Cynicism? Me?


Wherein Our Heroine is neither Cynical nor Sarcastic. No. Not at all.
Driving down the Beltway yesterday, I heard a caller on the open phones session of the Kojo Nnamde Show refer to the flight of the misguided Cessna as "the attack." Attack? Not even the news media, howling for a juicy story, is calling it anything but a mistake. I could more credibly call his use of the word "attack" an "attack" on my moving automobile (Imagine the scene - smoking Beltway wreckage and me saying, "His use of the word 'attack' was the direct cause of my eyes rolling back in my head, officer, which caused twenty-seven car pileup.")

Another caller compared this incident to JFK Jr.'s nighttime crash and insisted that light planes not be allowed into the air without a battery of instruments. Right. These guys weren't in danger of crashing due to sudden darkness at noon - unless it was due to terror of having scrambled fighter jets appear around them to escort them to a nearby airport.

No, no - the really frightening thing is that the DC Police department were not alerted to the incident until it was almost over - and then it was only by accident. The Feds are evacuating Congress (Blackberries all atwitter) and the way the DC Police finds out about this is when a Capitol Police intelligence official called in to the DC Police headquarters for information. (I would love to hear the tapes of that call - "Err... A plane what? Where? Wait a minute -you're calling me for information? Sounds like you have more of it than I do!")

At least the breakdown in communication was caused by an innocent mistake - I'm very sure it will all be fixed from here...


ETA: I had meant to include a link to Doghouse Riley's description of the stellar media coverage during the "attack." So there it is.
Posted: Friday - May 13, 2005 at 07:53 AM         | |

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