In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Yesterday I noted that in the wake of Southwest Airlines's Christmas meltdown, Mahogany Row gave themselves promotions and almost certainly bonuses. And over the recent long weekend, CEO Bob Jordan backed off the airline's own mea culpas at the time of the crisis: Southwest Airlines' CEO said aircraft engines froze and jetways wouldn't move after a storm caused an operational meltdown that led to thousands of flights being canceled, The New York Times reported. . . . The CEO's comments come a day after a group of shareholders filed a class action lawsuit against Jordan, its CFO, executive chairman and the airline, claiming that it hid problems that caused its meltdown. . . . Jordan denied that its technology failed and told the Times it had just experienced an "overwhelming volume." He added that it hired Oliver Wyman, a consulting firm, to independently investigate the event, per the report, and reiterated that he was responsible for what hap...

In covering Southwest's holiday-seasom meltdown, I've got to say I expected at least some management heads to roll. So far, not a bit of it. [I]n an announcement that flirts with humor and attempts to defy it, the airline this week promoted five of its senior executives to even more senior roles. Why, the vice president of Network Planning, Adam Decaire, was promoted to senior vice president of Network Planning and Network Operations Control. He's going to need a wider business card, isn't he? And please don't worry, he went to Ohio State and didn't study accountancy. Then there was Tony Roach. He was promoted from vice president of Customer Experience & Engagement to senior vice president of Marketing & Customer Experience. He's going to have some fun over the next few months. And no, he didn't go to the University of Texas. His alma mater is Abilene Christian University. All hail, too, Whitney Eichinger, ascending from vice pr...

I'm astonished at how quickly, during a holiday weekend, the Biden classified documents story has metastasized -- and that following the Christmas holiday break, from which reporters had already been reluctant to resume even the token appearance of doing work. Several commentators, even on the normally obtuse and lackadaisical right, have made worthwhile points. Bonchie at Red State notes , After initially framing the incident as a one-off resulting from hurried packing after Biden’s vice presidency, more documents were “found” in the president’s garage at his Delaware residence. Then, weeks later, yet another document was found in an adjacent room. In reality, almost all of this had already taken place by the time the public was informed, with the second batch of documents being secretly reported to the DOJ on December 20th, 2022. . . . Perhaps it was all over? Surely, Biden could blame the illegal possession of all those classified documents on careless staffers who “acciden...

A piece in Fortune two days ago caught my eye: Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is annoyed employees didn’t listen to his back-to-office request—and now he’s ordering a return . This echoes policy changes by figures like Elon Musk at his companies: the COVID panic is over, and it's time to drop all the charades. Although this is behind a paywall, this site carries a version from Starbucks's CEO, Howard Schultz, himself "Message to Starbucks support partners: Returning to each other and to the office" ["support partners" are headquarters management employees in Starbucks-speak]: I want to share a change in our policy about hybrid work consistent with our past, but boldly about our future. Before I do, let me share context. The pandemic was a full-out attack on the ideas that make Starbucks, Starbucks. It disrupted human connection. It made the world harder for so many. And it threatened our ability to be a safe haven and a Third Place. At the SSC ["...

Cue the Dragnet theme: I'm old enough to have lived through Watergate, start to finish. I was young enough at the time to have supported McGovern in 1972, and I thirstily drank up every detail of Nixon's subsequent downfall. The appointment of Archibald Cox as special prosecutor in the matter in May, 1973 was a big event, since it was forced on the Nixon administration as a condition of Eliot Richardson's Senate confirmation as attorney general. In fact, for those of us who followed the story closely, this was the key sign that Nixon was on his way out. The odd thing is that Attorney General Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate former President Trump just this past November. It's hard to avoid thinking this was a deeply unserious act intended to drive a stake through the potential for a 2024 Trump run, while Trump steadily fades as a prospect even without it. Garland's problem now, though, with the opposing party in control of the House, is that...

As I said yesterday, something struck me about Mr Paul Roland's essay at the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society site explaining his very hesitant journey to the North American ordinariate, about which he concludes, It was recommended to me by a Catholic friend that I join the Ordinariate because of how homeless I felt in the Catholic Church. I did not seriously consider it initially because there were no Ordinariate parishes near me, but after giving it more thought, I decided that I would join. I made that decision because I believed in the Ordinariate’s mission, in the hopes that one day I would be able to have a Catholic community or parish that I could call home, and, if nothing else, as an excuse to let myself be a little different from other Catholics in the meantime. It isn't entirely clear what sort of Catholic he is now. He says he hopes "that one day I would be able to have a Catholic community or parish that I could call home" -- but is he attending any ...

The United Methodist Church is belatedly coming to the same crisis of division that most mainline Protestant denominations have already met, the question of same-sex marriage and ordaining actively and avowedly same-sex-attracted clergy, although this has never been the exclusive issue dividing any of the denominations. In recent weeks, legacy media have begun to notice, and The Week, for example, explains , United Methodists have been more-or-less civilly disagreeing about gay rights since the 1970s, but the issue came to a head in 2019. At a UMC General Conference that year, the theologically conservative camp, aided by socially conservative United Methodists from Africa, outflanked the moderates and liberals and pushed through a resolution affirming existing UMC bans on same-sex weddings and the ordination of "self-avowed practicing homosexuals" as clergy. The UMC conservatives appear to have drawn lessons from the experience of Episcopalians in particular, recognizi...