Circle For A Landing

Boy, you sure can tell it's August, can't you?

Congress is on its five-week paid vacation, the nation's capital is wheezing through the dog days of limpid heat and violent afternoon thunderstorms, and the news media just don't know what to do with themselves.

I have some experience in journalism myself, and I can tell you that reporters go nuts in August for lack of anything to write about. In England August is known as the "silly season," the month when the papers will play up any idiotic story they can find just to fill space.

Just in case anyone has forgotten, (and I'm sure plenty have) the run-up to September 11, 2001 was a real snoozer. Right up until the moment those airplanes slammed into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and that field in Pennsylvania, we consumers of news were being tube-fed one shark attack after another, the vicissitudes of the Dow-Jones Industrial Average (it passed 10,000 for the first time that summer) and Chandra Levy, Chandra Levy, Chandra Levy.

Does anyone remember Chandra Levy now? We had her in 24-hour tape loop for weeks before 9/11. She was the Washington intern who vanished in Rock Creek Park, then turned up dead, and for a while (an endless while) all eyes were on the congressman she worked for, Gary Condit, whose priapic propensities were such that many wags called him "Gary Condom."

Then Al Qaida struck, and we all had something else to worry about.

Happens all the time. In the Soviet Union, coups tended to happen in August. With all the party big shots in Moscow out of town, swatting mosquitoes at their dachas in the countryside, August was the time to strike if you wanted to topple the government. I remember the last time it happened. I was swatting mosquitoes in Warrenton, Virginia, preparing to be transferred to my next Foreign Service post, Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire. August 19, 1991. The news cycle was in such a downturn that that week's issue of Newsweek featured a cover story entitled "Busybodies and Crybabies: What's happening To the American Character?"

Then the following morning, when the Washington Post was delivered to the door of my room at the Warrenton Comfort Inn, the blazing headline read that Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev had been deposed in a coup.

That coup collapsed after three days, but things sure were exciting there for a while. Then we all went back to wishing September would hurry up and get here, with its cooler temperatures and the NFL on Sundays.

I think I have identified the "shark attack" of 2008. Or the Chandra Levy, if you prefer.

A couple of weeks ago there was a story in the news about a Quantas jumbo jet having to make an emergency landing in Australia after a mystery explosion blew out a hunk of its fuselage in mid-flight.

Hot damn! Shark attack! Has anyone else noticed that in the days since, we have been virtually inundated with "emergency landing" stories? There was another one just this morning, about a plane having to make a forced landing at an airport in Orange, California after some sort of equipment problem.

Truth to tell, small planes probably have to make emergency landings more often than most non-pilots would guess. Generally such a thing would only make the news if it involved a Qantas jumbo jet. But this is August, and there ain't much else going on. And given the habit reporters have of reflexively (one might say slavishly) imitating each other, I'm going to go out on a limb and make a fearless forecast here: in the weeks between now and the time the autumn winds begin to blow (or something truly newsworthy happens, on the level of a terrorist attack, coup d'etat in Russia, massive earthquake in Pakistan or breast augmentation surgery for Paris Hilton)look to see lots and lots of stories about planes of all shapes and sizes making forced landings at podunk airports you couldn't find on a map.

Oh, and watch for that big interview Ted Koppel is going to have with his dog, Winky.

It's August, folks. Showtime.