Education, Experience, Skill and Competence.

For some unrememberable reason, I was reading an article on “mlive.com”, which is the online home to eight newspapers in Michigan. (It actually does a pretty good job of being the local paper online.) I happened to notice a Letter To The Editor entitled, “Why didn’t flight crew mention God?” 

Well, these days “flight crew” either refers to the much-heralded Sully Sullenberg and his crew that landed in the Hudson River, with no loss of life, or the tragic, fatal accident in upstate New York last week. Sure enough, the letter referred to Sully Sullenberg & crew. Here’s the letter:

“On the Feb. 8 “60 Minutes” program, we were captivated while viewing the Katie Couric interview of the crew and passengers of Flight 1549.

However, we were struck there was not one mention of God, who directs pilots of planes and secures the safety of passengers.

We have written CBS and asked them for more realistic programming. Help protect our freedoms. Write CBS about this.”

All I could think was, Huh? Well, that, and, “Jesus Christ”.

On Twitter, the day the plane landed in the Hudson, not far from my home, I remember reading (and retweeting, as did about two dozen other folks) a tweet by Anil Dash. He wrote:

“Do not let people mislabel the US Air landing a “miracle”. It was the result of education, experience, skill and competence. Not magic.”

There are 33 comments right now, 32 of them in defense of, yes, education, experience, skill and competence. And, reality. Read them, and the letter, here.

My faith in American good sense is restored.