The Conservative Soldier

I am not comfortable with feeble human attempts at scriptural interpretation. There is, for example, a Biblical passage that directs mankind to “be anxious for nothing.” Interpretation: It’s never as bad as you think.

With all due respect to the letter writers whose work became the all-time bestseller, these guys could not have imagined anxiety as we know it in 2008 A.D. With the world economy teetering just in time to elevate the fortunes of the most inexperienced, unqualified Presidential candidate in American history, I’d say we should be anxious for nearly everything.

Let me offer anecdotal evidence. There was a time when a guy would have been feeling pretty good about himself if, on the same afternoon, he was upgraded to First Class and seated next to a Baptist minister. That’s like one degree of separation from sharing warm mixed nuts with the Almighty himself.

This actually happened to me last Sunday. But if the angels were singing, I couldn’t hear them. In fact, I nearly had a stroke. I was anxious, very anxious. It was, after all, a United Airlines First cabin, thus only slightly less claustrophobia inducing than Economy. And the minister was a man slight of build, large of ego and top heavy with hair gel named Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr. (A friend partially captured the moment at left).

“Oh my God!” I thought, not as a prayer. “I am sitting next to Al Fricking Sharpton.”

The so-called Reverend, a preacher of white hatred and stoker of the simmering embers of racial rage across America, presented quite a dilemma. He would not look at, or acknowledge, me, of course. So what to do? Do I engage him in conversation? Do I say, “I’m a white knuckle flier, you?”

Do I ask him to explain his public comments during the racially charged verbal flogging of the wrongly accused (of rape) members of the Duke University men’s lacrosse team? (The context was there, as we were flying out of Raleigh-Durham International airport, only miles from the Duke campus). Should I remind him what he said in 2006, on live television? That “when the prosecutors went forward (to seat a grand jury), they clearly have said this girl is the victim.” (Turns out she was a victim of her own stupidity).

Do I mention recent reports that Sharpton and organizations with whom he is identified owe city, state and federal governments more than $1.5 million in unpaid taxes and penalty fees? Strikes me as a lot of wealth the Rev. has tied up that should be designated instead to Presidential candidate Barack H. Obama’s wealth redistribution plan. What kind of civil rights activist denies that kind of money to needy, ordinary folk?

If I rile him, and he tells me I am a race carding white elitist, do I remind Sharpie about the size of the race card (more like a billboard) he whipped out against former Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a white Mormon? (”As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyways, so … that’s a temporary situation,” he said in 2007).

Dare I remind Rev. Al that, when a self-declared Presidential candidate in 2003, he gladly appeared behind the pulpit as a guest in the Chicago Roman Catholic church of radical priest Michael Pfleger (a.k.a., a longtime Obama spiritual adviser)? Did this amount to an endorsement of Pfleger’s race baiting sermons and unbridled bigotry?

Instead, the Rev. and I sat in silence. I was listening to audio entertainment, while reading a magazine and a Republican National Committee newsletter called Rising Tide. He was reading a paperback entitled, “The Shack”. It is a runaway bestseller about a grief stricken father who eventually encounters God in the flesh of a chatty black woman during an encounter inside a rural shack.

Which reminds me, it could have been worse on Sunday. I could have been seated next to Michelle Obama.

Be anxious. Be very, very anxious.

United Airlines announced this week it is cutting 7,000 jobs by the end of next year.

I hope the 7,000 include some of the lying, arrogant, incompetent and utterly useless employees who transformed our recent routine Washington-to-Chicago trip into an all too typical commercial aviation nightmare.

I know, I know. They’re here for our safety. For example, I am sure they know exactly what to do to protect us from say, overindulging on peanuts or soda pop. They keep us safe from that nasty stuff by making only one pass down the economy aisle with “snacks” and beverages. Up front, they present warm nuts but still make you beg for that beverage refill.

But what do they really know about protecting us from, say, mental breakdowns and gate rage and anxiety attacks? Based on my recent experience at Washington Dulles, I am certain these union loyalists know absolutely nothing.

The scenario I am about to describe happens repeatedly, every day of the year at airports from coast to coast. But, as with starvation in Africa or human rights abuses in China, the conversation and the quest for permanent solutions must persist until progress is achieved. We must not stop having a national dialog among weary travelers about the airlines’ gross incompetence simply because it addresses the same old same old. We have to keep talking about it, we have to step up the criticism, we have to demand these gnats on the front lines of a dying industry be swatted from time to time.

The flight was United’s 461, Boeing 767-300 service from Dulles to O’Hare at 6:45 in the evening. It began quite well. My wife, daughter and I successfully upgraded from Economy Plus to United Business. (The aircraft has a three-cabin configuration of First, Business and Economy, as it is principally intended for international service). This particular 767 recently was updated to United’s newest International First and Business seating. The Business seats are narrower than ever, but are designed to become flat for sleeping, and provide each customer a private pod in which to rest, or watch moves or play video games on what appeared to be 19-inch screens.

Off we went toward the end of the taxiway, an active runway close at hand. Around us, fellow Business upgradees were positively giddy about all the new buttons to press and various seat-comfort positions they were about to road test.

Before long, as I listened to air traffic control, I heard our cockpit crew request a delay for a “maintenance issue”. Huge red flag. Of course, if we’d been lucky, they would have been referring to nothing more serious than an inoperative coffeemaker. No such luck. Thus began another chapter in my deteriorating 25-year relationship with United Airlines.

Back to the gate we would go, owed to some problem with a leading wing edge component that aids aircraft control in flight. The captain’s tone was not particularly dire, so there seemed to be optimism in the air that a mechanic would swoop in and save the day with a piece or two of duct tape.

Never happened. (A team of mechanics was unable to fix the problem on the 767, which leads one to wonder how the aircraft made it to Dulles in the first place. Or … was the “mechanical issue” simply a convenient cancellation tactic?)

As we sat, oblivious, with alternate flight options slowly dissolving, the cockpit crew ate a quick dinner, probably chit-chatting about pension woes and salary concessions. Ultimately we were sent off the aircraft and told to report several gates away to another, waiting aircraft. Sounded like a good deal.

Bad deal. This was a Boeing 757, a single isle aircraft. The first officer jumped on the PA and assured us there was room for everybody, but he never mentioned the little problem dawning on us more seasoned travelers. A different plane meant that all of our boarding passes were now irrelevant. I cringed thinking about how long it would take to re-issue them to 150+, grumpy passengers.

Turns out only a few boarding passes were re-issued (including mine). In the interim, a gate agent with a heavy Jamaican accent made a few incoherent announcements, begging patience and providing absolutely no sense of what the plan was. Then along came another customer service guy who also looked like a security type (to combat gate rage, presumably). His bit of exciting news was that the flight crew was about to become “illegal”, meaning they were nearing the maximum number of hours they can work in a day. The poor babies do need their rest. You can’t be obnoxious and indifferent without proper sleep, after all. You can’t not find an extra pillow without a restful interlude now and then.

The search was on for another flight crew, we were told. No one believed that for a second, of course.

As the Jamaican handed me my re-issued boarding passes for the “new” UA 461, my cell phone buzzed. It was an automated message from United. UA 461 was cancelled.

I advised the Jamaican. His phone rang just then. Confirming what I knew before he did.

He advised the masses to return to the main Dulles terminal and to visit “Q9″. He meant queue nine. But, alas, in his native tongue, queue means “line”. As in, get in line and await your fate.

We bee-lined to the nearest Red Carpet Club, where we were re-booked on a flight the next day at 10 am, handed complimentary toiletry kits and wished a most pleasant good night.

A night that began with the promise of a lie-flat bed ended in a taxi cab to my parents’ home for a quick nap and a shower. And we were considered the lucky ones.

It was the perfect storm for a disgruntled liberal in search of a place to assign blame.

Here’s the scene. An American Airlines MD80 on a steamy, overcast afternoon yesterday, at a gate at Raleigh-Durham International Airport, bound for Chicago-O’Hare.

We’re about to be pushed back, almost on time, when The Captain, in his best I-am-a-Senior-Pilot-with-a-vault-full-of-worthless-stock-options voice, announces we’ll be delayed. (As an aside, I think I know why commercial aviation is screwed up. Every flight begins with the plane moving backwards from the gate. That’s got to be a bad omen, no?)

Why the delay? Conservatives, of course.

North Carolina’s iconic conservative, Sen. Jesse Helms, died on the 4th of July. Not a Yankee Doodle, but a dandy for sure. His funeral was yesterday in Raleigh. An hour or so before the departure of our Chicago flight, Vice President Dick Cheney jetted into RDU aboard Air Force Two (a winglet-enhanced Boeing 757) to pay his respects to Sen. Helms.

As Air Force Two descended into RDU, the airspace in the vicinity was sealed, leaving planes such as our American MD80 in a holding pattern. As soon as VP Cheney was off the tarmac and headed to the Helms service, the airspace was re-opened and a number of flights were vectored for landing.

As the pilot explained, all of these planes came in at once instead of at their normal staggered times. (A few minutes is staggered, apparently). We would be delayed 30 minutes because the luggage from the inbound flight was still in the belly of our MD80 even though the passengers had long ago assembled in baggage claim. While they paced, we sat, for even more than 30 minutes. All of the incoming luggage finally came off, followed by the loading of the outbound luggage.

Over the PA, Disgruntled Senior Pilot suggests there was not sufficient ground crew to handle the onslaught of incoming flights (all three or four of them). “If you want to complain,” he added, “I guess you can write a letter to the Vice President.”

As fellow passengers began chatting among themselves as to how they would now surely miss their connections in Chicago (because, after all, all of the other flights at O’Hare would be on time), an AA flight attendant walked down the aisle distributing the latest weapon in the War on Error — the Re-Booking Slip.

The Re-Booking Slip takes the flight attendants off the hook, you see. When the blue-haired granny wants to know if she’ll make her flight to Omaha, the soon-to-be-unemployed flight attendant merely points to the toll-free re-booking number on the slip and advises Blue Hair to dial it, using her cell phone. Blue Hair, of course, does not have a cell phone most of the time.

While everyone chit chatted, I could not stop thinking about what the Senior Pilot had said. Blame it all on Vice President Cheney, he’d inferred. Just one more thing to lay at the feet of the Bush Administration. Obviously, Bush and Cheney must be the first U.S. leaders to require restricted air space for their aircraft. And, as if the real problem was in no way tied to the fact that the entire commercial airline industry is in staff cutting, cost slashing mode.

Why were there not enough ground personnel to respond to a minor surge in arriving flights at a relatively sleepy airport on a Tuesday afternoon? Because AA has been firing or furloughing them for months now. Give me a break.

In any case, this pilot had no chance at winning the Sound Bite of the Week award.

That already belonged to the pilot of Sen. Barack Hussein Obama’s aircraft, an MD80 charter from the Midwest Airlines fleet. It made an unscheduled stop in St. Louis en route to Charlotte, N.C., on Monday because an emergency escape chute deployed in flight from the rear section of the aircraft.

The pilot explained the decision to put down in St. Louis by saying, “We detected a little bit of a controllability issue.”

Apparently the Obama talking points people got to the pilot before he gave the honest answer, which would have been, “We didn’t know if we could keep this massive, aging airliner, moving at 500 mph, from nose-diving into a Missouri cornfield, so we landed as quickly as possible.”

Got to love that they had an emergency over the battleground state of Missouri. If I’m Sen. John McCain my first move is to get this ad on the air ASAP: “He tried to fly right over the Show Me State. Only a mid-air emergency compelled Sen. Obama to set foot on Missouri soil. Will Obama always wait for crisis before he reaches out to you?”

Wow, is there a lot of good material here.

Sen. Hillary Clinton had chartered the same aircraft before bowing out of the Democratic race. I think I ‘d have flown commercial before loading my staff and the press corp onto that charter. Another judgment red flag against the Obamas, I say. Bill sits near the back of the plane, doesn’t he? Isn’t that where the youngest tenured female press sit? Who knows what buttons he was fiddling around with after a few vodka tonics.

And you had to love the fact that the emergency was set off by a rear escape chute deployment? Did someone in the Obama inner circle decide he’d had enough, right then and there (a la the infamous 1971 hijacker/thief D.B. Cooper, who “escaped” by parachuting from the rear stairs of a 727 over Washington state)? Was Obama trying to drop anti-McCain leaflets over the midwest? Were the sacks of multimillion-dollar campaign contributions they tossed in the back simply too heavy for the rear door mechanism to withstand?

We know that Midwest Airlines is famous for serving its commercial passengers freshly baked chocolate chip cookies in flight. So, presumably, the cookies on Obama’s Monday flight to Charlotte were only half baked.

Need we say more?