I grew up with Air Force One pretty much in my back yard (I also grew up witnessing all variety of strange sonic booms and mysterious lights in the night sky affiliated with living so close to a military air base…but that’s for a different post). So it wasn’t all that strange a thing for me to see Air Force One flying low in the sky when I was little.
What might have seemed commonplace back then and in the particular area where I grew up has completely different overtones in another part of the country. Especially a part of the country that bore the brunt of the worst terrorist attack to ever reach our shores. It hasn’t been all that long since September 11, and even though we no longer have Mr. Bush out there reminding us of this day every chance he can find, you’d think that—at the very least—those in the military and the government would remember that morning.
They might even remember it enough to want to avoid quietly setting up a photo-op in which, unbeknown to residents and workers, they fly Air Force One low in the sky over NYC, complete with a fighter jet escort, during a work day. Or any day for that matter. Really? That’s one for the History of Dumb-Ass Ideas, Volume 8,000.
Next time you want a pretty photo-op of AF1 coming in for a tête-à-tête with Lady Liberty, you might want to give those on the ground a bit of a heads-up…
