People, is there any show on NPR more insufferable than “Marketplace”? I think not.
Every time it comes on the radio I want to cringe. Last night on the way to dinner we heard this report about a possible change in FAA rules regulating use of electronic devices on airplanes. Let me begin by saying, I don’t think anyone buys the BS that turning your iPad or laptop on will interfere with a plane’s electronics. If that were the case, the FAA would ban all electronics in the cabin and Al Qaeda wouldn’t have used guys with box cutters on 9/11.
But regardless, there’s word that the FAA may change the rules and allow you to keep your electronic devices on during takeoff and landing. To which this special snowflake responded:
The news brings a smile to Henry Feintuch, who really doesn’t like getting on airplanes right now. “It makes me feel out of control, insignificant, and frustrated and angry, frankly,” he says.
Feintuch runs a New York public relations firm. But with clients all over, he flies two or three times a month. He says staying plugged in during taxing, takeoffs and landings, could mean salvaging a business meeting with a quick text.
“Tell them the answer is yes,” he says. “Or ‘no problem, we’ll go that way.’” But by not being able to communicate that, I’m out of the loop,” he says.
Oh, my. Dude, if you feel “out of control, insignificant, frustrated and angry” because you can’t send a text for 15 minutes maybe you need to take a pill. Or a vacation. And if your business is so precarious that not sending a text scuttles a deal, please rethink your business model.
I swear to God, the overarching sense of self-importance in our business class is truly painful to endure. Get over your damn selves, please.
Southern Beale 
I’ve had bosses and colleagues who similarly viewed themselves as indispensable to operations, and invariably, we got a lot more done when they were “out of pocket.”
Maybe our annoyed traveler should just take his Gulfstream.
Wait, he doesn’t have a Gulfstream? Is he even rich enough to aspire to be the audience for Marketplace? #Doyourjobbetter #Invisiblehandbeeyotches.
PS “Insufferable” to me is a good definition of anyone NPR program who wants to sound like the radio extension of the WSJ Lifestyles section.
Bulls eye! Thank you, I could have said it better. When will you share these pearls on Twitter?
People are so addicted to their cellphones. I live at the end of a series of really twisting, winding country roads with little visibility. Many’s the time I’ve turned a corkscrew corner and nearly hit some self-important fool walking along yakking away on a cellphone and oblivious to anything around them. It’s so many people–mothers with strollers, young men, middle-aged women…like the phone-obsessed woman who fell into a fountain because she was consumed by her cellphone.
P.S. My employer stopped allowing cellphones in the office building, and there’s a jammer to block signals. Everyone has a landline telephone on their desk and there’s a receptionist with a landline at the front entrance who has all our desk phone numbers, so it’s not as if we’re unreachable while at work. At first the screams of anguish and the trumped-up claim of IMPORTANCE!!! However, it’s been a year and nobody’s died because they couldn’t check in on Foursquare or post Likes on Facebook all day.
Mr. Important Businessman needs to do what they are always ordering the rest of us to do, and bow to the almighty Free Market — if you can’t afford a Learjet, then you’re not important enough such that being out of touch will Hurt the Economy.
I dunno. I kinda like Marketplace. It helps me understand how the other side thinks, and it’s short and not NEARLY as annoying as FauxNews. LOL
Agreed on how it informs, but I find the unknowingness excruciating, GregH. It’d be great if this were satire, yet it isn’t.
Somewhere NPR needs a show about economics, and Marketplace is simply taking up the oxygen a good show would get. Yet FAIR and Dean Baker and Brad DeLong never get on the Rolodex and into the narrative.