The Wily Filipino

The Bewildering Story of Kenneth Eng, God.

The puzzling thing about the whole Kenneth Eng controversy -- for those of you not keeping score at home, he's the columnist for the San Francisco-based weekly newspaper AsianWeek who wrote the inflammatory "Why I Hate Blacks" column -- is how this guy got hired in the first place. (We are now inevitably treated to the spectacle of various Asian American leaders having to step up to the mic and condemn the shithead individually. But, oh leaders -- it's really AsianWeek you should be going after for giving this guy a bigger venue. And as an afterthought, you could also address the fact that Eng isn't the only Asian American racist -- but that's not something you want to think about right before you hold the townhall meetings with African American leaders.)

The article itself -- pulled from the AsianWeek website, but the Chronicle helpfully provides a scan of it (see below instead) -- is appalling. It's also quite badly written -- just the sort of nonsense you see on bulletin boards and not on nationally-circulated newspapers. And it isn't his first foray into ranting either (see his November 2006 column, "Proof that Whites Inherently Hate Us", or a later January 2007 column, "Why I Hate Asians"). Clearly not a one-off satirical piece (if it could be called satire). What, then, were AsianWeek's editors thinking when they hired someone who called himself "God of the Universe?"

I'm guessing it's because Eng -- correction, "Kenneth Eng, God" -- is "the youngest published science fiction novelist in America." I'm guessing someone found his musings on the Theory of Nothing / The Conceptual Theory of Everything (they're Parts 2 and 3 and I can't be bothered to find the first part) and figured they had a philosopher on their hands. Or maybe they found his short (semi-autobiographical?) piece, entitled "Glasses", from a website called Bewildering Stories:

It had been a day since last Johnny Spectic saw something spectacular. And already he was bored. So bored that he felt like killing himself. You see, it was the end of his college years and he had nothing left to celebrate. The parties were over. The classes were done. Now, all he had to look forward to was getting a job, working for the next 30-odd years and getting a house that he would brood in until dying of dullness. Sigh, what a way to spend your life. Everything that was remotely spectacular was behind him.

Contemplating many deep thoughts, he took a stroll and wandered to a lens store nearby. That reminded him he needed new glasses.

Contemplating many deep thoughts, I can say that he obviously had a career as a columnist at AsianWeek to look forward to.

All the five-star reviews on Amazon.com notwithstanding -- almost all written, suspiciously, by people who've posted only one review, i.e., Eng's book -- Eng also has a profile on Amazon with the blog entry "Religion Is For The Inferior:"

...most religious people I've met tend to be incredibly stupid/poor. They are usually black/hispanic immigrants who do not have the brains or the balls to understand science and thus resort to reading retarded stories about saviors and saints. (Oh, by the way, for those of you who want to scream at how "racist" I am for mentioning negroes and hispanics in such a way, go to someone who gives a sh*t).

Well. You'd think this would have sent off little alarm bells at the AsianWeek offices, but no. Or perhaps they missed his essay entitled "Discrimination Against Asians at NYU" (scroll further down) and didn't read between the lines enough?

Come on, AsianWeek. I know you folks will wash your hands clean and say that the op-ed columnists don't necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, et cetera. But to run a column like that and not expect criticism is sleeping at the wheel.

But I think I know why -- or more important, how -- they hired Eng in the first place.

It's because Eng is them, and Eng is in them:

“Reincarnation is not limited in time, space and material,” says Eng. “I could essentially be anyone living in the present, past, or future, or any imaginary being drawn from the Omnitemporal Realm. All consciousness is one. I am in everyone, friend or foe.”

Your Mail Has Been Killed.

Here's the situation: I live in a basement apartment (1354A) right under 1354, where my landlady lives. For the last two years, my mail would always arrive according to schedule, though there were times (more often than I thought) when my mail would arrive at 1354 instead, and the landlady (or, earlier last year, the renters) would bring them down to my apartment.

Sometime in December, my mail started slowing down to a trickle. Some packages went missing. A couple of checks never arrived. I had thought at first that my mail was somehow sitting upstairs at 1354, and that they had gone off on vacation (which they did). One eBay seller wrote back and said that the package had been returned; she resent it to me and it actually arrived.

The thing is, I would have caught it earlier if the mail had stopped completely; the problem was that it was intermittent, and there were times during the week when the mail carrier himself would stick the mail into the slot. I had also lodged a couple of complaints earlier, and then mail would arrive immediately after (leading me to suspect that it had to do with the particular carrier on a particular day). I'd gone to the local post office and asked to see if they had any of my packages; they had none. But all my credit card bills still arrived. My vehicle registration stickers arrived. And I couldn't figure out what was going on. Was my mail sitting in a similarly-numbered apartment a block over? Was someone stealing the packages?

And so it continued -- this constant ebb and flow of appearing and disappearing mail, of issues of The New Yorker or The Wire gone missing and reappearing a couple weeks later, of writing Amazon and asking to have items redelivered.

Last week, the mail finally stopped dead. I went to my local post office demanding an answer, and the woman behind the counter gave me a local number, different from the 1-800 customer service number where I had previously lodged my complaints. So I call the number and get Ronnie, a supervisor, and after I tell him my address, he goes:

Ronnie: Oh. According to our records, that address doesn't exist.

Me: What do you mean?

Ronnie: It's not registered at City Hall as an official address. It's an illegal address.

[Short history here: according to the previous landlord, Jim, the unit was in fact legal and built according to code with all the accompanying permits. It was indeed legal, according to my new landlady, Janice, but the only problem (she had told me this when we were out to dinner earlier last week) was that Jim had failed to file the proper paperwork after the unit was constructed.]

Me: I didn't know that.

Ronnie: Well, it's been three months, and we can't hold your mail any longer.

Me But if I had known you wanted me to do this, I would have done it! I didn't know you were holding my mail for me!

Ronnie: We wouldn't have been able to give you your mail in any case. We don't give mail out to customers.

Me: This is insane! So how was I supposed to get my mail?

Ronnie: Your landlord should have gone to City Hall and registered your address as a legal address.

Me: Well, I wasn't informed about any of this! And besides, you folks have been delivering mail to me for two years!

Ronnie: That's right. But we did some investigations and discovered the truth.

Me: [getting really upset now] But it's not as if I'm hiding the truth from you; I mean, this isn't my fault! This is insane!

Ronnie: It isn't the Postal Service's fault either. We don't deliver to illegal addresses.

Me: [sigh] Can't you just put the mail in there anyway? I mean, it's right underneath the house.

Ronnie: We don't deliver to illegal addresses.

Me: [trying a different tack] Well -- can I go down there and pick up my mail anyway?

Ronnie: [pause] I'm afraid we sent them all back yesterday. It's been three months.

Me: [panicking] What do you mean?

Ronnie: We can't hold them here any longer.

Me: You mean you just returned three months' worth of my mail that was just sitting there in the first place???

Ronnie: That's right. And from now on, any mail sent to that address will have to be stamped "return to sender."

Me: [incredulous] So how am I going to get my mail?!?

Ronnie: You can get your landlord to file the registration at City Hall, or you can give them a different address. Hopefully those people who sent you mail will contact you and ask for a different address.

At this point -- unwilling to say, "How are these people supposed to contact me? Through the mail??" -- I hang up and leave a message for my landlady. Then I call again.

Ronnie: Didn't I just talk to you earlier?

Me: [trying to be placating] Yes, I wanted to know if you could help me in figuring this out.

Ronnie: [sighs] You should get your landlord to file the registration.

Me: But that might take a couple of months! Can't I just file a change of address form?

Ronnie: You can't do that. What's the original address?

Me: [dumbfounded] It's 1354A ...

Ronnie: That's right. That address doesn't exist.

Me: [unable to think straight now] But it's right here! [I run outside the house, pointing to the door, but Ronnie obviously can't see any of this.]

Ronnie: You can't file a change of address form to change from a non-existent address to a different one. You can't change an address that doesn't exist.

Me [feeling like I'm trapped in Terry Gilliam's Brazil]: I can't change an address that doesn't exist. So what am I supposed to do?

Ronnie: Again, talk to your landlord. Or you can contact all the people that send you mail and give them a different address.

Me: [stupefied at the work that would entail] So you can't just put a sticker with a new address on my mail?

Ronnie: No, because all mail to that address has been killed. [pause] Oh. I just checked on the computer and it looks like your first-class mail is still here.

Me: Oh -- I thought you had already sent them back?

Ronnie: No, you were lucky. They're still here. You can come down here and pick them up. But remember -- we do not give out mail to customers. This is a favor -- remember this -- this is a favor, and I am only doing this once, you hear?

Me: Oh, that's wonderful, thank you very much! [Though my jaw is clenched hard at this point.]

Ronnie: And remember -- as of tomorrow, all mail delivery to that address will be suspended and returned. That address doesn't exist. Your mail has been killed.

So I drive off to the sorting center and pick up my mail -- overdue bills, checks, magazines, CDs, rejection letters, a couple of books (and yes, I gave the poor bookseller a bad rating on Amazon.com, so sorry), Christmas cards, newspapers -- 3 months of my life in a box, minus all the catalogs. I'm thinking grimly about all the mail that's already on their way. And you can probably imagine what I did the rest of the afternoon.

(P.S. to Ruthie, who I'm hoping to finally meet in June: unfortunately our vinyl wasn't in the box. But I'm confident it's on its way back to Jeremy deVine, owner of the coolest record label in the world right now, and who will hopefully send them back to me...)

Oh Yes.

Sometimes those seven Safeway dumplings / slice of pizza from the Indian restaurant next door / vegetable quesadilla just won't do:

Trio of Sashimi:
Japanese Fluke, Hearts of Palm, Honey-Lime
Tasmanian Trout, Avocado, Green Apple Ponzu
King Amberjack, Scallion, Mushroom Yuzu

Sonoma County Duck ~ Foie Gras:
Saffron Couscous, Asian Pear, Pistachios
Barley Risotto, Cranberry, Pecan
Quinoa, Huckleberry, Almond

Berry Shortcake ~ Ice Cream:
Raspberry, Devonshire Ice Cream
Blueberry, Creme Fraiche Sherbet
Strawberry, Milk Chocolate Mousse

2005 Segue Cellars Pinot Noir, Russian River Valley, Sonoma

Walter Sparrow, Pet Detective.

The Number 23 isn't unwatchable by any means, but its particular brand of awfulness deserves a little explanation. Directed by affable hack Joel Schumacher, the movie is part of what I'd call the post-Memento film, featuring unreliable narrators, plots that twist upon each other, suitably grimy production design that screams "I must be insane because I wrote all over the walls," and the pleasures of the readerly text. Its saving grace is that it doesn't constantly tease you -- "constantly" being the operative term here -- with "Was that real, or did he just dream that?" At least the whole thing is wrapped up neatly with a bow at the end, which is the least one can demand after having to sit through this.

Tonally, the film is all wrong, too. The pulpy novel that propels Walter Sparrow into his Downward Spiral Into Madness is meant to be badly-written hardboiled dialogue -- actually, most of it is badly written period -- but Schumacher seems to take it fairly seriously. Instead we get Jim Carrey doing his best brooding Colin Farrell impersonation; it's a problem when the audience isn't sure whether to interpret this as camp. (To his credit, the writer makes Carrey's character a dog catcher; this can only be deliberate, considering one of Carrey's most famous roles, but some sequences -- particularly when Sparrow is pursued by the Hound of Heaven -- are inadvertently funny.)

In short, the best thing about the movie is Virginia Madsen's cheekbones, and they're not reason enough to watch it.

(And to Mr. Schumacher: when your oeuvre contains the infamous "Fi' cent" scene from Falling Down, it's not very cool to start with an elaborate, unfunny joke that ends with the punchline "In China, people eat dogs.")

(And to the woman at the Metreon free sneak preview who demanded to take the seats that I saved for my friends who merely got up to go to the bathroom, and who loudly pronounced, "I can do whatever I want" and tried to take my jacket off the seats anyway: you suck.)

p.s. The fact that I apparently posted this entry at 2323 hours is a total coincidence. (I'm writing this section much later, at 1:15 am.)

The SFIAAFF.

Woo-hoo! The SF International Asian American Film Festival is here once again; all hail Chi-hui!

I'm busy most of the week (though the list below doesn't look like it, but unfortunately I'll be missing the new Lin / Byler / Weesethakul films), but I'm certainly checking these out:

Ato Bautista's Blackout:

Arthur Dong's Hollywood Chinese:

Hong Sang-soo's Woman on the Beach:

Romeo Candido's Ang Pamana:

and maybe Johnnie To's Exiled:

Giant Steps Are What You Take.

So I'm about to break my Concert Rule #1 (no arena/stadium venues) after hearing this bit of news. Holy cow. My very first "favorite band of all time" ever, back circa 1982-83 -- at least the very first band that inspired me to go save up my allowance and buy their entire discography. On vinyl even! (Indeed, the very first CD I ever owned* -- bought second-hand, still at a piggy bank-breaking price, from an early-adopter friend -- was Every Breath You Take: The Singles.)

I remember my dad -- who was the big Nat King Cole / Tchaikovsky / Richard Clayderman fan -- being quite skeptical of my new obsession. "Paulit-ulit lang 'yan, ah," he said, dismissing the repeating "Keep it up" coda of "Walking on the Moon." I tried in vain to point out how Stewart Copeland was clearly playing different drum patterns, but to no avail: my music had been dissed.

U2, Talking Heads, The Cure (in that order) then followed, in typically youthful hyperbole, as My Favorite Band Of All Time, but The Police was always the first. And now they're going on tour.

*Side note: I'm thinking now of how kids these days probably have little conception of their first CD, or even the first time they heard a CD. Ah, the days of record cleaning fluid and dipping a Q-Tip in rubbing alcohol to clean the rollers and heads... I still remember the first time I popped the Police CD into the player and almost fell back in shock -- perhaps too trebly, especially those early pressings, but sonically, a total revelation; Hugh Padgham's work on Synchronicity never sounded better.

Stop The Killings Benefit Show.

See you Bay Area folks here:

STOP THE KILLINGS Benefit Show
Saturday, February 17, 2007
7:30pm @ SOMArts (934 Brannan St., SF, CA 94103)
All Ages - $10 (Proceeds go to KARAPATAN)

Performances by:

Blue Scholars
Kiwi (of Native Guns)
Rhapsodistas
Echo of Bullets
Golda Supernova
Power Struggle
Praxis Rocks
The Movement Show
Kapatid X

Art by:

Speaker Fruits
CELL68

ACT NOW!!! Sign the online petition.

Did you know that 825+ people have been killed in the Philippines since 2001? Regular people...students, teachers, lawyers, workers, journalists, clergy, human rights workers, etc. Witnesses have pointed to elements of the Armed Forces of the Philippines in carrying out these killings. Yet not one person has been tried or convicted for any of these deaths. President Arroyo's government has done nothing to stop to these atrocities.

For us living in the U.S.A. it's a little sticky. The U.S. government has been providing excessive amounts of military assistance to the Philippine government. Reports from the Library of US Congress state that the total U.S. military assistance to the Philippines rose from $38 million in 2001 to $114 million in 2003 and a projected $164 million in 2005. That's our tax dollars potentially subsidizing death squads of the Philippine military at the cost of the Filipino people.

Come out to the show to learn a bit more about the issue and find out how you can get involved.

The Best Movies I Saw in 2006.

As usual, these include (older) films I got to see only in 2006.

In alphabetical order:

- The Descent (dir. Neil Marshall, England, 2005)
- Linda Linda Linda (dir. Nobuhiro Yamashita, Japan, 2005)
- Tropical Malady (dir. Apichatpong Weesethakul, Thailand, 2004)
- Workingman's Death (dir. Michael Glawogger, Austria, 2005)

And three runners-up:

- Cavite (dir. Neill dela Llana and Ian Gamazon, U.S.A., 2006)
- High Tension (dir. Alexandre Aja, France, 2003)
- Platform (dir. Jia Zhangke, China, 2000)

"The language of cinema is universal." This is Landmark Cinema's introduction to its movies -- a contradiction, however, to how much of the American public seems to like its movie-watching. "Like" is a guess on my part; Jonathan Rosenbaum argues, in essence, that the weekly charts of top ten highest-grossing movies are more of a reflection of how producers, marketers and distributors view the American movie-going public. There's no reason, for instance, that Park Chan-Wook's satisfying but disturbing revenge flick Oldboy would not have cashed in at the box office -- except for the fact that it has subtitles and, most importantly, was relegated only to limited film-festival or one-week runs in North America. (Okay, there are various acts of mutilation and torture, and an animal gets eaten alive -- but surely Jackass Number Two had similar scenes, no?)

While we cultural anthropologists generally dislike so-called "cultural universals," there are surely certain cinematic codes and conventions familiar to the movie-going middle class everywhere. Nobuhiro Yamashita's Linda Linda Linda, a film about Japanese high school girls who form a band, is an excellent exemplification of that "universal language," and therefore runs the risk of an American remake. Hollywood's remaking of Japanese horror movies, for instance -- perhaps testifying to its relentlessly acquisitive nature or its history of appropriating things in its own image -- consistently removes the specific cultural context from which the film emerges, almost as if the American public needed to be shielded from hearing foreign languages or different cultures.

Let me illustrate this dynamic by posing something opposite. I encounter something similar in my introductory sociocultural anthropology classes, where a student would invariably say at the end of the semester that they learned a lot because they could "relate to the readings," or that they could "see themselves in the situations," or, my favorite, that they "learned more about themselves." But my standards in this cinematic case are somewhat different: These lessons are absolutely commendable, but there is something to be said about a perceptual lens that enables one to recognize, appreciate, and understand difference, rather than simply projecting oneself onto the ethnographies. Surely film audiences can do the same, at the same time using those codes of the "universal language" to guard against archaic exoticisms.

(The fact that the band in Linda Linda Linda, called "PARANMAUM" -- Korean, apparently, for "Blue Hearts," the name of the '80s Japanese band whose songs they cover -- is led by a Korean singer who can only speak halting Japanese, her second language, nicely entwines the twin themes of the possibility of intercultural communication with a nostalgia that cannot be shared; "Linda Linda" is not a song from the lead singer's childhood, and despite this (or because of this) by the end she inhabits it and makes it fully her own.)

Linda Linda Linda isn't perfect; it traffics in the usual stereotypes, none of them very deeply fleshed out -- the tough one, the one with a crush, the hesitant outsider (played wonderfully here by my new favorite actress Bae Doo-Na). But unlike, say, Joan Freeman's Satisfaction (terrible) or Alan Parker's The Commitments (better -- it's based on a Roddy Doyle novel after all), there's no anticipation of a big break, no big club date or audience, just a high school basketball court performance on a rainy afternoon. In this respect the dilemmas are charmingly small, but massive in its adolescent context: will they find a place to rehearse? Will they make it to the concert on time? Will they ever get those opening notes right? This is where Yamashita's direction shines; when they finally get to sing their song, the crowd-pleasing scenes at the conclusion are genuinely earned.

It is in the film's series of final frames -- almost-still shots of empty courtyards and hallways -- that the film acquires a particular gravity. With the mystic guitar chords of memory ringing in the background, the film tells us that the high school -- surely one of the more emotionally charged locales, however one might repress it, in a typical viewer's life -- will always be there, even if its temporary residents will inevitably come and go. Spaces only become places once they are animated by the lives and recollections passing through it. The film works in the same way, a testament to the uncanny power of music to anchor the hearer in a fleeting temporal space through a brief, bittersweet burst of nostalgia.

Music runs through Jia Zhangke's Platform as well, and it would probably be in my top four if I had had the chance to rewatch it. At once both intimate and epic in its observation of a traveling rural Chinese theater troupe, the film is also in its way an illustration of how music unsettles and moves people. There's a feeling here of unbounded potential, of China at the brink of its exciting dance with capital. But the way Jia both makes minute observations as well as portrays the characters swept up in larger forces -- combined with how the settings vary from the hugeness of barren mountains to the smallness of cramped lodgings -- betrays a clear ambivalence about what the changes will entail. But the final scene -- involving a teakettle with a whistle that sounds like a train -- is perhaps easy to interpret: the sadness of a generation left behind.

Apichatpong Weesethakul's Tropical Malady, about the budding love affair between a Thai soldier and a country bumpkin, doesn't exactly confound interpretation, as befuddled critics and audiences -- including Quentin Tarantino, who spearheaded the Cannes jury that handed it the "Un Certain Regard" award that year -- seemed to assert. The audiences at Cannes would be familiar with this sort of magic realism as it were -- if not in their own national cinema, then at least through viewings of Hongkong martial-arts/fantasy films, or Japanese ghost stories that have been the staple of recent popular Asian cinema.

What I thought was most jarring is this magic-realist combination with his fiddling around with narrative: the oneiric presentation of events in the first half, and the sudden split in the center. (I liked the plunge into darkness in the middle, as it was reminiscent of my early movie-viewing days at the Agrix Cinema in Los Banos, when the projectionist would take his sweet time switching the reels.) The romance of the first half gives way to… well, the same romance, though pitched on a dream-like mythological level, or retold on an allegorical plane. (Though as I type this, the words "though pitched on a dream-like mythological level, or retold on an allegorical plane" may in fact be erroneous, as the second half may be seen simply as a literal continuation of the earlier narrative.) There's something genuinely risky with what Weesethakul accomplishes here, especially since the plot itself is almost nonexistent, but the viewer's patience will be richly rewarded.

Tropical Malady is undoubtedly a Thai film, though one financed with French money. Cavite is undoubtedly an American film, but one that's quite literally "transnational" in scope. Here's what I wrote about Cavite earlier.

(Cavite deserves a longer blog post addressing previous comments -- one by Darren, who wrote that it was "the best Asian American film since Terminal U.S.A.," and one by my last.fm friend Ardee, who wrote a stinging tirade against the filmmakers regarding art -- and I have more to write about that ending.)

Transnationality is even more expanded in Michael Glawogger's Workingman's Death, about which I wrote previously.
And finally, two horror movies, about which needs no translation.

Here's what I wrote earlier on Neil Marshall's The Descent.

(It's worth noting that American audiences were also "protected" from the ambiguities of the original UK version -- via some trimmed seconds from the ending and throughout -- which dared posit a metaphorical descent as well.)

And finally, a shout-out to Alexandre Aja's High Tension, an absolutely nerve-wracking, taut thriller machine, told with minimal dialogue and an impressive narrative economy. It also boasts of one of the more malevolent villains in recent film history and surely the most gloriously horrific use of a rotary chainsaw in a film. Unfortunately it's marred by a frankly insulting twist at the conclusion and appalling sexual politics. (Even more so, Aja's gift for gore is squandered in his second film, an unnecessary remake of Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes.)

Meme with No Specific Questions.

I got tagged by Papers for the Border. Dan writes: "What you do: Imagine the question that led to the answer, and then provide your own answer."

So here goes:

1. The corpulent Ms. Llamas, may she rest in peace, undoing our belts and, as punishment for some now-forgotten offense, making us march in place in front of a laughing and jeering third-grade classroom until our pants fell down to our ankles.
2. Julianne Moore on the sofa, sharing a six-pack of Bud Light, watching late-night TV.
3. PUFFY, "Long Beach Nightmare," 105 plays.
4. Unmoored.
5. Twelve liters of water in the dehumidifier in two days.
6. "Gonzo" beans and rice.
7. "I am listening to hear where you are."
8. A fatty slice of ham tucked between two slices of fried carabao cheese and warmed-up pan de sal.
9. The Zierer wave swinger.
10. That Sunday the possessed boy attended church, a week after the pastor's retelling of his exorcism, and how he gave that ear-piercing cry and started babbling in tongues once the pastor stood up to deliver his sermon.

And 5 people I'm tagging: Happy, Ver, Barb, Catriona and Gladys.

Perks.

At the John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, I noticed something I hadn't seen at airports before: a separate security check line for first-class and premium passengers. (Although now that I think about it, there was probably one at SFO as well.) As we stood in the obviously slower and longer line, I turned to Izzy and said -- in a voice loud enough for whoever was listening to hear, hoping to gain a sympathetic ear -- "This seems kind of unfair, Izzy."

The woman in front of me wheels around and says, "Of course it's fair. All you have to do is pay double the fare."

Surprised at her reaction, I said, "But it's one thing for a private company to do that. But this is a government procedure, so it doesn't seem very fair to make us wait longer..."

"It's fair because they paid twice the price," she answered. "If you want to go in the quick line, you simply pay more."

"But it seems to discriminate against people who can't afford to pay the higher price." My voice started trailing off, realizing this wasn't working, and that the "D" word -- "discriminate" -- probably made me sound like, you know, one of those angry "people of color."

"Oh my god," she said, rolling her eyes and turning away.

Of course, she was right in the sense that if people are foolish -- okay, wealthy -- enough to afford the first-class tickets, then they should be welcome to do so. But I don't think this was what she was arguing. Part of what rankled me was her easy defense of the "natural," capitalist order of things, but that shouldn't have been a surprise.

Having separate lines was certainly understandable in the context of a private company, but this was not the case. What was perhaps most annoying was the fact that the intrusion of the public into the private, and vice versa, was so unquestioned -- nothing new at all, but simply one more instance of such encroachment. First-class passengers already have separate check-in counters, a departure lounge, cushier seats, what-have-you -- what's one more perk, one supposes the airport officials thought, to reward the rich for a job well done?

Whatever one's opinion regarding the shifting palette of homeland security threats -- and you irregular readers of this blog would know mine -- the fact remains that the war on terror, and its grave consequences, already affects Americans unequally. Surely its attendant inconveniences demand to be applied at least a little democratically as well.