I’m Tired of Sitting in the Middle

By BARRY FRIEDMAN

Former Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn was pacing at Gate C-5 at Fort Lauderdale International Airport. He may be the most conservative man in Oklahoma; I may be the most liberal. We were on the same flight.

This could be fun.

“As an African American male, coming through the progress of everything he experienced, he got tremendous benefit through a lot of these programs. So he believes in them. I just don’t believe they work overall and in the long run they don’t help our country. But he doesn’t know that because his life experience is something different. So it’s very important not to get mad at the man. And I understand, his philosophy — there’s nothing wrong with his philosophy other than it’s goofy and wrong [laughter] — but that doesn’t make him a bad person.”

Coburn said that about his good friend, Barack Obama, in 2011. Was he called on his condescension and racism?

No.

He’s a man of integrity.

He’s a monster with tousled hair.

But this isn’t about that. It was supposed to be, but it’s not.

Coburn boards first and, by the time I get on the plane, he ensconced in the Exit Row. “There’s no way,” as Tom Hagen said to Michael Corleone about Hyman Roth, “to get to him.” (My thinking is Coburn, if pressed, would probably assist in an emergency—hold a door, administer first aid—and then advocate cutting the FAA in his next New York Times op ed.)

I digress.

I plop myself down in the bulkhead: to my left, a round stocky guy in shorts who has a 6” divot of skin removed from his shin; to my right, a tall, solid guy — Division II quarterback type.

“Holy f***,” says the quarterback.

“You s***ting me? Do you have to sit here?”

“You talking to me? Yeah.”

“Really?”

“What’s your problem?”

“You’re taking up half my seat.”

“Half? You sure it’s half?”

“This is f***ing crazy.”

“Then move.”

“I’m not moving.”

“Then shut up. Every seat is taken. You want to choose who gets to sit next to you. This is Southwest.”

“I just don’t want a fat f*** sitting next to me. Sorry, but I don’t.”

(The “Sorry” makes it art)

“Then move,” I say again.

A flight attendant comes by. “Problem fellas?”

“Yeah, look at this,” stocky guy says, “he’s on half my seat.”

“I can see that,” she says. “If there’s a problem, I can remove you both from the plane.”

I’m 6’4” 250. Large, but I still fit in one seat.

“You see half his seat missing?” I ask

“The door to the plane is closed, but I can call the air marshal,” she says again.

Another flight attendant comes by and asks if either one of us would mind being reseated.

“I’m not going anywhere,” says the guy.

“You got something, I’ll go.”

“One of you has to. If I have to open the door, the Marshall will remove both of you.”

“Again with this? I sat down. Let’s keep that in mind,” I say.

A seat opens up. A woman—and this part of the story is wonderful—bigger and wider than I says she’ll exchange with me

“Ease up on the meth,” I say to stocky guy, as I leave.

As I settle into my new seat, I see the QB help the new woman with her seatbelt, I see stocky guy laughing with her, I see both flight attendants joining in the hilarity. The plane departs, the beverage service begins.

“Can I get you something, sir?” the original flight attendant asks me. She doesn’t appear to remember me.

“Before I answer, how is it the guy who is called a “fat f***” is re-seated while the guy who said it is treated like he’s in first class?”

“Sir, we didn’t assess the situation, we only tried to resolve it.”

“That’s what that was?”

“We don’t assign blame.”

“Maybe you should.”

“Not our job. Had I opened the door and called the Marshall, it would have been worse.”

“How many times are you going to tell me that? Again, I sat down. Period.”

“We didn’t know that.”

Since when have flight attendants been so powerful, anyway? Since 9/11, actually, and they, along with TSA officials, mall cops, and insurance agents in armored vehicles are the country’s new minders, our new mullahs, and they don’t have time for nuance or causation anymore. In America these days, the right sees a lack of order; the left sees a lack of understanding. Donald Trump boasts about grabbing pussy; Al Franken is out of the Senate. The left sees fault in both. We’re good like that.

We must find common ground.

But what if there isn’t any?

Where are the climate deniers who are pro choice, the neo-Nazi who wants to fully fund the civil rights division at Justice, the GOP congressmen who owe their lives in politics to the Kochs who aren’t calling for gutting the EPA?

Life, like politics, while ambiguously messy, is often just an a**hole in bulkhead and a monster in the Exit Row. They’re not hard to spot.

Barry Friedman is a comedian and a writer in Tulsa, Okla., and blogs at FriedmanOfThePlains.com.

From The Progressive Populist, May 15, 2018

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