Since March 8th, when a Malaysian Airlines jet with 239 passengers disappeared, the sense of terror and terrorism has been attached to the search for both the victims and the answers.
How could it not?
Since 9/11, the preoccupation with it’s just-a-matter-of-where-and-when has accompanied every reasonable adult through lines of increased airport security and onto commercial flights.
That brings us to Alec Baldwin, thrown off a Dec. 2011 American Airlines flight for refusing to comply — and after several requests — with safety regulations by turning off his phone, as had everyone else on the flight.
The flight was delayed an hour to facilitate Baldwin’s removal.
Given what flying has become since 9/11, Baldwin’s behavior should have been met with universal condemnation. His big-ticket, big-stage acting career even might’ve been suspended pending an apology — a real one, not one of those “released in a statement” jobs.
But he’s a TV star. Thus, Baldwin actually was rewarded for his selfish, abhorrent behavior.
He quickly starred as an airline pilot — get it? — in wise-guy TV commercials for Capital One credit cards, a company that ostensibly trades on the public’s trust. He starred on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” again playing a pilot and again exploiting his forced removal from a flight as a security noncompliant.
Funny, funny, funny! Woo!
Yet, if Alec Baldwin had been John W. Doe, and an NBC or Capital One exec had been seated nearby when he repeatedly defied FAA rules and disrupted the flight — and perhaps scared the hell out of everyone on board who only knew that there was a hassle up front — how eager would these execs have been to see, promote and even reward Doe’s behavior as comical?
What made Baldwin’s behavior okay — even funny and commercially useful – other than the fact that he’s Alec Baldwin and not John W. Doe?
As Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 again proves, there’s nothing particularly funny about the vulnerability of every man, woman and child who enters an airport, then boards a commercial flight.
Unless you’re Alec Baldwin — and those who would pat him on the back and have him shamelessly exploit his perverse sense of entitlement to sell credit cards and comedy.
Sorry? Ashamed of himself? How could he be when he cashed in? I’m guessing he wouldn’t have changed a thing.
This month a scientific study suggested that an ingredient in tequila could help ease the symptoms of diabetes.
“Finally,” concluded “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon in his monologue, “a shot that people with diabetes can enjoy!”
Some folks — although not many — in his live audience actually laughed at that. The rest of his monologue was equally forced and equally funny.
Kevin Trudeau, the king of get-rich-fast, lose-weight-fast, send-me-your-money-fast TV infomercials, has been sentenced in a federal court in Chicago to 10 years in prison for fraud. Judge Ronald Guzman called Trudeau, “deceitful to the core.”
Ten years. That’s roughly one for every three that he paid TV stations to allow him to take their viewers for scam rides.
Of course, Trudeau couldn’t have done it without the full cooperation and shared financial benefits of his TV “partners.” Yet, dozens of culpable TV channels and networks escape both prosecution and restitution. Instead, they’re busy cashing checks to air scam-enriched infomercials from other Kevin Trudeaus.
Seeing how our local newscasts go out of their way to show they have “news helicopters” — vacant lot fires and a side street flooded by a pipe rupture become live, overhead “breaking news” — it too often seems that these helicopters are the news.