The emperor's planes
Getlein, Frank
despite a fairly flabby comment by the bishops in their re- ence. Will history repeat itself, with a majority of resolutions sponse to the recent National Pastoral Congress on this and individuals...
...What will happen instead is that after we have mortgaged Mis' Lillian to provide the down payment on the invisible airplanes, the CIA will leak a top-secret report showing that the Russians are per- fecting a super-penetrating eye-beam which will allow them, after all, to see the invisible airplane.The Joint Chiefs will appear before the Military Handout Committees of both Houses, say, Sorry, fellows, but it's now going to take eight times as much as we thought to keep the Invisible Airplane Invisible...
...This will become apparent in a (Brian Wicker is Commonweal's regular correspondent in significant way when the party meets for its annual confer- Great Britain...
...some nut in favor of peace is going to make it to the White House and there goes the bali game...
...And will the distant future even likely...
...Of several minds: Frank Getlein THE EMPEROR'S PLANES WHO STEALTH MY PURTH STEALTH TRATH As YOU WOULD have expected if you d thought about it a minute, the press got everything back- wards in regard to the dread leak of the dread news of our dread secret weapon, the invisible airplane code-named "Stealth...
...Followed by: You wanta surren- der now or will tomorrow be more con- venient...
...Suddenly here were the Russians threatened by Tom Swift and his invisible airplane, or George Brown and his invisible Tom Swift, or the airplane and its invisible George Brown, or some other combina- tion...
...So would every airplane contractor, every war contractor, in the country, every three-card monte merchant on old Broadway...
...Generations of Joint-Chiefs yet unborn could have grown up, soldiered their wayup the ladder and retired to sell invisibility back to their former comrades from snug harbors as chairmen and pres- idents of the proliferating branches of Invisible Enterprises, which for that mat- ter, could even have staged Invisible Duck Hunts for Invisible Joint Chiefs, frustrating at last the hated and anti- American press...
...The Invisible Airplane plays right into such a maniac's hands...
...but I invite Commonweal readers to hopeful facts in the whole equation...
...The Carterites-- I guess there's no dis- pute about this--handed out the dread secret through their political Secretary of Defense--has there ever been some other kind?--and were immediately accused by the Reaganites of using war informa- tion for political advantage, horrid thought...
...Whereupon, statesman Jody Powell reared back and allowed as how the mere accusation of his master's using war information for political purposes served the nation ill, gave the Russians one jump up and was beyond the beyonds of civilized political discourse, some-thing he must have heard about on the telly when he got some PBS colonial replay of some BBC think-'em-up by mistake while looking for Hee-Haw...
...Just as the only really unthinkable thought Herman Kahn ever had was the thought that funds for think tankers with their predestined thoughts about increased military budgets might somehow be cut off, so the only prospect that really terrorizes the Joint Chiefs has nothing to do with the Russians but with the terrifying possibility that somehow, some day...
...The Invisible Airplane was no more aimed at the Russians than has been any other superweapon...
...They are Russians, after all, the same people who signed up in 1939 as part of Hitler's New Order, who fearlessly fought off the in- vasion of the Motherland by the fierce Finns, Russians who have since turned back threats by the Hungarians, the Poles and the Czechs against socialist solidar- ity, have bravely defended that same old Motherland from threats of the Afghanis- tani, of all people: you really have to keep your eyes peeled...
...B.enn...
...Offhand, I can't think of anyone over the age of primary readers of Tom Swift who remotely believes that will happen...
...Quelle bonanza...
...No wonder the Joint Chiefs got their chieftainship out of joint when the news was leaked by their superchief...
...It is true that the closest that has come to being in recent years was Eugene McCarthy and that wasn't very close, but still it's a possibility and the Chiefs, after all, are paid to be prepared for the un- likeliest possibilities...
...Shelley would have understood...
...And that's why the Chiefs were so mad at Brown for letting the cat out of the invisible bag...
...So she asked her in, accepted copies of Awake and The Watchtower, and thought that would be the end of it...
...The chief Joint Chief surreptitiously steps on a floor button, much like that used to summon the butler, back at quarters, but this one activates the super sound deck and the hidden giant fans...
...Da capo...
...Well: divided...
...Tom Swift's Invisible Airplane, on which, apparently, the future survival of this country rests, is presented as the last-word in the dialogue between the Soviet Union and the United States...
...Had it not been for old blabbermouth Brown, the Chiefs could have carried on in their joint for years with everyone sworn to silence as to where the money was going...
...Just sign here, we'll fill in the amount...
...Each time she brought up her religion and the importance of joining...
...Certainly, the idea that the perma- outcome of all this be simply a drab compromise, easily nent Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament presented in the media as a clash of abstractions (left vs...
...As the noise of the jets rises to almost unbearable levels and the wind rises with it, the chief Chief points to the empty air and says with quiet pride: See, you can't see a thing- IfI hadn't told you the Invisible Airplanes were going by, you'd have thought you were looking at nothing at all, right...
...The press enthusiastically went along with both sides of the controversy...
...read the papers and ponder what they say on the topic...
...Press, public, and who knows how many nosy Congressional committees will be asking questions, demanding progress reports, even insisting on Invisibility Ac- countability forms, listing every quart of the invisibility potion turned out, so that any amounts used for invisible duck blinds, shotguns, and sporty chiefs would be noticed at once...
...And then, after the Really Invisible Airplane cuts its swath through the Treasury, the CIA will leak yet another Eyes-Only-Burn-This- Now report that the Russians are working up a plan to explode high level clouds of powdered charcoal which, falling upon the Really Invisible Airplanes will make them all too visible and vulnerable...
...There was something sad about this, because she had plainly wanted not only to convert us, but to be a friend...
...would' have been greeted with unbelieving offer a prognostication on this question which may be settled laughter in 1960--yet today, it is a fact, and one of the most by the time this is read...
...Although Re- gina tried, with each visit, to make our lack of interest as apparent as she could and still be polite, she finally had tomake it quite clear that we were Catholic and were not shopping around...
...In- deed the leak gave the Russians the tip they needed to start now to counter the fearful Stealth airplane and indeed the Republicans, by raising the issue, gave the Russians the emphasis they need to realize something is important...
...Like all its predecessors, the Invisible Airplane had one target: the Treasury...
...I do not reckon to Heenan to boot...
...I found the book fascinating, and began to notice Commonweal: 584...
...Since if there is one subject on which all presidential candidates lie it is peace, we may assume a genuine peace candi- date would do so, too...
...Then, once in office, he could stage War Hawk Days ever month, for Congressmen and citizens to line Main Street and watch our Invisible Le- gions roll by, meanwhile invisibly syphoning the money into social amelio- ration, mass transit, rebuilding the cities, education, health care, all those ir-relevancies which get in the way of the true purposes of the modem superpower state, which is to impoverish its citizens so as to increase its ability to slaughter as many foreigners as possible as expen-sively as possible...
...Back to the Handout Chairmen: If we could get a buyer for California and Mas-sachusetts, we could afford the Really 24 October 1980:583 and Truly Invisible Airplane...
...It was bit- terly cold outside, and Regina thought the young woman could warm up a bit before continuing her door-to-door walk through an unsympathetic neighbor-hood...
...No matter how you slice it, boys, you can't see what you're slicing and that's the beauty of it--the invisible beauty, but the beauty no less...
...The quality lay in the showing...
...Will history repeat itself, with a majority of resolutions sponse to the recent National Pastoral Congress on this and individuals on the anti-nuclear side, but the weight of matter--the possibility is quite thinkable, and in the not too Parliamentary and big union opinion on the other...
...Poor Brown: a traitor to his class...
...Right, there, Field Marshal, 'swonder- ful, and as long as you're up, how about a splash of that noise-killer, talk about technological breakthroughs...
...The two things--our conversion to her religion and genuine friendship--were insepara- ble for her...
...It did have one very special quality but that depended upon absolute secrecy...
...Barbara Grizzuti Harrison left Jehovah's Witnesses, and during the writing of her book surprised herself by becoming a Catholic, something she de- scribes in the closing chapters...
...A pity...
...Just as Jimmy Carter lied when he promised to cut de- fense spending, so the peace candidate would lie by promising ever increasing bucks for bangs...
...The Invisibility principle could have been applied prodigally in all directions: Invisible Tanks, Invisible Carders, Invisible Volunteer Armies, Invisible Audits, Invisible Conflicts of Interest...
...Roughly translated, that last word is, Gotcha...
...It's pennies from heaven and not just pennies, big buckeroos, heavy moolah, substantial simoleans, Stealth, the invisible airplane, is potentially the most profit- able thing to happen to flying ships since Eastern got the grabs on the New York-Washington run...
...To come back to the beginning: where does all this leave the BRIAN WICKER Labor party...
...FRANK GETLEIN Of several minds: John Garvey ANOTHER KIND OF WITNESS A GOOD WORD FOR AN ANTHOLOGY O NE WINTER DAY several years ago my wife invited a young Jehovah's Witness into our house...
...Later, partly because of this experi- ence, I picked up Barbara Grizzuti Hard- son's Visions of Glory: A History and a Memory of Jehovah's...
...There's worse...
...l~hanks to what-a-pot- o'-me Brown, it's all out on the table...
...But the woman returned several times, bringing her husband with her once...
...It was the story not only of Jehovah's Witnesses (which is, with Mormonism, one of America's most intriguing contributions to religion) but also a description of the effect of a cult on a particular person and her fam- ily...
...The woman never came back...
...Witnesses (Touchstone, $5.95...
...right) should be a Catholic priest (and one-time secretary to Cardinal or of personalities (Callaghan vs...
...All gone now...
...You bring out the Handout Chairmen to the secret base on your fly- ing saloon from Andrews, pour them off the flight, trundle them up onto the view- ing platform and whisper, Now here comes the Invisible Airplane...
Vol. 107 • October 1980 • No. 19
