Today's La Crosse Tribune cherry picked a semi-local (if depressing) item off the Associated Press wire: Delta mechanic killed at Minneapolis airport. Admittedly, my motives for clicking were not lily-white: Dennis and I will be travelling later this year, and I thought I remembered Delta being one of the airlines involved. Thus, there was more than a passing interest in safety involved.
Yet that consideration was quickly overridden by disgust at the presumption of what was considered most important to the audience. Specifically phrases such as "...no impact on overall operations..." and "...a substitute plane that left on time from another gate."
Not even the pretense of regret at the fact that somebody's melon was squashed in a bloody great big gear door on a bloody great big airplane. Yes, it's important that airlines pretend to hew to their published schedules. But it's rather more critical that safety is not merely a pretense and that somebody somewhere cares more about flesh and blood than metal and fuel. That's what I want to hear addressed. Not that the two-legged cargo was efficiently herded away before its delicate sensibilities were ruffled by the sight of someone's brain being hosed off the tarmack.
Yeeeeesh.
Like I said, I hope that this is merely an example of clumsy quoting and/or yellow journalism at its most sensationalist. Either way, somebody's got some 's'plainin' to do... Whoever you are: Back to Human School with you!
