Every American Airline Passenger Can Relate to This

Peggy Noonan's column starts out with a scenario that is familiar to every American that flies:

America is in line at the airport. America has its shoes off, is carrying a rubberized bin, is going through a magnetometer. America is worried there is fungus on the floor after a million stockinged feet have walked on it. But America knows not to ask. America is guilty until proved innocent, and no one wants to draw undue attention. America left its ticket and passport in the jacket in the bin in the X-ray machine, and is admonished. America is embarrassed to have put one one-ounce moisturizer too many in the see-through bag. America is irritated that the TSA agent removed its mascara, opened it, put it to her nose, and smelled it. Why don't you put it up your nose and see if it explodes? America thinks.

And, as always: Why do we do this when you know I am not a terrorist, and you know I know you know I am not a terrorist? Why this costly and harassing kabuki when we both know the facts, and would agree that all this harassment is the government's way of showing "fairness," of showing that it will equally humiliate anyone in order to show its high-mindedness and sense of justice? Our politicians congratulate themselves on this as we stand in line.

All the frisking, beeping and patting down is demoralizing to our society. It breeds resentment, encourages a sense that the normal are not in control, that common sense is yesterday. Another thing: It reduces the status of that ancestral arbiter and leader of society, the middle-aged woman. In the new fairness, she is treated like everyone, without respect, like the loud ruffian and the vulgar girl on the phone. The middle-aged woman is the one spread-eagled over there in the delicate shell beneath the removed jacket, praying nothing on her body goes beep and makes people look.

America makes it through security, gets to the gate, waits. The TV monitor is on. It is Wolf Blitzer. He is telling us with a voice of urgency of the Pennsylvania returns. But no one looks up. We are a nation of Willie Lomans, dragging our rollies through acres of airport, going through life with a suitcase and a slack jaw, trying to get home after a long day of meetings, of moving product.

No one in crowded gate 14 looks up to see what happened in Pennsylvania. No one. Wolf talks to the air. Gate 14 is small-town America, a mix, a group of people of all classes and races brought together and living in close proximity until the plane is called, and America knows what Samuel Johnson knew. "How small of all that human hearts endure / That part which laws or kings can cause or cure."

Gate 14 doesn't think any one of the candidates is going to make their lives better. Gate 14 will vote anyway, because they know they are the grownups of America and must play the role and do the job.

Last year when I flew to Northern California I had to give up my 'Lecric Shave because the bottle was bigger than 3 ounces and might cause the airplane to mysteriously fall from the sky or crash into a San Francisco skyscraper. In Oklahoma City, a few months after 9/11, I saw a four-year old boy frisked by security, standing their with his little arms in the sky and a look of terror on his face. He too, was a threat to our national security.

Flying has become such a chore and an insult that it's no wonder the airlines are having problems. Although higher fuel prices are big trouble for the airlines, it may be what saves them too, because I found that in planning a trip to visit my daughter next month that it is actually cheaper to fly than to drive and pay $4 a gallon for gas. I hate the very thought of walking into an airport and going through the "kabuki dance" in the screening process, but for at least this trip, I'm going to degrade myself like all the other potential terrorists that fill our packed airliners every day.

The sad thing is, I love to fly. From the point where the airplane accelerates down the runway until we brake to a stop - I love it. The act of flying is exhilerating, but cramming a 6'5" not-so-slender body into a coach airline seat, after going through everything you have to go through just to get on the plane, and then being stuck for hours without any food and maybe a beverage, is self-degradation on a major level, and we're paying more and more for the experience.

When I was a kid we took the train to Kansas City and back. It may be time to take another look at train travel when schedules permit.