REVIEW --- Moving Targets: Today, O'Hare -- Tomorrow, the World
Last Sunday, in response to the budget sequester, the Federal Aviation Administration began a forced-furlough policy for its air-traffic controllers. Now, to a roster of delayed flights, unexpected fees, farcical movie selections, disintegrating earphones, confiscated honey jars in the shape of cute little bears and cracked elbows caused by injudiciously manipulated beverage carts, the airline industry has added delayed or canceled flights triggered by the federal deficit.</br></br>Almost unimaginably, the unfriendly skies have managed to get even less friendly.</br></br>What would it be like if other businesses operated on the same principles as airlines? Size 11 shoes would shrink to size 10, then to size 9, and ultimately all the way to size 4. Only first-class pedestrians would be sold shoes that fit them; everyone else would have to squeeze into fraying bootees. Intractable demands by the cobblers' union would be tabbed as the culprit.</br></br>Cardiologists would commandeer the public-address system to announce that they had overbooked open-heart procedures. They would offer a free quadruple bypass operation, valid for one year, to anyone willing to cede his place in line to the next customer. If they got no takers, they would offer two bypasses and a 50% discount on the patient's next four stents.</br></br>Dentists would announce that until further notice all wisdom-tooth extractions would be conducted without anesthesia, owing to furloughed dental assistants. Psychiatrists would begin offering frequent psychotic-episode plans that they would then refuse to honor due to mysterious restrictions concealed in the fine print of the agreement.