HOME    E-MAIL JOE    PRINT    SEND MOBILE LINK    2010 COLUMNS    JOE'S ARCHIVES   SEARCH NOBODY ASKED ME, BUT ... By Joe Brancatelli October 21, 2010 -- Nobody asked me, but… NPR fired "news analyst" Juan Williams yesterday for going on Fox and saying: "I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous." Some commentators on the right claim that firing Williams was political correctness on the part of left-leaning NPR. I look at it more practically, as an editor: I don't want anyone on my staff who's so-o-o-o stupid that he thinks terrorists would dress in "Muslim garb" to attack an aircraft. Even the terrorists aren't that clueless and arrogant. Can anyone point to a single incident when someone in "Muslim garb" attacked a Western aircraft? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Williams? Williams? Nobody asked me, but … Speaking of terrorism, an interesting piece in The Atlantic suggests that our mistake is thinking that terrorists are smarter than they are. The article's title? "The Case for Calling Them Nitwits." The Atlantic piece echoes a lot of what I've said over the years: The terrorists aren't so much smart and crafty as fanatical and, more often than not, lucky. If they were really smart and really understood the American psyche, they'd have long ago bombed so-called "soft targets" like post offices, libraries and shopping malls in the nation's heartland. Vigilance and rational preparedness are our best weapons against the wackos who are determined to do us harm, but our best edge is our realization that they understand less about us than we know about them. Juan Williams excepted, of course … Nobody asked me, but … The Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, has declared that Homer Simpson is a Catholic. I guess no one on the paper's staff has actually watched The Simpsons. Homer worships--okay, usually he's asleep in the pews--at the "Presbylutheran" First Church of Springfield. Had anyone at the paper watched, they also would have noticed that the church's pastor, Timothy Lovejoy, is married. Of course, L'Osservatore Romano hasn't been any good since it fired Father Guido Sarducci as the gossip columnist. This just in: L'Osservatore Romano has offered Juan Williams, a former Washington Post columnist, Father Sarducci's old gig. Williams says he'll take the job, so long as he doesn't have to wear "Catholic garb" or sit next to Homer in St. Peter's. Nobody asked me, but … My Hyatt credit card, issued by Chase, arrived yesterday. By overnight parcel from UPS. In a really classy "kit" complete with a glossy brochure of benefits, two free hotel nights and one insane perk: The card didn't have an annoying "call to activate" sticker. Not having gluey remnants on my credit card is worth the $75 annual fee. A bunch of British researchers writing in Food Quality and Preference magazine claim the reason that airline food sucks is because background noise in an aircraft cabin affects our ability to discern flavors. Maybe so, but I've always considered my inability to discern flavor as a benefit on those rare occasions when I've felt compelled to consume airline food. A note for cartographers in the crowd: The Netherlands Antilles is no more. Curacao and St. Maarten are now autonomous nations and the smaller islands (Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba) are now special municipalities of the Netherlands. Why does this remind me of George Costanza's classic American geopolitical befuddlement in a 1987 episode of Seinfeld: What is Holland? Where is the Netherlands? And who are the Dutch? Nobody asked me, but … El Al is angry that none of the existing airline alliances want it as a member. El Al vice president of alliances Eli Cohen says that SkyTeam, Oneworld and Star won't accept an Israeli airline because it would jeopardize the alliances' commercial interest in Arab carriers. El Al's solution? Create what Cohen calls "an alliance of the miserables" named WE, an acronym for West-East Alliance. What airlines would be part of WE? Eastern European carriers from nations like Russia, the Ukraine and Armenia. Because, you know, those countries have always had such a warm and friendly attitude to their own Jewish populations. A spat has developed between Canada and the United Arab Emirates. The Canadian government has resisted calls from Emirates and Etihad for more landing rights in Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. (Dubai-based Emirates and Abu Dhabi-based Etihad split six weekly flights to Toronto.) UAE officials claim that Canada is protecting Air Canada and its Star Alliance partner Lufthansa. The official UAE response? They're booting Canadian troops from a "secret" base in the Emirates and denying "over flight" rights to Canadian military aircraft. Nobody asked me, but … Here's an idea: Maybe unaligned Gulf carriers like Emirates, Etihad, Qatar and Gulf Air can join El Al in the "alliance of the miserables." Just sayin'… Germany's attempt to create a multicultural society has "failed, utterly failed," says chancellor Angela Merkel. Her ire is seen as an attempt to mollify members of her right-of-center party who are unhappy with the rising number of Turkish immigrants in Germany. I'd like to offer a rational critique or even joke about my preference for Turkish cuisine when I travel in Germany, but I'm conditioned by history. When German chancellors start talking like that … Forgive the awkward placement, but I wanted to alert you to the return of Bonomo's Turkish Taffy. It's not Turkish, it isn't taffy and it's 50-50 that it'll pull fillings from your teeth, but the stuff is addictive. There's something psychically satisfying about a candy bar that urges you to "crack it up" by smashing it against a flat surface. Nobody asked me, but … An Internet watchdog agency has ruled in favor of Ryanair and shut down a popular anti-Ryanair site. The agency, Nominet, ruled that nothing on the site was offensive. It shut down IhateRyanair.co.uk because the founder, Robert Tyler, generated about $650 from advertising placed on the site and that constituted an unfair commercial use of Ryanair's trademark. The site is already back up in blog form (and without advertising) at IhateRyanair.org. Hotels are incensed that Bedbug Registry allows people to anonymously post reports of infestations. The founder has been threatened by lawsuits, but he points out that the site's FAQs specifically note that individual posts cannot be verified. He also has a mechanism for hotel and building owners to dispute claims of infestation. You may have heard that 3 million Cablevision customers in parts of New York and Philadelphia have lost access to Fox Network television affiliates and some minor Fox cable channels. Fox pulled the stations a week ago when it could not reach a licensing agreement with Cablevision. But what you may not have heard is that Fox briefly blocked people using Cablevision's Internet service (called Optimum Online) from Fox Web sites and Hulu.com, the video site partially owned by Fox. Nobody asked me, but … Bryan Bedford, the chairman, chief executive and president of Frontier Airlines, went on Undercover Boss last Sunday. Ratings fell from the previous week's episode, which featured the president and chief executive of DirecTV, the satellite service. NBC's 10 p.m. dramas now average lower ratings than last year's supposedly disastrous experiment with The Jay Leno Show. Scripted TV fare such as Chase, NBC's current contender in the 10 p.m. slot on Monday, cost about $3 million an episode. Leno's program cost about $1 million. But Leno, who moved back to Tonight after the 10 p.m. show ended, now pulls lower numbers than Conan O'Brien, who NBC decided wasn't doing well enough in the ratings. A new book by Keith Richards slams Mick Jagger. Richards says that he calls Jagger "your majesty," finds him "unbearable" and hasn't set foot in Jagger's dressing room in 20 years. Richards also directly attacked Jagger's physical endowments. I stumbled upon all this Rolling Stones news via the Net, using my Cablevision modem. Where's Fox blocking when I need it? HOME    E-MAIL JOE    PRINT    SEND MOBILE LINK    2010 COLUMNS    JOE'S ARCHIVES   SEARCH

ABOUT JOE BRANCATELLI Joe Brancatelli is a publication consultant, which means that he helps media companies start, fix and reposition newspapers, magazines and Web sites. He's also the former executive editor of Frequent Flyer and has been a consultant to or columnist for more business-travel and leisure-travel publishing operations than he can remember. He started his career as a business journalist and created JoeSentMe in the dark days after 9/11 while he was stranded in a hotel room in San Francisco. He lives on the Hudson River in the tourist town of Cold Spring. THE FINE PRINT All of the opinions and material in this column are the sole property and responsibility of Joe Brancatelli. This material may not be reproduced in any form without his express written permission. This column is Copyright © 2010 by Joe Brancatelli. JoeSentMe.com is Copyright © 2010 by Joe Brancatelli. All rights reserved.