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A couple of years ago after flying all over Europe and enjoying their quiet airports it was a huge and unpleasant piece of culture shock to be subject to the hell that is now the Atlanta airport.
While I was gone they had installed new flat screen T.V.s and Bose non-directional speakers. The speakers are so bass heavy and the volume so loud that ear plugs barely damper out the warbling CNN. Even without the added loop tape of bad music, incessant announcements, horns from the carts transporting old people, and jerks yelling into their cell phones and everybody's blood pressure would go up.
You used to be able to get away from it in the restaurants, but the terminal is now so packed with people that even getting in one of them is very dicey, and chances are the restaurants will be blaring ESPN or FOX in any case.
The traditional social contract in the United States was that you could do whatever you wanted as long as you doing it didn't interfere with others. This meant that the burden of proof was not on people who wanted peace and quiet, but was on those making loud noises. In Atlanta this bit of the philosophical foundation of our country no longer holds I guess.
