AIR HEADS

In today's news, a woman who was wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the images of Bush, Cheney, and Condie Rice and the legend "Meet The Fockers" was told by a Southwest Airlines crew that she and her husband would have to leave the plane halfway through their flight from L.A. to Seattle because other passengers, it seems, did not like the message on the t-shirt. Fortunately, the plane was on the ground at the time, having stopped off in Reno enroute. The mind fairly swims at this. First, given the financial condition that Southwest individually and the airline industry collectively are in, they are in no position to turn away anyone. If I were the head of Southwest--and, given the airline's balance sheet, you'd think that I was--you would have to be wearing a garment made of the flesh of orphaned children before I would refuse to take your money. The airline's stated position was to the effect that she was causing a disturbance. My stated position is No, she was wearing a goddam shirt. Right-wing cranks were causing the disturbance, if by "disturbance" you mean insisting that other passengers conform to their ideological dress code. I understand the right-wingers' point of view, of course, but my solution would be to schedule them on special flights. Alas, the scheduled flights I have in mind all took place on 9/11. That is a rather harsh sentiment, I know, but this is America and I have a right to express it. Well, unless I happen to be flying on Southwest Airlines. By the way, I gather that Southwest is owned by and part of US Airways. Yes, US Airways. Metaphor makers, start your engines.

On a different, tangentially related subject, Kurt Vonnegut has another book out, "A Man Without A Country," and while I've only read reviews of it, the book continues Vonnegut's lifelong pattern of writing sentences, phrases, and comments that I dearly wish I had come up with, the latest being his comparison of his experiences soldiering in WWII with the misadventure in Iraq, where he notes that American troops are 'being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas." Hammer, nail, bang.