Who Do They Think They Are?

By Garrison Keillor

You know Republicans are running the country when you see the new express lanes for first-class customers at airport security. They're cropping up all over. The other day I was in the regular 59-c- non-express line of middle-class peasants waiting to be scanned, and a few of the ruling elite came sashaying along the other side of the rope to the head of our line--it was line jumping, government sanctioned--and two hefty gentlemen with helmet hair and dangly cell phones butted in front of me as if by divine right and dumped their bags and laptops on the conveyor and forged ahead without a nod or a smile. It felt more than unpleasant; it felt un-American. But this is a Midwesterner talking. We were brought up to be thankful and wait our turn and not think we were too important to stand in line for the turkey and stuffing.

Perhaps we shall see a separate line at the department of motor vehicles for Lexus and BMW owners, and Marshall Field's will usher the preferred children forward to see Santa, and there will be a platinum section of Central Park, and why not a gold-club voting machine for people who pay more than $100,000 in income tax, and a concierge-class birthing room at the hospital--pay extra for same-day delivery. But before we get there, consider the cost.

Last year, after the unthinkable happened, a wave of spontaneous grass-roots patriotism spread across the land, and we all stood in line, the pinstripe suits and the grandmas and grandpas and the kids with the knapsacks, and accepted the inconvenience with darned good humor. It was a rare moment of common feeling, and we should hold on to that feeling--for the execs and traders, secretaries, flight attendants, the dishwashers and wait staff at Windows on the World who all went down together.

In a democracy, we need a few reality checkpoints at which we all crowd together, nabob and yahoo, and rub elbows and get a clue about who lives here other than us. The draft-board physical used to be such a checkpoint, where even a Rockefeller had to spread them and bend over, but that's gone, a casualty of Vietnam. The older generation that went through all those checkpoints--Central High, the cafeteria, the Army, the train station--those folks learned to stand in line and accept their place in the picture, and they learned decency and kindness. I can remember when a kid could hitchhike in America, and older guys would see that your clothes were clean and you stood up straight, and they'd stop and pick you up, and you got to meet interesting people and hear their story. No more.

The Duke of Dubuque and the Pasha of Oshkosh who butted in front of me at the airport put their stuff on the conveyor and walked through the scanner, and something on the Pasha's person set off the alarm. A security guy set about frisking him with a wand, which irked His Eminence, as did the request to remove the royal shoes. They were put through the scanner, and his briefcase was searched, and His Eminence started to give off anger fumes. He sighed deeply and shook his head at the insanity of it all. But the woman scanning the shoes saw something, and a couple of colleagues came over to peer at the screen. And the Pasha seemed to lose it right there, and when a security guy told him to boot up his laptop, he said, "Boot it up yourself," and tossed in a common vulgarity. And then he was asked to come and sit in a blue chair and wait. He plopped down, all fussed up, steam coming out of his ears, and you could see that an express lane wasn't enough for him--he needed a Learjet, and right away.

There's a price to be paid for the concierge life: stupidity. Your mind tends to wander and take you with it. You learn something standing in the crowd. I think of the inconvenience of serving on a jury last summer and the hours we spent poring over a case of criminal assault. It's hard work summoning up your best judgment on behalf of the law, and to do the work with that slice-of-St.-Paul bunch of moms and retirees and folks from Cubicleville was a revelation. If I were the accused, I'd want that jury and not one chosen from the express lane of life. You don't want your fate decided by people who go for the quick and easy.