"What the heck were they thinking?" dept.

The airliner circled Southern California for hours, crippled by a faulty landing gear, while inside its cabin 140 passengers watched their own life-and-death drama unfolding on live television.

While satellite TV sets aboard JetBlue Flight 292...were tuned to news broadcasts, some passengers cried. Others tried to telephone relatives and one woman sent a text message to her mother in Florida attempting to comfort her in the event she died.

"It was very weird. It would've been so much calmer without" the televisions, Pia Varma of Los Angeles said after the plane skidded to a safe landing Wednesday evening in a stream of sparks and burning tires. No one was hurt.

The Fox News story quoted above says that the plane's monitors allowed the passengers to watch their own airplane "until just a few minutes before landing at Los Angeles International Airport."

On television, though, it sounds to me like they're saying the passengers could see the whole thing--including the front landing gear bursting into flames.  (Video available at the above FNC link.)  If that's true, it's unbelievable.  No one could be that stupid and inhumane.

But even if the show ended before landing, I still can't imagine piping everything those idiotic professional television journalists were saying about the possible fate of that airplane and its occupants into the cabin for all to hear. 

Let the Captain communicate with the passengers and crew as needed.  At least that way you know what will and won't be said--otherwise you could be allowing every doomsday scenario possible to be announced to your already-nervous passengers, and knowing television journalists when they're following a story like that, that's probably exactly what they were doing.

UPDATE:  I have no idea how there could be any left-vs.-right perspective on this story at all, but Unpartisan.com has again linked me as one representive of the "dextrosphere" on this story.  (Shrug)

CORRECTION:  Sorry, folks, but it looks like I made a completely unwarranted assumption above, which is what I get for talking before I think.

Passengers had DirecTV available to them in their seats, so they had the choice whether to tune in to news coverage of their flight.  This was not a choice made by JetBlue or the crew of the plane.  And it's standard procedure to terminate the TV feeds ten minutes prior to landing, which they did.

In addition the pilots did an incredible job of letting the crippled nosegear down gently and keeping the aircraft straight down the center line.  One good thread describing this is at Wizbang!

UPDATE, OR CHANGING THE SUBJECT ENTIRELY:  It is being widely reported that Alexander Jacobs, an editor at the New York Observer and six months pregnant passenger on the plane, described the experience of watching their fate unfold on television as "a bit post-Postmodern, if you will."  I might describe the experience of meeting a woman named Alexander to be "a bit post-Postmodern," but that's a different subject.

Nowhere have I read anything purporting to explain what the dickens Ms. Jacobs might have meant by "post-Postmodern" (nor, for that matter, did she ask me whether I "will" or "won't."  Fortunately for her, I will). This may be because it is assumed that everyone would know what she meant, that is, unless one is hopelessly unintellectual (and quite boorish and slow besides).  I have some passing understanding as to what it is to be postmodern (for example, that early elements of postmodernism in the 1920s were associated with the emergence of the "dada movement," the basics of which most American toddlers master before the age of 18 months as a foundation for the slightly more involved "mama movement"), but after careful consideration, all I can theorize (theoretically) is that, just perhaps, her comment itself was intended as an illustration of postmodernism in action.  You may remember (or not--it matters not in the slightest) that Humpty Dumpty told Alice:

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'

"Which is to be master," indeed!  If I may take another (theoretical) stab at Ms. Jacobs' statement, perhaps she means that the flight took place in a time period following that of postmodernism, which would be much better news even than saving a bunch of money on my car insurance.  It would mean that all of America just might be ready to learn to think again.

ANOTHER UPDATE ON THE SAME SUBJECT, SORT OF:  A commenter said:

I'm glad you posted this. The word 'postmodern' has always bugged me. It is kind of an oxymoron's oxymoron. I think it is the most useless, idiotic word. First of all, when did anything 'become' after the 'modern'? Modern is what is current, what is now. To put 'post' before 'current' means just the very second after the now, this instant. In all time modern has been that time in which people are aware, alive, living, being...... Did we suddenly stop being? No.

You're right--the word "modern" actually means a couple of different things, depending on who you're talking to and how pseudointellectually elite they want to seem.

"Modern" can mean either "contemporary," as you're using it to mean, or it can mean a particular way of responding to things, as in "modernism," which began about 1890 and sort of seems to have ended recently, which is why people speak of "postmodernism." Just exactly what that is is debateable, but it seems to include ideas (such as are promoted by some feminists) that "logic" and "reasoning" are merely arbitrary constructs that men use to oppress women.   (Disclaimer:  IANAPhilosophy Professor.)

Darn--see, they got me. When I argue a point logically, all I really want to do is oppress any women who may be reading this blog.  (Sigh.)  I therefore have been rendered summarily irrelevant.  At the very least I have been reduced to sounding just like they do.

In this worldview, opinions can never be validated (or invalidated) by evidence--any opinion is as valid as any other. Ipso facto, no one's opinion can be challenged as irrational or opposed to the available evidence, and if you do so, you are so sexist, you pig.  Hie thee back to thy pigpen.

So, anyway, perhaps by the time we start calling things "post-postmodern" we're starting to sound just a little bit silly, and we might want to consider reconsidering the pre-postmodern modernism we rejected a few decades ago.  Or something like that.

ANOTHER UPDATE AGAIN:  Or did I mean a sort of pre- pre-postmodern-modernism-ism?  I'm still not sure...

Comments

[Phoenix]

I'm glad you posted this. The word 'postmodern' has always bugged me. It is kind of an oxymoron's oxymoron. I think it is the most useless, idiotic word. First of all, when did anything 'become' after the 'modern'? Modern is what is current, what is now. To put 'post' before 'current' means just the very second after the now, this instant. In all time modern has been that time in which people are aware, alive, living, being...... Did we suddenly stop being? No. Modern is a continuum which has no 'after' to it as it continues apace despite our attempts to label it. I mean, I'm fine with The Renaissance, The Reformation, The Dark Ages, The Industrial Age, The Space Age...... but those 'ages' were all 'modern' for their time. We're not devolving, certainly, so 'postmodern' is plain old S T U P I D ,... if you will. We would do better to call this The Dipshit Age because we actually use words like 'postmodern' and feel all intellectual and stuff.