First Class Manners

Do you know what this is a picture of? That’s right, it is an American Airlines Premier Class in-flight magazine, available to those lucky souls who get to fly First or Business (as the Gay Uncle recently did, due to a fortuitous last-minute upgrade). It is full of boring articles about the fifty best golf courses in Asia, and the fastest convertibles under $300,000, as well as about seven hundred pictures of expensive watches. It is made of thick, glossy paper–much higher quality than the regular in-flight magazine– and is slightly over-sized in a way meant to convey insouciant luxury. Do you know why it exists? It is there solely to deliver advertising to those people stupid, or disinterested, or anti-intellectual enough to not bring something of their own to read during the twenty or thirty minutes when there is no televised in-flight entertainment. Do you know what it is not for? It is not for your nanny to use as a feeding trough for your noisy three year-old. But that’s just what the Gay Uncle witnessed at 38,000 feet. A 20’s-ish Croatian woman seated next to her young charge asked him if he wanted something to eat, and when the little bugger responded in the affirmative, she grabbed a handful of Toasty-Crisps from a zip-loc bag, plopped them on the cover of Celebrated Living (right over Sheryl Crow’s boobs, G.U. couldn’t help but notice), and then held the magazine aloft in a horizontal position parallel with the boy’s mouth. At which point Mr. Man proceeded to commence grazing: roving his face over the cover and sucking off flakes, like a catfish clearing algae from the side of a tank. The nanny beamed down at him with an eerily prideful gaze, as if this was a charming little ritual they’d developed together in private. Gunc rolled his eyes, and repeated the mantra he’s recently created for dealing with instances of poor public parenting: Divest, remove. Divest, remove.