Letters to the Editor
Alan Lloyd
Published Letters: 294 Editor's Choice: 63
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the discomforts of flying
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In your article, you mentioned the attitudes of airline employees as critical to the "flying experience":
"...it's also patently true that passenger allegiance is ultimately earned or squandered not through physical comforts but through the attentiveness and dedication of an airline's employees. I'll never say that anybody else's job in this mad business is an easy one, but if workers cannot muster the necessary levels of commitment, then something is systemically wrong and needs to be fixed before any of the rest will matter."
Front-line employees, as is well known in the world of those who either (a) encounter them, or (b) are them, will generally treat customers as well - or badly - as they themselves are treated.
Ever ask anyone who works for NorthWorst how they like the company's management style? They're not the only one, just the local one for me. A long history of labor/management stress, upper management greed, and outright hostility to the front line folks, coupled with their recent, highly unethical, "bankruptcy proceedings as a means to ditch labor contracts and pensions" corporate direction, is inevitably going to lead to sullen, stressed-out, monosyllabic gate and flight attendants. Cabin cleaning? Ha!
Before this becomes a rant, it's probably time to close...
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Tony Bourdain - War Reporter
[Read the article: Watching Beirut die]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Perhaps, as kevinm says, :...Bourdain is the best kind of war correspondent (because he's not)...". His observations are indeed, though, as vivid those of people like former CBS reporter Jack Laurence (memoir: The Cat From Hue) Ryszard Kapuscinski, or many of the other correspondents mentioned in other letters. What's around him. Who's there. And what's going on inside.
Having read two of his books ( Kitchen Confidential and A Cook's Tour) I know Bourdain is a first-rate observational nonfiction writer. From his two shows, I know he's also a top notch - if sometimes a bit over the top - on-camera presence.
That said, I genuinely hope Bourdain does not change course in midstream and spend much more time reporting in war zones. For one thing, the stuff he does now (serious travel journalism) he does as well as or better than anyone I've ever seen.
I'd also hate to think of some (un)lucky shot closing the door on that serious travel journalism.
And I'd worry about it because I just recently finished Chris Hedges' War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. Hedges vivdly describes the life under fire, whether lived by those in uniform, the press, or, sadly, the innocent civilian victims. And that life ultimately kills what's inside. And what's inside Tony Bourdain is what give his reporting that vivid quality we're all struck by here.
His early bravado is also not out of character. That the swagger was quickly replaced by the observational look and listen speaks volumes as to Bourdain's good sense. That seeing war up close was sobering for him is without doubt. Better for him that it was. Better for us, too. Especially since he did manage to get out in shape to tell his story.
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Stem Cell Research = "Pro-Cure"
[Read the article: Dueling wedge issues in Wisconsin]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'd love to see those who oppose stem cell research "on moral grounds" publicly sign a pledge affirming that they will never avail themselves of any curative advances derived from stem cell research. (I'd include their families, except that that's the moral equivalent of taking hostages.)
Now if only the term "Pro-Cure" catches some traction. Do your part, oh precious few readers!
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What, Republicans get to have all the fun?
[Read the article: Dueling wedge issues in Wisconsin]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"...the lie cannot be interpreted as anything other than a premeditated, vicious, deliberately incorrect smear by the Wisconsin Democratic party."
-- elephantman
The Republican Party of today has made its fortunes largely on such "...premeditated, vicious, deliberately incorrect smear(s)..." and yet somehow, they find it in their dank little souls to complain about others. Even to the extent of lying about the purported "lies" in the first place.
Is there no low to which the Yellow Elephants will not stoop?
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No liquids? ("crisis" = "opportunity")
[Read the article: Getting beyond our airport security obsession]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Anyone care to venture a guess as to how quickly the cash-strapped airlines (and with their ludicrous CEO/upper management pay structures, how can they be otherwise?) begin charging for even a cup of water during in-flight service?
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Flying is no longer worth it!
[Read the article: Is airport security futile?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The terrorists have indeed won.
We can no longer carry a sealed bottle of water - even one from a shop inside the "security zone" past the TSA screenings - onto a plane.
One of the other letter writers had it bang-on right. It's not about security, it's about conditioning us to accept the tedious, meaningless disrespecting of our persons and privacy as somehow essential, that we might be properly subservient to faceless overlords, sitting in some remote offices, who most assuredly do not have to submit to the same inconveniences in their travels. What would Franz Kafka say?
And it's all nonsense. Other writers here have discussed ways someone might do damage anyway - including surgical implantation of an explosive device. (Not likely, but we just never know...) More likely is something in checked baggage or in air cargo - which is almost never screened.
It's just not worth it to fly any longer. Even though it's domonstrably safer by far than driving, the fact that all the security nonsense is, at the end of the day, ineffectual means I don't want to put up with something that will not achieve its desired end - except by fortunate accident - in order to grant the illusion of safety. I know better. And I'm tired of being told otherwise by those who want my compliance for their own other ends.
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Earth to Okalahoma
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's a football game. Get over it, and yourselves.