The Week

In Miami Beach there was one section you just couldn’t get into, not without the most elaborate credentials, and that was the working press section. But we saw one stranger make it, the guards and the sergeants-at-arms and the attendants falling aside like the Red Sea. The only credential the stranger wore was the button: “Committee to Horsewhip Drew Pearson.”

Strikes are out. Slowdowns are in. Claiming that they’re overworked, airport ground controllers are following the letter of the rule-book, thus slowing things way down and stacking the planes three hours deep. Now car inspectors on the Long Island Railroad are doing much the same thing—taking cars out of service on technicalities, thus forcing the line to cancel trains for lack of equipment and so disrupting the lives of 180,000 commuters. Next week, subway inspectors may get in the act with a rule-book slowdown affecting 8 million New Yorkers. There’s no rule-book for travelers and commuters, of course—just the Eleventh Commandment of modern life, Don’t Try To Fight It.

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In Miami Beach there was one section you just couldn’t get into, not without the most elaborate credentials, and that was the working press section. But we saw one stranger make it, the guards and the sergeants-at-arms and the attendants falling aside like the Red Sea. The only credential the stranger wore was the button: “Committee to Horsewhip Drew Pearson.”

Strikes are out. Slowdowns are in. Claiming that they’re overworked, airport ground controllers are following the letter of the rule-book, thus slowing things way down and stacking the planes three hours deep. Now car inspectors on the Long Island Railroad are doing much the same thing—taking cars out of service on technicalities, thus forcing the line to cancel trains for lack of equipment and so disrupting the lives of 180,000 commuters. Next week, subway inspectors may get in the act with a rule-book slowdown affecting 8 million New Yorkers. There’s no rule-book for travelers and commuters, of course—just the Eleventh Commandment of modern life, Don’t Try To Fight It.