Today is officially the most depressing day of the year – what we need is a superhero, writes Ann Marie Hourihane
IT IS time to send for Captain Chesley B Sullenberger III. We’ve been hit in both engines, flames are licking the fuselage and we are losing height so rapidly that the national nose is bleeding.
We need someone to make a decision, and fast. Captain Chesley B “Sully” Sullenberger III represents our only hope.
He’s resting now, and will not speak to the press until the inquiry into what struck US Airlines Flight 1549 has been completed.
But that’s OK. We don’t need Captain Chesley B “Sully” Sullenberger III to talk to the press. We just need him to come on over here and tell us what to do. If he tells us that we have to evacuate, we’ll go.
It doesn't have to be Captain Chesley B "Sully" Sullenberger III, of course. Spiderman would also do. Just as soon as Spiderman, also known as press photographer Peter Parker, has finished rescuing President-elect Barack Obama from the dastardly plot at tomorrow's inauguration (see the latest issue of Spiderman).
But to hell with Barack Obama – another hero of whom we expect great things – he’s got a lot of clever people around him to make sure that he’s all right. We’re over here in Gotham city scanning empty skies.
How sad Irish crowds have become. The photographs in the newspapers show our old people looking permanently frightened. They go to public meetings clutching umbrellas and their canes, looking like Peter Parker’s beloved Aunt May just prior to being rescued by her dutiful nephew.
Our politicians are as grey-faced and as hollow-eyed as any crooked mayor who is shortly to be visited by the Caped Crusader. Our shoppers are grim.
Superheroes like Captain Chesley B Sullenberger III and Spiderman and Batman operate in urban landscapes in which the fire hydrants explode and the Tarmac splits.
The stories of their exploits often feature city buses: the bus hanging from the bridge, the chase which continues over the roof of the bus, with the superhero leaving his footprints in the steel and so on. Now Gotham has lost 10 per cent of its buses and a sizable chunk of its transport staff.
Over this grim scenario hang the black clouds of anxiety and disillusion. Handsome villains go unpunished. Despised politicians are unable to cope.
It is at exactly this moment, as all comic book readers know, that the crowds look up and see the Bat logo projected on to the sky, and see Spiderman running up the side of a fully occupied office building.
Lord knows that the crowds in superhero comics are unattractive; comic book artists are not known for their democratic leanings.
Comic book crowds are made up of tired, frightened, sheep-like creatures. (There used to always be a woman shouting “My baby! Someone help my baby!”, but the shouting woman has not been seen so often since feminism started stalking the land. Some of us miss her.)
Or comic book crowds are greedy, venal and vicious; the poor a mob and the rich despicable in their low-cut evening gowns.
Comic book crowds are really an obstacle for the superhero to swoop over and to dazzle before he leaves them to resume their humdrum lives. Oh God, if only.
Today is officially the most depressing day of the year. Normally that’s just a question of low serotonin levels and too many unpaid bills. But this year it’s that much worse.
In the US they have a new president as their superhero. Yesterday, a New York Times/CBS poll showed that 79 per cent of respondents were optimistic about the next four years. Even though two-thirds of respondents expected the recession to last two years or longer, Barack Obama has the highest-ever approval rating of any incoming president.
And what do we have?
David McWilliams, God bless him. It’s not really the same thing, is it?
Every superhero leads a double life, and I suppose being an economist is as good a disguise as any.
But Captain Chesley B “Sully” Sullenberger III has an even better background for a superhero.
His only sibling, his sister, spoke last week of how, as a boy, he used to build his model planes meticulously, painting every surface.
And he isn’t a flash kind of guy either. He lives in a quiet street in California. His wife is a fitness instructor. He is 57, and looks it. The Sullenbergers raise guide dogs for the blind. There is no information available on whether they own a holiday home.
Despite his experience in the US air force there is no record of Captain Chesley B “Sully” Sullenberger III having ever travelled anywhere by helicopter.
Luckily for the passengers on Flight 1549 he was more interested in flying gliders.
Unusually for a superhero, Captain Chesley B “Sully” Sullenberger III’s speciality is in that unfashionable area of expertise and safety. As well as being a pilot of some 40 years’ experience he also runs his own company, Safety Reliability Methods Inc, which is surely one of the very few businesses in the world at the moment which looks like a good investment.
And Captain Chesley B “Sully” Sullenberger has made a careful study of how teams function in emergencies.
Come on, we need him in Gotham right now.