Thursday, August 10, 2006

New Airline Restrictions Create Bored Kids

It didn't take long today for some reporters with a very suburban mentality to ask kids and their parents about the horrors of flying without having their iPods and GameBoys and DVD players in their laps. Indeed, HOW COULD an affluent, "connected" kid keep entertained deprived of such devices? Why, some of their flights are more than FIVE HOURS long.

Well, how about a book? Maybe a conversation with Mom and Dad? Maybe people watch or just maybe look around at where you are. Maybe, as the pilot always suggests, "sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight"?

Maybe looking out at the planet passing beneath them or up into the clouds. Heavens? No. Clouds and oceans and unidentifiable landscapes in the haze are for pagans and lost souls, daydreamers, and OUR KIDS are not daydreamers.

Message: the world itself is a boring place (even though, by the way, the terrorists are hop, skip and jumping all around us - glued to THEIR OWN cell phones and laptops, iPods, and DVD players to be used as detonators.

WHAT a bunch of rotten parents we've spawned. It's not like it's the kids' fault. THEY didn't ask for this world. And they didn't learn to roll their eyes and smirk and whine without being surrounded by immature adult (and parental) role models. Parents who have themselves all too often taken complaining to an (ugly) art form.

Travel is a luxury that is not about ignoring your surroundings - or even feeling the need to endure them. Your surroundings, wherever you are, are, if you are alive, a luxury. So show some compassion and some passion for the real world.

Travel doesn't make kids bored.

Parents make bored kids.


"May you live in interesting times." So the saying goes. And may you see your time as interesting.

These are interesting times, so interesting in fact that a conversation about them could last all the way across the Atlantic....

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Leiberman Slicks His Wounds

Spinmeister Leiberman, Clueless Joe, has a democratic hangover today, democratic small d. And he may be on his way to having a Democratic hangover - or could we say "fly by"? - large D. Leibermann is proving he's all spin, a disavowing, disloyal opportunist at heart.

Meanwhile, the morning after, Mr. Leiberman is swallowing his bitter pill, trying to sound upbeat (and even victorious, if a bit premature) about his chances of knocking out the two guys coming at him from the left AND the right. He's slickly trying to appeal to the big tent rainbow coalition moderates, the defenders of military might, but alas, he still sounds groggy. He still sounds like a slyly demeaning grandfather, part Mr. Rogers, a cloak for his Dr. Snide.

For years, I've thought Leiberman has been disingenuous with us, not saying outright that he wants the U.S., in cahoots with armed-to-the-teeth Israel, to aggressively, offensively chop up the Arab world into little pieces. If they - the Muslims and heathens - rattle their swords, we should rattle the ground beneath their feet, preferably until our "righteous" forces blow those hearts of darkness off the map.

But for Joe now, perhaps, no rehire in his shining city on the hill. Some die-hard dems see him for what he is -- an insiders' insider, trying to make that shining city yet another heart of darkness.

Welcome to the feeling of defeat.

And here's the bottom line: if Leiberman runs as an independent, as today he has declared himself to be, then he is no longer a Democrat, as of now -- and should immediately be stripped of all party perks and power. Win or loose, Ned Lamont is the only candidate from Connecticut deserving Democratic Party power and prestige from here on out.