When I'm able to, I always fly on Southwest Airlines. They have above-average seat room, they offer free soda and peanuts, and - best of all - they have an open seating policy. In a brilliant business move reminiscent of true capitalism, Southwest fliers who print their boarding pass online reserve a seat in line (in the order in which they sign online and print the pass). Because I'm a neurotic flyer, and have a thinly-veiled fear of dying in a horrific plane crash, I always sign online as quickly as possible to reserve an early seat in line. This always puts me in the "A" group, which boards first and puts me in my lucky seat (7C, on the left aisle side, right next to the engine on the Boeing 737-500).
At this precise moment, however, I am waiting to board a flight to Jacksonville, Florida, alongside 50 other nervous passengers, silently watching a horrific scene on the airport terminal's large TV. It appears that a commercial airliner, a US Airways jet flying from LaGuardia to Charlotte, NC (a flight I once took myself, a few years back), had crashed into the Hudson River. The crash resulted in killing everyone on board, I am certain. When airplanes crash land into water - especially when they crash land into 33 degree water, with the air temperature in the mid-teens - nobody ever survives this sort of thing. This is absolute fact.
The passengers around me seem to think along the same lines that I do, because they are grim and absolutely silent. The dude in front of me nervously scans his BlackBerry for news, but out of some macabre mixture of politeness and not wanting to know what happened, I don't peer over his shoulder for the death count. At this moment, I am ready to fly. I am certain that I no longer fear my own death by airplane. No way this happens twice in one day.
What I do upon boarding the plane is text message my Mom. This is funny, because Moms don't usually text message. But my Mom does, and I text her to let her know (a) there's been a horrible plane crash in the Hudson river, and (b) I was not on board that particular plane. This is important, because if my Mom were to turn on the TV news at any point while I am in the air, she would immediately think her son died - in the way he always imagined.
This is important also because I'm the sort of person who craves facts. I ask her how bad the crash was. Before the plane takes off, I find out there are no fatalities. I text back "WOW", and soon I'm instructed to turn off my cell phone. Before my plane landed safely in Jacksonville, I sip two Diet Cokes and read GQ.
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Other people, far more eloquent than I, have already condemned modern society's reliance upon tragic sob stories in order to reveal our individual, concealed feelings. I won't parrot these remarks. Nobody needs to know where I was on 9/11, because it isn't important. The story that I just wrote, though, makes me a hypocrite. Because, just like on 9/11 when we all capitalized on horror to make ourselves seem human, I think that a simple "miraculous" plane crash is allowing us to capitalize on hope to do the exact same thing.
What I'm focusing on now is the near-constant news coverage of this "miraculous" event. In doing so, I don't want to understate how amazing it was that nobody died in the plane crash. Over a hundred people are waking up today having thought they were going to die, but having actually lived. These people are going to treat their kids, spouses, and coworkers better, and they're going to have a story for the rest of their lives (one that will certainly get a few of the passengers laid, and more power to them).
But, so far as news stories go, it's as exciting as that one time I had Ace-King suited and flopped four of a kind Aces. Actually, it's just like that one time I flopped four of a kind Aces. All the requisite skill was there. The pilot knew what he was doing and landed the plane perfectly so that it wouldn't sink. All the requisite luck was there. The engine failed at just the right time such that the plane could crash-land in a highly populated river, close to ferries and rescue boats. The statistical context was there - the laws of physics said that a successful crash landing in water was at least theoretically possible (even though planes that ditch in the water usually tend to sink).Because of this, the amount of news this "miracle" generated made me wonder. It made me wonder whether all this crap with the economy in crisis, people losing their jobs left and right, etc., is starving us for good news. The people who decide what goes on the news are human and therefore biased, no matter how objective they think they are. They've likely had a really rough year, and there's little doubt in my mind that yesterday's "miracle" became The News of the New Year because we're all rooting for everything to turn out all right.
I'm visiting my dad in Florida this weekend, and he was so excited about the news this morning that he TiVo'd one full hour of the "Today" show's plane crash footage. (NOTE: I think that earlier this morning, the "Today" show devoted its' entire four hours to yesterday's plane crash.) My dad, like many Americans, has lost a third of his nest egg within the past four months. Like many Americans, my dad is completely pissed off about this fact. Regardless, he was actually excited to watch the news this morning. So even though I'm a Godless curmudgeon and I do not believe in miracles, I suppose good news counts for something these days.
Stay classy out there.
1 comment:
Damnit Freducat, did you get it all in or not?? Against one or both??
Wait, what was that about a plane?
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