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.

I ate lunch today at my favorite sushi place. While I savored my selected delicacies, I was thinking about Beijing and the Olympic Games beginning there Friday night.

I know, I know. Sushi is of Japanese, not Chinese, origin. But anytime I am struggling with a pair of chopsticks I am reminded anew about our obsession with cultural sensitivity. I love sushi, but I know I would love it more with a knife and fork, and I am sure there are quite a few Hollywood liberals who’d argue that I would “offend” the Japanese by taming my sushi with blatantly Anglo-Saxon utensils.

I am going to make a prediction about the Beijing Games, even while extracting chopstick slivers from my tongue. I predict that we will observe a steady procession of American Olympic athletes, coaches and officials issuing apologies for misguided words and deeds that are obviously offensive to the warm and humanitarian people of China.

It has begun already. Apparently, the mainstream media intend to treat the Chinese like one billion Barack Obamas. Even the hint of criticism will be strictly off limits.

Just yesterday I had to send an email to a journalist friend scolding him for his characterization of four U.S. cyclists arriving at Beijing’s airport. Writing for NBCOlympics.com, he observed that by showing up in surgical or hygienic masks they were guilty of “one of the sorriest breaches of good manners any American Olympic athlete has displayed.” And, as we live in an era when Americans are increasingly embarrassed, if not downright apologetic, for being, well, American, my friend further ranted that our Olympians must be “sensitive always and in all ways to the ways in which Americans can be perceived overseas.”

To be sure, Americans have demonstrated poor judgment and behavior during the Games in recent years. I will grant that. In Seoul in 1988, there were the swimming Olympians who removed a lion’s head sculpture from a hotel lobby. In Nagano (Japan) in 1998, American ice hockey players trashed a few Olympic Village sleeping rooms on their way out of town.

“Duh, they’re hockey players,” didn’t seem an adequate explanation for the Japanese.

As there seems to be trouble in Olympic years ending in 8, perhaps we know why U.S. Olympic officials required every 2008 American qualifier to attend a series of cultural sensitivity seminars. It is not only criminal stuff like stealing or pillaging they’re worried about. Of equal concern is that one of our louts will inadvertently hug a Chinese person. They don’t hug. Which is sad, really, in a nation where so many downtrodden, neglected people appear to be in desperate need of one.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the seminar includes a warning to America’s finest athletic ambassadors to avoid “spearing” food items with chopsticks. Try to explain that to the javelin or fencing guys.

As for the mask-shrouded cyclists, their lungs were clear but U.S. Olympic officials later decided their consciences need a good scrubbing, too. They strong-armed the athletes into issuing a public apology for drawing attention to Beijing’s absolutely horrendous air quality. Some media members were particularly upset that the masks were worn indoors, inside the airport terminal. (Indoor air is pristine, apparently).

“We deeply regret the nature of our choices,” the apologetic statement read, in part.

I deeply regret that the U.S. Olympic Committee made the masks available to any and all team members who asked for them, then immediately made an example out of four who elected to wear them. I regret that somehow it has become culturally insensitive to hammer away at a country that has demonstrated blatant disregard for its air quality, that has no emissions standards, and that had the nerve to present itself as a worthy Olympic Games host in the first place.

Just wait until an American athlete takes a baiting media member’s sashimi morsel hook, line and sinker and goes off on the myriad human rights abuses that seem to be as much a part of China’s fabric as democracy is part of America’s.

The idiots in the U.S. House of Representatives believe American should apologize for the part of its past when citizens owned slaves. But we dare not so much as raise an eyebrow at a Chinese government that enslaves activitists by throwing them in prison and enslaves citizens (living far outside of the Olympics’ bright lights) by ensuring they endure unthinkable poverty.

Please, slap the hands of Olympians who go into a foreign country and mock the language, or the clothing, or the food, or who commit immature, even criminal acts. Send ‘em home. Call ‘em out.

But let’s not spend the next two weeks apologizing because someone wears a mask (Asians wear them quite frequently as a practical defense against smog and germs), or observes that, wow, your pollution really sucks, Mr. Hu.

It is not a question of if, but when, a well intentioned American kid fumbles a piece of fish on a minor chopstick infraction in the Olympic Village.

My advice: Ask for a fork and tell your Chinese hosts the apology is in the mail.

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.