Apologies to Keith Olbermann (Did I say that ?) but Michael Totten has a hilarious story about flying on Alitalia. If anybody wants to know what the health care system Obama will design is like, read this.
A fifty year-old Italian man in a fedora started screaming at both of them.
A man standing next to me chuckled.
“Do you understand what he’s saying?” I said.
“I’m from Argentina,” he said, “but I speak Italian. That man is cursing like you wouldn’t believe.”
Mr. Enraged was screaming like you wouldn’t believe – wild-eyed, nostril-flared, spittle-flecked screaming.
Listening to him and imagining which curse words he used he was entertaining, but mostly the guy came across like a belligerent jerk. The two Alitalia employees on the receiving end of his tirade weren’t responsible for our predicament. The baggage handlers were on strike, but the counter employees were still on the job.
Later, though, I realized that Mr. Enraged was just ahead of everyone else. The rest of us booked on the flight to Chicago would learn soon enough that a huge number of Alitalia’s employees absolutely deserved to be screamed at.
It’s a hilarious story as long as you didn’t have to live through it.