In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

When I was racking up free flights on Southwest traveling for work in the 1990s, it was still the old Southwest with "party seating", peanut snacks, cheap drinks, and singing flight attendants. I was drawn to that sort of culture, and I followed stories about it in the Wall Street Journal, which I got for free at my door every morning at my hotel. I learned at the time that its relations with its unions were unique. The airline was succeeding as a discount carrier, and its workers were willing to work for a little less to have secure jobs. Its unions were less adversarial and more inclined to look at win-win opportunities. If Southest prospered, so did its workers. The last time I flew Southwest, maybe 15 years ago, things had changed greatly; they'd gone corporate, the peanut snacks, party seating, and singing flight attendants were long gone, while the company style had turned to talking down to the public like children. As far as I could tell, though, the unions h...

What puzzles me about right-wing media is that the Biden classified document puzzle is a story that's a potential career maker. Just look at what Watergate did for Woodward and Bernstein, who were at least portrayed before the scandal broke as underperformers in the Washington Post newsroom, but soon enough they had Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman playing them on the silver screen. I bet they both scored big time after that. But if all they did was find themselves in the right place at the right time for Deep Throat, even that took some minimal level of enterprise -- they had to get up in the morning and show up, after all. The current right-wing writers, as far as I can see, aren;t even doing that. All they're doing is cribbing from each other and mostly not even going to Wikipedia. Let's take one data point that as far as I can see was covered by just one obscure YouTuber, a South Florida radio host named Brian Craig . He actually went to Wikipedia to look somebody u...

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...