Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Editorial: A wasteful photo-op for an airplane
A picture of Air Force One over the Statue of Liberty caused an avoidable panic.
From the RoundTable blog
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Picture a pleasant morning in New York City. Offices teem with busy workers, and tourists wander the streets. The sun shines out of an almost cloudless blue sky.
A Boeing 747 plane shatters the serenity when it buzzes low over the city, shaking windows. An F-16 fighter jet follows closely. New Yorkers remember well what happened the last time low-flying aircraft entered their sky on Sept. 11, 2001, and they react quickly. Some panic.
That was the scene on Monday. In truth, there was no danger, but the public did not know.
The big plane serves as Air Force One when the president is on board, but he was not. It was out for a photo shoot. The administration is updating file photos of the nation's most famous plane over national landmarks, and it wanted to get a good shot over the Statue of Liberty.
If people had known that, there would have been no panic and no injuries in the rush to evacuate New York buildings. At best, someone did not think, and at worst, someone displayed cavalier insensitivity to the public psyche of a city that remains a top terrorist target.
White House officials insisted on keeping the operation secret. Even New York's mayor did not know in advance, though his office did. And the stunt came as a surprise to the president himself, who was reportedly "furious" when he found out.
Equally troubling is the waste of it all. Officials insist they combined the photoop with training, but that sounds more like an excuse than an explanation. Someone in the White House thinks it is a good idea to spend taxpayer dollars producing a few pictures of an airplane. Flights cost tens of thousands of dollars an hour.
Officials easily and cheaply could take a picture of the plane, a picture of the landmarks they liked and combine them with photo editing software. As long as they were honest about it, doing so would have made no difference in promotional materials.
