down on a knee is painful to watch. But with discounted airfare, hotel room and fight tickets, this might be one of the few times I've traveled to The Meadows and actually made money.

If the American public is so into morality in movies, why don't they throw more of their disposable income at religious-themed entertainment?

Even I haven't downed enough L.A. Kool-Aid to believe that somehow Hollywood movies are an overt instrument of morality. But according to a recently released survey conducted on behalf of the Anti-Defamation League, 43 percent of the respondents thought that Hollywood and the national media are waging an organized campaign to "weaken the influence of religious values in this country."

"Organized campaign?" Really. If there is one, my Evite to that gathering must've gotten dropped in my junk mailbox.

Of course, since Hollywood knows I've got this massively read blog on the NPR Web site, they probably don't trust me with their secret "down-with-religion" meetings.

But if Hollywood is so systematically anti-religion, how do you explain films like The Passion of the Christ? How do you explain The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? How do you explain TV shows like Touched by an Angel, Highway to Heaven, 7th Heaven, Saving Grace (with its angelic visitations) which are TV staples going back to when that certain nun learned how to fly?

If anything there's a lack of diversity of religion in entertainment. Where are the TV shows that feature families who are practicing Muslims or Buddhists? Meanwhile, Hollywood's got no problem making light of, say, Hindus in films like The Love Guru.

And if the American public is so into morality in movies, why don't they throw more of their disposable income at religious-themed entertainment? For every Passion of the Christ there's a Fireproof that comes and goes with no notice. While The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was a monster hit, the follow-up — Prince Caspian — was a relative disappointment at the box office. And as I'm so often hectored by the wildly "open minded" when I note the lack of diversity at the multiplex: Show business is a business. People need to vote with their dollars.

The truth is, Judeo-Christian ethics abound in entertainment. No, you're not going to find them in Saw IV. Or Saw V, or whatever number they're up to. But you can find such values in family fare such as Wall-E or historical dramas like The Express (another film that went underappreciated by all). Heck, you can find them in any romantic comedy that giddily espouses the bromide that "love conquers all."

Even "may the Force be with you" is nothing but a spiritual blessing.

So, is Hollywood anti-religion? Not in my opinion. But unlike, say, politicians and preachers who talk faith before going off to speak in tongues to their mistresses, Hollywood just doesn't wear its faith on its sleeve.