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There's no place like home? Not if your candidate loses
A JetBlue plane is seen at John F. Kennedy International Airport April 27, 2012 in the Queens borough of New York City.
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Correction: This online story incorrectly identified the type of flight that contest winners would receive. JetBlue is offering a round-trip ticket. The text of this story has been corrected.
This final note today, apropos of the debate, I guess.
JetBlue has a new contest it's running; the big prize is a free flight. It's a round-trip flight so you can flee the country...when the candidate you didn't vote for wins. The tagline reads: "Live free, or fly."
So it's funny, right? But also sort of really... not.
Oh, come on... It's a j-oh-oh-oh-kuh!! Yes, hyperbole is the everyman's media buy currency and our twitterfed 15 seconds of fame/day makes extreme statements apparently way too easy for many... but I doubt if more than a handful of such citizen-cowards would actually do it... and bon voyage if they do... the most admirable political figures and citizen activists in the world risked their lives to stay local and vocal... to have citizens who can't stomach the peaceful transition or re-election of power then choose to self-select themselves out of the voting populace can only make the remaining citizenry cumulatively stronger. JetBlue obviously knows this (especially if you listen to the statement at the very end), and is making fun of such folks... playing a much-needed "court jester" role to an increasingly whacked out public dialogue. I hope they make some money from it.
I don't think it's funny. I think it's disgusting. It used to be the left-hippies who kept threatening to move to Canada if things didn't go their way. Now it's everyone?
If you want to leave so badly, get out. Really, leave. If you actually care about your country, stay and make it better.
As a liberal, JetBlue's "Live free or fly" ad strikes me as funny because it captures the ludicrousness of the rabid Obama-hating, government-fearing, talk-radio-brainwashed 'Tea Party" conservatives who claim Obama a) is not an American citizen, b) is a Muslim, and c) is a socialist. I doubt any of them would actually leave, though, because they've invested so much money and time in accumulating their doomsday survival stockpile of food, guns and ammunition.
The joke is that greed is our 'apathetic best' when the values are absent for the pursuit or substantiation of an unobtainable ideal, emphasized by an obvious loss to recognize/rationalize a need for virtue.
And it's funny because it's like the reminder from an old friend that whispered in your college-burned ears 'it's all up to us'.
Find solace, my friends, in the call and the effect it has upon us - don't lets call it cynicism, but for the hunger pangs of hope it can be taught to yield - it is a sign that the furnace of the human spirit lives yet and yet wants more. It's all up to us.
