Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Why should frequent flyers get the best seats?

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A communication consultant I've known for years, a good guy and a moderate liberal, grouses that despite his status as a million-mile flyer with United Airlines, he gets stuck in the middle seat on the back of the plane.

Well, United sucks like a bucket of ticks, so argument there.

But I've always been troubled by the sense of entitlement that people who fly a lot feel, just for flying a lot. Granted, the airlines encouraged this sense, by inventing the term "Frequent Flier" and flogging it as if it implies some social virtue, like "Hard Worker," or "Straight Shooter."

But really, all "Frequent Flier" means is either that you are rich and able to fly around a lot, or that you have to travel a lot for your work.

But here's what it also means (everywhere but United, apparently): You get priority over "infrequent fliers." (They ought to have a catchy name too. Let's call them, "Rare Birds.")

You get to zip past them at the check-in counter and you get the best seats on the plane.

And who are the Rare Birds? By and large, they are people who live a more modest existence than the Frequent Flier—they don't have money for lots of vacations, and they hold local jobs in a global economy.

I'm not asking Frequent Fliers to feel sorry for the Rare Birds. I'm not even asking them to stop feeling sorry for themselves. (I hate business travel and am grateful I don't have to do it often.)

I'm just asking why they think the Chicago shlub who saved a few hundred bucks to go visit his cousin in Pittsburgh should be stuck in the middle seat instead of them?

We have seen Ed Arnold, and he is us

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A friend of mine told me my headline from Monday, "Why it was great to edit print publications," was a snoozer, seemingly meant to convince readers I'm 72.

Well hell, man, these 20 years I've been in the working world have been a pretty big 20 years in the communication business, and looking back over those two decades sometimes makes a body feel like he's 72.

For instance:

In the early 1990s, one of the most popular seminar leaders was a graphic designer named Edmund Arnold. Ed was known as "the father of modern newspaper design," and claimed to have designed more than a thousand newspapers as a consultant.

He was a charming man and a fine teacher who believed, and taught until his dying day, that ragged-right margins were a sign of slovenly hipness, as much a regrettable fad as bell-bottoms, long sideburns and large collars.

He taught a lot for Ragan, and toward the end of his career Ragan staffer Pat Williams asked him if he ever had a hard time remembering the names of those who attended his sessions.

"Oh no," he replied. "I just call all the guys 'Champ,' and all the ladies, 'Honey.'"

I once worked with Ed to produce a book. He believed desktop design was a fad, too. So this was a real honest-to-goodness cut-and-paste job which he sent to us, all mocked up and, in Ed's mind, ready to shoot and print. The Ragan staff designer and I took it down to the corner tavern to look through it and determine if she could reproduce it on the computer.

I spilled our second pitcher of beer all over the manuscript, and we frantically mopped up the pages, one by one.

Now I ask you: With a head full of yarns like that, how can you not feel 72?

Michael Gerson: Facebook friendless, no more

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I hope former President Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson doesn't think I'm stalking him since last week's post about his e-mail auto-reply. Gerson_lg

But I couldn't help noticing his Jan. 17 column in this week's Washington Post, about Facebook (also available on the CommercialAppeal).

Gerson writes:

There are many motives, of course, for sharing personal information on social media. Most people, I suspect, are networking. I was considering these issues recently while updating my own, nearly friendless Facebook page. Progress sweeps even skeptics before it. But who could possibly care that I listen to Iron & Wine or recommend the movie "The Passion of Joan of Arc."

Well, I'm a Facebook friend of Gerson's—one of 300-ish as of the publication of his column Sunday.

His Facebook updates are a mix of flat pronouncements …

GWB and Bill Clinton will make a very good team.

Michel Martin of "Tell Me More" on NPR is a very fine interviewer — informed, direct, serious.

2009. Glad to see the back of it.

… and the very kinds of personal details he wonders why his fellow Facebookers share, like …

Whole family sitting down to watch premier of House — the best show on TV.

Attending U2 concert in Chicago tonight.

can now say something I never thought I would say: I have a dog. A little Havanese.

"I suspect," Gerson writes in his column, "that some Internet exhibitionists are simply lonely. They want the details of their lives—no matter how trivial, troubling or shocking—to matter and count to someone. Of course, those details do matter and count, as all lives matter and count. But if loneliness is the motive, it is not likely to be relieved before a computer screen."

I'm starting to think people who are confused about Facebook are confused about how they see themselves in relation to their fellow human beings.

Are we all equals, involved in sharing our ideas and jokes and feelings and cute baby pictures with a circle of friends and admirers? Or are some of us Important Columnists and others just Lonely Exhibitionists?

As for Gerson, I bet he feels important sometimes, and lonely other times.

Like the rest of us, if we're lucky.

But honestly, who cares about one more Baby Boomer expressing his angst and ambivalence about Facebook, right?

Well some people must care.

Three days after his column came out, Gerson is up to 505 Facebook friends.

Lucky bastard!