INTO THE FIENDLY SKIES

Dear Readers,

Does anybody remember when flying was fun? Was it ever fun?

Thanks to fuel prices, airline service cutbacks, fewer carrier choices and endless delays, we can now add the Christmas Day Underpants Bomber and it's resulting panic to the list that's making flying in a commercial airliner a misery for an awful lot of people.

Americans of a certain age look back wistfully at the days when airline dinners were a go-to joke for stand up comedians, but no more. Cheese-paring among airlines means that in the near-future, raffles will be conducted on long-haul flights to see who wins the 3 bags of crisps that will soon become the maximum amount of comestibles on any given aircraft. I, for one, now utterly regret turning up my snotty nose at the foil-wrapped, overheated Chicken Florentine with two veg that used to be placed on my fold-up tray by a reasonably friendly cabin crew member. The tray will probably be eliminated next, then movies, then seats, then air.

A grim reality of the 21st century is that flying has become a nerve-wracking, constitution-challenging ordeal. The perils of travelling from place to place in a commercial jet liner have increased, even as aircraft have become larger and more reliable. The quaint notion of dreading being sat next to the fattest person you've ever seen has now been replaced with the dread of sitting next to someone who decides to set fire to his shorts.

In America, the FAA no longer regulates air travel, which may comes as news to nobody but the FAA. No, the control of our skies (and that of many other nations) has devolved to Al Qaeda. From caves in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen-stan and maybe other 'stans' we've not heard of yet, terrorists pretty much determine how passengers are loaded, baggage stowed and takeoffs allowed, and it's a little worrisome that over eight years after 9/11, the handover has still not been acknowledged by our officials. And you thought it was taking a long time to build the Freedom Tower on the scar that was once the World Trade Center!

It's no good to just shrug and say that it's the problem of those who happen to fly, either. A plane that blows up in mid-air can theoretically crash down on anybody, even the most dedicated Luddite, and just because we've been reduced to strip-searching 89-year old grannies suspected of being a potential Depends Bomber doesn't mean that a disaster can't still occur. The thing about terrorists -often forgotten by comfortable and reasonable Americans - is that they may get caught 99 times out of a hundred, but that one success could be a whopper, and the terror-leaders are not concerned about getting their one, successful agent back, either.

Compared to what we're now up against, World War II looks like a polite war. When Germany and Japan surrendered and signed the documents, that was it - game over. But we can't win a war that has no stated goal - heck, we can hardly imagine how to fight it. In a war where the attackers only need an army of one guy with pyrotechnic Calvins to score a success, we're all potential walking collateral damage, no matter your religion, or lack thereof.

The people who are nominally in charge of security have got to face up to the fact that a 100% success rate in thwarting terrorists is the minimum standard, and they must work harder at analyzing data, screening dodgy people and sharing information with other nations who are similarly threatened(The Underpants bomber left a paper trail that practically outed himself as a risk, and nothing was done about it). And if you say that there's not enough people to do the job, well, a Terrorism Stimulus Program might not be a bad investment for putting the unemployed back to work - a much better idea than building pork-barrel bridges to nowhere.

What a boost for the economy it would be to have airports crawling with security staff and every flight manned (or womanned) with an agent sitting at the back with a loaded fire extinguisher at the ready.

Air travel will, sadly, never be the same as it was as recently as a decade ago, and there's no use trying to deny or ignore that fact. Once you actually get on the plane, you'll have to say goodbye to the pillows, blankets, peanuts, free drinks, free headphones, leg room, carry-on luggage and the in-flight entertainment that was once the norm for even bovine-class passengers. There is a bright spot, though, with the ban on the use of smartphones in-flight certain to be totally repealed, we can take nostalgic solace in watching You Tube clips of 80's comedians as we cruise at 30,000 feet, squashed into our seats - "Hey, what about that airline food, huh...?"

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LOOKING BACK IN ANGER

Dear Readers,

The second decade of the 21st century is now on the road, and as we cruise down the highway of time in our shiny, new vehicle, there's every reason to suspect that what we really have is a chimera of a ride, cobbled together from the remains of several chassis, despite the new-car aroma.

With all the best-of, most-of and worst-of lists for the 'decade with no name' out of the way, it seems to me that the years 2000 through 2009 can be summed up in four words: greed, corruption, war and technology. This quartet could describe any decade, of course, but the depressing thing is that these aspects of life seem to be intertwined in a more sinister fashion than in past ten-year chunks of history.

It's worth noting that greed and corruption have no redeeming qualities, while war and technology can be both good and evil, depending on the generally accepted righteousness of, or which side of the battle or invention you happen to be on. And while more and more ordinary people are connected to the world at large than ever before, the influence of this mass of humanity on events that shape this world seems increasingly impotent, despite all the writhing and moaning.

Take Twitter for example. This ingenious little network allows us all - potentially - to be reporters, commentators and published diarists to a (potential) worldwide audience, hard-wired for virtual social networking. Apart from the inanity of what Paris Hilton is up to, news that used to have to wait for an hourly radio bulletin, TV film at 11 or the next day's newspaper to 'go viral' can now ricochet all over the globe, almost instantly. But the value of this 'speed of information' seems dubious to me, and has yet to prove it's value. Sure, the world knew that Michael Jackson had croaked within minutes of the singer's assumption of room temperature, but was it vital information? Did it matter? It was titillating, perhaps, but could have easily waited until Eyewitness News At Six. So much of this 'vital information' falls into the category of 'it could wait'. Maybe the best example of the potential power of a 140-character burst of knowledge came during the post-bogus-election-result protests in Iran. Texting, Twittering and cell-phone photographing provided the protesters involved with instant access to each other and the world at large as they clashed with the goon squads of the state in a confused, running battle. But in the end, it did not change the outcome one bit. The repressive regime survived, intact. Score one for brute force over Blackberry, Palm Pilot and I-Phone.

As the financial and influence gap between the wealthy, powerful elite and the great mass of the rest of us widens, the paranoid in me wonders if the ruling class has somehow kept us docile by bestowing on us the gadgets of modern technology that keep us so glued to our Wiis, wide screens and smart phones that we have even less time than before to look critically at the big picture all around us. The powers that be can rest assured that there will be no protests in the streets as long as we're absorbed with our tweets.

So, while two futile wars rage on, and Wall Street's new generation robber-barons wallow in obscene, Great Recession bonuses, a sizable plurality of America's public stays firmly in debt in order to stay firmly gadgeted-up. But people have yet to truly tap into the power that's been so cynically handed them. It's still all about me and my space. We may sheepishly accept the wars and the rip-offs imposed from above, but if a reasonable request to turn off a cellphone in a theatre is made, look out, There Will Be Blood. Meanwhile, outside in the real world, big finance's dodgy products wipe out millions of jobs at a stroke. Classic Machiavellian tactics: keep the mob at each other's throats so that they don't go for the ruling elite's jugulars. Maybe a gross misreading of the situation, but it does seem like a lost opportunity so far, the chance to use the new technology to hold the guilty to account. Seems we'd much rather be the first to know that Tiger Woods has resurfaced in the Bahamas than raise an angry protest against the men who have sold us out.

In China, the ruling class keeps limits on Internet access and social networking because they know that with a population that size, with less to lose, the risk of revolution is greater than in the US, where the populace is generally comfortable enough to put up with misfeasance. Our leaders live in hope that the center will hold, and our child-like optimism about the future will last a while longer. The financial/political elite of this country must look with absolute envy upon the Chinese system, which, as the balance of power shifts from the West to the East(thanks, largely, to the cynical, short-term-gain-for-long-term-pain, financial sell-out to the Orient), seems to be evolving into a kind of 'Capitalist Dictatorship', or free-market, centrally controlled economics coupled with political repression. The Chinese squash dissent with tanks, the US must (for now) continue to squash dissent with affordable, entertaining gadgetry.

The 2000's was a decade where we raced boldly into the future without facing up to many of the fundamental problems of the past. Now, in the new year and new decade, partially blinded by the light of a billion LCD screens, it's quite easy to lose sight of the fact that we've heavily mortgaged our future for the pleasures of the present, and the latest I-Phone app won't do much to address the threats of terrorism, corporate crime, climate change or the fact that millions of people live lives right this minute that we wouldn't allow our pets to endure.

There's a great line in John Osborne's play, Look Back In Anger, that effectively(and contradictorily) describes my opinion of the 2000's. To paraphrase a character in the play comparing the older and younger generation of the time -" one is angry because everything has changed, the other is angry because nothing has changed". Happy New Year.

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SEETHING WITH GOOD WILL

Dear Readers,

Washington is quiet now as the politicians, exhausted from their 'workload' stagger back to their home districts for a little R&R (I had no idea that the Caribbean, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas were so well-represented). And even President Obama has headed off for the state of his birth, Hawaii, for some well-deserved down-time amongst the grass skirts and pineapples. In-between the parties and committing a solid majority of the seven deadly sins, the beltway pols can take a look at it's accomplishments and shortcomings from a position of extreme comfort and tally up the numbers. As everybody loves to keep score, there will be more scorecards for the new President's first year than returned sweaters to department stores. But I will resist the temptation to add to the pile by simply saying 'he made it'.

Whatever one says about Mr. Obama and the successes and/or failures of his first year, you gotta admit that the guy kept his cool. The people who expected the new President to wave a wand and change the D.C. culture in a instant have serious issues with the way things have gone to be sure. The left-wing Democrats, who seem to have expected him to govern to the left of Fidel Castro, and the lunatic right wing (i.e.,the leadership of the Republican Party), who were crying 'socialism' at every turn like trained circus bears, were the most vocal. Even the vast, centrist, piano majority seemed uncertain as to how to react to a President who promised change, yet wound up governing like a veteran bureaucrat, calmly surrounding himself with the Geitners', Summerses' and Clintons of the world. Yet, contrary to popular belief, things did get done, like the stimulus package, the Afghan 'surge', the auto rescue and the framework of the health care reform bill, just to name a few. Plus, the guy won a Nobel Prize for gawd's sake, without breaking a sweat. Much was left hanging though, like unemployment and banking reform (don't hold your breath), and dealing with those issues will make Finnegan's Wake seem like a beach novel. But even as tsunami after tsunami of criticism, unwanted advice and hasty judgements poured down on him, Obama maintained a calm, steady and confident demeanor, which at least gave off the impression of a man in firm control. While citizens of many stripes might have an awful lot to complain about this administration, you can't say he didn't stand up and do his job with a lot of aplomb.

Obama, who spent considerably more time as a candidate than as a senator during his two-thirds of a term in the upper body, certainly made the best use of his majority in the sense that he let congress be congress - with all it's slimy deal-making, porkbarrel ways - and got something out of it on a core issue like healthcare, a trick that no other president has been able to pull off. While other chief executives have tried to use their election victory momentum to dictate terms to the Congress, Obama just gave them a general idea of what he was after and let them churn out the sausage, using their own, traditional, unsanitary recipe. Considering that Obama was so little regarded (and little-seen) by his peers in his 4 years as a U.S. Senator, his approach borders on the brilliant in dealing with such a group of self-important, puffed-up group of insatiable grabbers.

So, while the business of governing in 2009 has had it's little successes, the coming year in the nation's capital promises to be an argy-bargy of epic proportions. The Republican rump may seem beaten and constantly outvoted, but it would be a serious mistake to take them lightly and dismiss them as a bunch of teabagged lunatics. While the left may be wary of the administration, and the center may be confused, the right-wingers are unshakable in their paranoia about Obama, and the infection can easily spread. It's worth noting that political Washington broke camp for the holidays with the 'loyal' opposition in a bitter high dudgeon over the health care bill, certain to return to work refreshed and committed to revenge. In between the presents and the parties, the Jacobins at Fox News will be banging away at Obama nonstop between the showings of "A Christmas Story" and "New Year's Rockin' Eve", and while most of the Republicans in congress are probably several time zones away from anybody resembling a constituent during this holiday break, no doubt they'll be 'hearing it', one way or another. Obama may be feeling good about how the year in Washington wound up, but it would be foolhardy to ignore an opposition that will return in 2010, tanned, rested and ready - and hell-bent on destruction.

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CHRISTMAS CRACKERS

Dear Readers,

Some inspirational quotes for you to help get through the required jolliness of the holiday season.

"Christmas is a holiday that persecutes the lonely, the frayed and the rejected." - Jimmy Cannon

"Christmas makes everything twice as sad." - Douglas Coupland

"Christmas to a child is the first terrible proof that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive." - Stephen Fry

"I beg to present to you as a Christmas present the city of Savannah." - William Tecumseh Sherman

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SINK THE BISMARCK!

Dear Readers,

The old saying about there being two things you shouldn't watch being made - sausage and legislation - is never more true in the case of this current attempt at health care reform. Except as the US Senate meat-grinder churns on, it seems like as many ingredients are being taken out as put in, and this bill looks like it's going to be quite an unappetising banger.

Gone are the better ideas like single-payer provisions, the public option, medicare buy-in and any sort of cost control which, to my way of thinking, should have been at the very heart of the legislation.

In fact, this bill has no heart. It's a freakish monster, written largely by the medical and drug lobbies and the !#$%^&! minority party, the left-for-dead GOP.

The medical lobbies and the Republicans have played this one beautifully. First, they got ahead of the curve by distilling easy-to-digest sound bite lies (like the Obama death-panels) out of complicated facts, scaring the bejesus out of and mobilizing the Republican 'base'. Then, with the help of the big medicine lobby and a handful of pusillanimous Democrats, they threatened a feckless Majority Leader of The Senate, Harry Reid, into making huge concessions in order to gain his 60-vote, filibuster-proof majority. So, not only have the Republicans gotten most everything that smacks of real reform out of the bill, but have contrived a scenario where the Democrats will get the blame when voters realize they've been had. Pure (evil) genius. Ernst Blofeld of 'James Bond' fame could not have done better.

When the Democrats watch, grinning, as President Obama inks the legislation, we'll probably have a bill - largely re-written by big medicine - that requires, under penalty of law any uninsured person or family to buy health care that basically allows insurance companies to charge what ever they want. Even the removal of the 'pre-existing condition' excuse for denying coverage is a poisoned chalice. Big insurance has to cover you, but can charge you big time for having, say, something like high blood pressure (a condition I'm acquiring as I type). No more deciding between the mortgage and paying your insurance premiums, no more choice between eating and settling your health care account, pay up or be heavily fined by the US Government. 'Death Panels' will no longer be a paranoid fiction - they'll be real and manned by big health insurance executives.

Why the Democrats decided to try and reform everything in one bill remains a mystery to me. Wouldn't it have been better to address each area of concern separately? They could have gained a sense of momentum by passing bills to remedy easy targets, then used that momentum to push through more controversial items. But no. They, like the German Kriegsmarine during World War II, just had to construct and put to sea an enormous, vulnerable, lumbering, huge-target Battleship Bismarck, heavy in firepower, but eventually doomed by a couple of well-aimed torpedos from old, slow, clapped-out, obsolete bi-planes. Surely, the Dems (who ought to act more like they run the government) would have been more successful by sending out a pack of legislative U-Boats, moving stealthily under water and picking off targets one at a time. Sadly though, unlike the original, this modern Bismarck will probably survive, severely damaged, but with it's still-powerful guns aimed squarely at the people it was designed to protect.

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I'M A CELEBRITY, GET ME OUTTA HERE

Dear Readers,

Fame, ain't it a b**ch.

In a week where a very weird couple apparently gate-crashed an official state dinner at the White House, another crash was taking place about 1,000 miles away. Inadvertently, golf great Tiger Woods has turned a humble fire hydrant near his Floridian gated community estate into a cultural icon merely by crashing into it at 2:30 in the morning. Woods, who may be the most world-famous sports celebrity since Muhammad Ali, is now signalling to the rest of the planet that he would like to be left alone (and probably crawl beneath that hydrant) and have everybody just forget about the whole thing. But that's not possible when you are as well-known as he is, and for those who are just dying to be celebrities, it ought to be a morality tale-like warning, easily on a par with Aesop.

The wealthy goofballs who circulated at the White House state dinner apparently had it all - money, social status (of a sort), fairly good looks, good health and the savoir faire sufficient to blend in with the invited guests. Even with all that, they were suffering from a 'disease' that more and more Americans seem to be coming down with -they weren't famous. Forget the 'swine flu', 'Fame Flu' is a condition there seems to be no vaccine for, and it's spreading.

If your stomach is still strong enough to watch TV, you must have a number of 'reality shows' on your favorites list, and they are invariably populated by completely talent-free, utterly banal human beings who somehow grabbed the public's (and the TV producers) attention and attained the ultimate accolade - a hit TV show featuring themselves. The list is too great and nauseating to review, but when nobodies like Jon & Kate (plus 8) become cable-ratings kings and wind up on the cover of every publication from People to Popular Mechanics (having watched it once, one can only imagine what the lower-rated shows must be like), then you know that the 'fame coin' is seriously debased. Yet reality-show stars are actually only useful to the media until a real star like Tiger goes and screws up and blows them off the headlines.

So Mr. Woods hides out while speculation and unsourced gossip about what caused the wee-hours accident (and why he's reluctant to explain the circumstances around it) swirl around all media from TV to Twitter. The complete ordinariness of Woods's situation stands in stark contrast to the astonishing lack of security revealed by the White House gatecrashers, and yet his story won't die. Being famous for being famous is one thing, but real celeb-juice (based on talent, mostly) is still a rare commodity. Despite this truism, I can hear it even now, in some midwestern livingroom - "Ma, call the press, I think junior's trapped in an out-of-control hot-air balloon. And don't forget to call Hollywood, too". Andy Warhol didn't know the half of it.

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SOON TO BE SNAIL MAIL

Dear Readers,

Here's my newest promotional postcard. Please feel free to save it and print it out for later use, as I need to cut back on stamps. I think it's rather cute, don't you?

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