THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

I recently took a five-day trip to California to attend a memorial service for my late mother.  Two of those days were spent in airports and on airplanes.  I flew United Airlines.  My destination was Santa Barbara, California, and I began my trip in Syracuse, New York.  There is no direct flight from Syracuse to Santa Barbara, so I necessarily made the trip by legs.  The longest leg on the way out was Chicago-to-Los Angeles and on the way back, San Francisco to Dulles.  United’s feeder-lines handled the shorter flights.  The two long flights were United Airlines flights.

All seat-backs on large United Airlines passenger aircraft now have television screens in them, so that every seated passenger has telescreens in front of him. It is possible to turn off these insidious devices although it is so non-intuitive that I had to ask a stewardess how to do it.  At certain moments, however, as at takeoff, the passenger has no control.  The picture glares and the sound blares.

Going west and coming back east what glared was an obnoxious, self-congratulating advertisement for United Airlines, which was touting itself for offering great employment and career opportunities to women.  Women, women, women…  In one segment (the thing went on for a full five minutes) a female pilot, looking suspiciously masculine, and posturing in the cockpit, said fatuous things such as, “Wow – look!  This is my office!”  I said to myself, No man would posture himself that way or utter such adolescent, self-promoting fatuities.

I once taught a senior seminar in “Advanced Criticism.” I deliberately subverted the course by teaching several Traditionalist writers including René Guénon, René Girard, and Eric Voegelin.  At the end of the semester, a female student who had been giving me evil glances during the fifteen weeks, but who was otherwise pointedly disengaged from the work, spoke up in a petulant tone: “Where,” she demanded, “is the Voice of Women?”  I answered back that the Voice of Women was ubiquitous and frankly never ceased its nagging; in fact, the only place that the Voice of Women wasn’t was my class, which made my class a unique actual contribution to what is called diversity.  She sneered at me, but didn’t know what else to say.

That United Airlines self-promotion clip, which the passenger can’t turn off, is an example of how the Voice of Women never shuts up.

Please follow and like us: