O, LaGuardia, a weary nation turns to you
In today's edition:
A few years ago, Alexandra Petri for a Thanksgiving project wrote a snippet of a fake song from a fake musical about a woman stuck in an airport. The show's stakes depended on New York's LaGuardia Airport being the armpit of American transit.
Indeed, as David Von Drehle writes, 'the old airport was Stygian, festooned with yellow police tape and smelling of hell, where angry travelers squatted on their roller bags for want of places to sit through perpetual flight delays.'
But, boy, will Alexandra's fake musical never win a fake Tony, now: LaGuardia is gleamingly reborn.
David chronicles the years-long, multibillion-dollar renovation the airport recently underwent, totally over the top of its own marshy Queens footprint, without the extra space for so much as an Auntie Anne's. The transformation into a hub heaped with praise is a story, he writes, of American ambition and prowess: 'From worst to best is not the pattern of a failing culture.'
A less celebrated aviation change of late is Southwest Airlines' decision to give up the ghost at last and start charging for checked bags. Bill Saporito of Inc. Magazine writes that it's easy to imagine the carrier's 'late co-founder Herb Kelleher lighting a cigarette and ordering a Wild Turkey — maybe a double — at the notion that his airline is diverting from the culture that made it so successful.'
Before you toast with your own teeny plastic bottle, though, consider Saporito's argument that Southwest could only run from market realities for so long. It's a miracle it made it as long as it did with one cabin class ('hell, that's airline socialism!').
Now, Saporito writes, Southwest faces 'a simple business proposition. If you can't soar with the hawks, soon enough you're going to be flying with the vultures.'
I celebrated Purim this weekend with some Jewish friends (if anyone has any tips on keeping your hamantaschen from unfolding in the oven, please let me know), and talk turned to an essay you might have missed last week: law professor Zalman Rothschild's reflection on his Hasidic education growing up.
Rothschild's schooling in his conservative Jewish community in Brooklyn included hours of close readings of ancient texts, six days a week. There was rigorous study of modern Jewish mysticism from every angle. Still, when he got to college, he had to teach himself basic arithmetic. Other instances of such ill-preparedness for the outside world abound in his essay.
Rothschild writes that he prizes the Hasidim's ability to exist largely under their own laws that preserve the community's unique way of life, but he argues that 'the value of pluralism surely has an outer limit.' When it comes to educating members of that community, minimum duty is to equip those members — should they so choose — to leave.
Chaser: Elsewhere in monotheism, Cardinal Robert McElroy just assumed the Catholic archbishopric of Washington. E.J. Dionne writes in a profile that the man has been preparing for this his whole life.
From the Editorial Board's analysis of this slash to the city's budget, which requires congressional approval. It writes that 'D.C. residents are used to lawmakers regarding the city as the federal government's plaything, but this … sabotage is a new level of insulting.'
What's more, it doesn't even save the federal government money, considering that D.C.'s budget is balanced and funded overwhelmingly by local taxpayers. Finally, it puts the lie to Republicans' claims of wanting to reduce crime in D.C.; the budget restriction will almost certainly require police cuts.
Chaser: D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has bigger fish to fry right now than the fate of Black Lives Matter Plaza, but Jonathan Capehart mourns its erasure all the same.
Jason Willick has a really thoughtful piece on artificial intelligence's apparent ability to out-impartial federal judges when making weighty legal decisions. Therefore, the bots are better, right?
Jason is examining a study in which judges were presented hypothetical convictions to either uphold or overturn. Some convictions were backed by precedent, and some not; some had remorseful defendants, and some not.
The judges were much more swayed by defendant sympathy, whereas the AI stuck exclusively to the law. You know what other group just stuck to the law, though? Law school students, whose study results mirrored the AI's.
'This research is a reminder that the legal system isn't just about doctrinaire rule-following,' Jason writes, something that law students learn over time — and that AI has yet to pick up.
Chaser: Speaking of judges, Karen Tumulty writes that Wisconsin's Supreme Court race might be the most important election of 2025.
It's a goodbye. It's a haiku. It's … The Bye-Ku.
To a fine country
Mired in weighty baggage,
Keep calm: Carry-on
***
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
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