Celebrity and Home-Built Airplanes

New blogging star Bill Whittle stopped by and joined Tenacious G and I for dim sum last weekend; he’s on his way out of town for a while to go build himself an airplane.

We had a great lunch, and he’s such an interesting and pleasant guy that I’m kind of irked that we never got to meet until he had his bags packed and the car door open.

We talked animatedly about a number of things while G watched us with some amusement; liberalism and how he’d lost his faith in it and found himself on the other side of the table, the fact that somehow I’d kept mine, his great new essay on celebrity, modern technology, and homebuilt airplanes among a dozen or so other things while they cleaned up the restaurant around us.

If you haven’t found his piece on celebrity already, go read it now. It’s great on its own terms, and hits me close to home.

I grew up in Beverly Hills, in the shadow of celebrities everywhere. At Nate & Al’s deli, at Carroll & Co. and Sy Devore, where my dad bought his clothes, at Carl’s Market on Doheny and Santa Monica. This was in the 60’s and early 70’s, and it was different back then; somehow they were famous people, with an emphasis on people.

Groucho really did give out 50-cent pieces to kids who trick-or-treated his house. George Peppard came over in his bathrobe and screamed at my friend and I to “turn that damn thing off” as we tuned the racing engine on my friend’s Boss 302 Mustang in his back yard. We once wound up seated with Dean Martin’s family at Cyrano’s; I’ve never been certain why, but his son briefly went to Beverly High and remembered me there.

Something has changed. Bill recounts some of the symptoms, but I think we have to look in the mirror and ask ourselves exactly when it was that we handed the keys to our polity to the celebrity class? How exactly did that happen, and why exactly do we put up with it?

Because we do put up with it. I was at dinner maybe eight years ago in a fairly chichi restaurant (hey, I don’t just eat BBQ…) in Venice; I excused myself to go to the men’s room, and found my way blocked by an obvious bodyguard. “You’ll have to wait,” he explained to me. “No, I won’t,” I replied. “Not unless you have a badge that says U.S. Secret Service.” We had a brief but professional exchange of views, and at the point where I was going to step past him and he was going to have to make a decision, his principal stepped out of the bathroom and walked past both of us without looking up.

I didn’t recognize him.

The bodyguard was flummoxed because he was used to ready compliance. I’m sure that he’s used the “You’ll have to wait” line, and that the usual response was “Oh. OK,” followed by a craned neck to see who it was who might be important enough to warrant a bodyguard at dinner.

And we have made a sacrifice in adopting the point of view; not only of some measure of our self-respect, but of something that goes deeper still. I’m not sure how this ties together with how wonderful it is that Bill is heading off to build his own airplane, but it does.

I know one other man who builds his own airplanes; he is a retired immigrant rocket scientist. He worked at TRW or Hughes during the 50’s and 60’s, and while he worked building missiles, his wife invested every penny they had in beachfront apartments, and now they are quite well off. I stayed at their home north of Los Angeles when I first met them through one of their children, and when I woke up well before everyone else in the house (as I usually do) I padded about exploring, and went into the garage, where he was lofting a wing on the garage floor. My first reaction was “Holy Sh*t!! That’s a big model!!” Then I realized that he was building a damn airplane in his garage. His daughter woke up and matter-of-factly explained, “Oh, he does one of those every two years or so…he designs them himself”

And that’s one of the wonderful things about America, Bill and I agree. That an immigrant rocket scientist can become rich, and more, can build and sell airplanes out of his garage. It is that sense of hope, of possibility, of dynamic enterprise that has made this country wealthy and successful, powerful and great.

You don’t get that kind of hope sucking on the glass teat of celebrity, or clutching LOTTO tickets sweaty-palmed while you wait for the numbers. It comes from work, engagement, sacrifices and the real success that comes from some measure of accomplishment. If we liberals are to be taken to task for anything, it is for the fact that we succeeded in feeding the bellies of the poor here in America, but at the cost of any real hope. It’s there, someone’s just got to help look for it.