The lead story on the NBC Nightly News last night had nothing to do with Pakistan, Afghanistan or the health care debate (three deadly fire zones); it was about the Northwest Airlines flight that flew past its intended destination, the Minneapolis airport, while the people who were supposed to be flying it were either napping or arguing.

Nobody died, as my mother used to say and maybe it was just the what-the-hell factor that put it at the top of the hour. (Today’s New York Times put the story on the inside, while Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal — now with more outrage! — placed it above the fold on the front page, under the hed Wandering Flight Spurs Nap Probe.) Anchor Brian Williams knows what his viewers want — more stories about official incompetence — but he may have also sensed its symbolic import. And it has nothing to do with flying.

Most rage comes from a sense of powerlessness. Trust me. And politically, globally, locally a lot of people feel something less than empowered right now. You say you have a skill or craft that you have practiced your entire life, probably went to college to pursue and have been working away since then, visions of travel and retirement in your head?  Or you can’t understand how the people who caused this financial downturn have escaped unscathed — and in some cases have been rewarded? Or that you can’t believe that the people in Washington/the state capitol/city hall are fighting instead of dealing with the mounting crises? Shall I cue the laugh track now?

If the car goes off the road, I don’t think the kids in the back seat care if mom & dad were arguing or sleeping. If the plane misses the runway by 150 miles even the seasoned traveler, who knows most flights are guided by autopilot, has cause to be alarmed. (For the record, the NWA pilots say they were having a “heated discussion over airline policy and lost situational awareness” — try that line the next time you come home drunk!) In my mind arguing might be worse; it seems a more intentional waste of time and energy.

Take the Obama administration’s battle with Fox News. It’s already proven to be a distraction, giving Herr Beck & his ilk more cause to feel slighted and even the rest of the media now feels obliged to cover it — when there is so much more deserving our attention. Whatever the White House’s motives (and honestly, did they think Fox was going to play fair, or nice?) it’s time to drop it, let their reporters back in the loop and move on. This is not the time for autopilot.

Before the launch of this season of Mad Men, AMC ran a teaser of the show’s most shocking moments to date. There was the early episode where we found out Don wasn’t Don, and Peggy discovering she’s pregnant — when she has a baby — and the time Roger Sterling vomited on the floor in front of the Nixon people. But the most shocking moment for me came in the second season, when after a picnic beside what looked like the Taconic Parkway, Don and his nuclear family stood up to leave — but not before throwing their trash all over the pristine lawn on which they’d been noshing. Don even took aim with a beer can, pitching it high into the trees. 

If you grew up in the sixties, littering was tantamount to killing kittens. Of course we knew people who did both (I remember my father drowning a few of the latter) but starting about the time the organization Keep America Beautiful joined forces with the Ad Council in 1961, we were indoctrinated with slogans such as “Every litter bit hurts!” Remember the Litter Bug? Okay, well he remembers you and he’s lurking there, in your subconscious, right beside Smokey the Bear and the Jolly Green Giant. 

The organization has been criticized over the years, mostly for serving as a shill for the very industries who produce all the non-recyclable waste in the first place and especially for the Crying Indian ad campaignof the seventies,  featuring Iron Eyes Cody. But even if events like the Great American Cleanup aren’t on your calendar, they helped make America aware of litter, the way Germans are aware of the Holocaust. 

Some Americans, that is. Because if you live in an urban environment such as mine you are confronted by the daily reality that some people really don’t care where they throw their trash. And pointing out the folly of their ways is an invitation to ridicule, at best. And yes, I am speaking about young black people for the most part, at least in my part of Brooklyn. 

Is this a racist observation? You tell me. I suspect it has something to do with culture and maybe generational influence. I remember throwing stuff out the car window as a child, but I also remember being reprimanded for it by my mother — the way I was reprimanded for using the N word. I can only conclude that the kids who throw their potato chip bags and candy wrappers and half-eaten fried chicken on the street have not been told not to do that — or have been and are practicing open rebellion amongst their friends. Maybe they’ll quit when they’re older, the way people quit smoking and sniffing glue. 

I guess I could do a control group study by hanging out at nearby Brooklyn Tech,which seems to be about 80% Chinese-American. It could just be that there is no one shared culture anymore. If you remember the Crying Indian or the Litter Bug it’s because there was nothing else on and you couldn’t skip through the commercials. What if there was a video of Jay-Z and Kanye West putting trash in its place?

Kids would probably throw garbage at it.

Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn held its Fifth (and we hope last) annual Walkathon today, a rather forbidding and gray fall day in our borough. The weather kept the crowds at bay; about 200 people gathered at Borough Hall to hear John “Nobody Fucks with the Jesus” Turturro (lifelong Brooklynite but a more recent convert to the anti-Ratner cause), city councilwoman Tish James (who led the troops on our protest like Delacroix’s Liberty leading the people, albeit fully clothed) and DDDB president Daniel Goldstein, all telling people not to give up.

Rather we need them to give it up; the money the organization raises all goes to the legal costs of fighting developer Bruce Ratner and his hated Atlantic Yards project. This week attorneys representing Goldstein and other property owners presented their case to the New York Court of Appeals, with mixed results. The justices seemed less than eager to redefine the meaning of eminent domain, or define public use — but they also had some tough questions for the other side.

Such as why was the residential area, where lots of working class folks live, declared blighted after the fact. “Have you gerrymandered this area to fit what the developer wanted?” asked one of the justices. (“Heck no, your honor — but with the governor, mayor and borough president all ready to lie down for us we figured we could just take what we wanted.” Okay, he didn’t say that.)

It could be weeks, or months, before the court hands down a decision but events such as this one are designed to keep hope alive. The marchers stopped about midway in front of Bloomberg’s reelection office on Atlantic Avenue. There was some general booing and chanting (“Eight years is enough!” “Brooklyn’s not for sale!”), followed by an impromptu sermon by the Reverend Billy of the Church of Life After Shopping. It was he who invoked Jane Jacobs, the patron saint of urban development opponents everywhere, and reminded us that the opposition may have more clout and money (rubles, even) than us — but they ain’t got soul.

I missed most of the haters on the right reacting to Obama’s peace prize, partly because I was traveling but partly because I’ve been to the sewer, thanks. Now I’m reflecting more on the response of those with whom I more politically aligned, and cogitating on just what the hell the Nobel Committee was thinking. 

In an interview the committee’s secretary Geir Lundestad said not only were the Norwegians betting on the future (Nobel To President: Don’t Screw It Up) but claimed that he has “produced an entirely new international climate.” 

Looking with some skepticism at the president’s achievements to date, a lot of Americans forget what he means to the rest of the world — all those people in all those  places we so perfectly alienated over the last eight years. Of course Rush & Beck & company don’t care about them — but you should. 

I remember seeing Yossou N’Dour performing at BAM before a largely African and Muslim audience shortly after Obama’s speech in Cairo. The occasion was the premier of a documentary about the singer, I Bring What I Love, and the director in her opening remarks referenced the speech — and the place went nuts. Five minutes of sustained prolong unprompted applause, all because our leader had said the equivalent of: Let’s Talk. 

Granted, Bush set the bar pretty low and any number of candidates for the peace prize stood in contrast to the forever-war politics of the GOP. And yes, Obama has not been bold (or reckless) in his decisions about the conflicts in Iraq & Afghanistan — but bold and reckless aren’t really his style and was not why many people pulled the lever to make him president. Give him time. Give the world time. Consider the alternative. 

I heard a podcast of a dharma talk this morning by Paul Haller of the San Francisco Zen Center: it was early, we were in a hotel, I was trying not to wake my daughter. In the lecture (called Divine Discontent, available here for those playing at home) he tells the story of guy who goes a hundred miles to see some famous Buddhist teacher and says, What have you got? “Do less harm,” says the master. 

That’s it? says the pilgrim, incredulous. I come 100 miles and you say, “Do less harm”?!

“A child of eight knows it,” says the monk, “but can a person of 80 practice it?” 

Good question! Let us all live to be so old.