Dumb's the Word

A closet Muslim US President strikes a nuclear deal with the Shia Muslim President of Iran that enrages the Jewish Prime Minister of Israel. 

Meanwhile, the Evangelical Christian US Representative Michele Bachmann says the outwardly Christian Obama is for the 300 million predominantly Christian (Protestant and Catholic) souls of the United States what the Christian pilot Andreas Lubitz was for the 159 souls on the Germanwings flight.

You are correct – the second paragraph sounds rather odd. Ok, what has happened is that all the words denoting all the religions on this planet have somehow evolved from being proper nouns to being full-fledged, highly descriptive adjectives. The adjectives (formerly known as nouns) in the second paragraph are deemed unnecessary and totally irrelevant to the habitual reader of the 21st century to whom the first paragraph is perfectly fine. And so, if facts would have mandated 'Muslim' to be the choice of adjective for Andreas, not only would that part of the second paragraph be grammatically and syntactically relevant, but would have also allowed us to rekindle the rhetoric on terrorism. Oh, and of course, the notorious underworld would have scrambled to figure out who would claim responsibility for the big 'score'. 

But thank God that is not the case. Moreover, the name of the co-pilot doesn't sound Middle Eastern either. Thus, a billion normal human beings are spared of being plunged into a relapse of the post-9/11 clinical depression stemmed from a collective guilt. With the 'M' type adjective missing, the terrible loss is now labeled as an 'isolated', 't' type incident. That is 't' for 'tragic', not 'terrorist', though I, the black and white engineer, can't fathom the difference between the two. Hence, the discussion of depression is perfectly kosher.

The passengers boarding the ill-fated airliner never had the right to know about the first officer's bouts of clinical depression. He is protected by the doctor-patient confidentiality.  Uhm, I don't think his medical record is all that confidential at the moment. That means, the code of secrecy is not totally impregnable – 'all' it takes is an Airbus jet to be disintegrated into smithereens with the loss of 159 innocent (note, I didn't say 160) lives to break that 'confidentiality'. Mum's the word? Not always. It can sometimes mean dumb's the word, as in the case of the Germanwings tragedy.

Open the door, and flies come in. Open the cockpit door, and bigger flies come in, as had happened on 9/11. Close that door, and the rotten fly, rare as it may be, can remain within.

Not sure what the ultimate test of cerebral fitness is when it comes to manning the controls of an aircraft. But aviation regulators in several countries have been quick to implement a minimum two-person presence at the flight deck, something the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) mandated a long time ago. And no, that doesn't mean putting an air marshal inside the cockpit or just plain have both the pilots wear diapers… 

Tragic, that it takes a tragedy to push people into a trajectory to action. I just hope that regulators, both aviation and healthcare, don't work at the speed of the International Cricket Council. For once, let's make foresight, instead of hindsight, a 20-20 vision.

The writer is an engineer & CEO turned comedian (by choice), the host of NTV's The Naveed Mahbub Show and the founder of Naveed's Comedy Club.

E-mail: naveed@naveedmahbub.com