I’ve got to stop using Morning Edition to wake me up–it’s worse on my blood pressure than coffee.

This morning they chose to do a piece on a new policy that American has come up with at some airports of separate expedited security lines for elite members. Maybe it’s just me, but this seems like an eminently-sensible solution to try to win back some of their most valued customers–the ones who, without which, they will surely go under. These people pay a lot of money for their tickets, or buy a lot of tickets. In return, they have always gotten comfier seating, better food, and better service, including their own line at the ticket/baggage-check counter. Under the current circumstances, in which the airlines are hemmorhaging money because many of these customers are now unwilling to fly due to security hassles, such an approach is an entirely natural extension of such service.

But of course our friends at NPR treat it as some kind of anti-democratic outrage, seeking out and interviewing brain-dead customers in long coach security lines to complain about how unfair it is, when we’re all supposed to be “equal” in America. “Why can’t they just get to the airport an hour earlier, like we have to?” one woman whines.

Now to be fair, they also interviewed a guy who said, common sensibly, “They pay the extra money, they get a shorter line.” But my question was, why was this even a story?

But anyway, to the degree that it is a story, they actually end up burying the lead, attempting to end it on an “upbeat” note. They tell us that when the system becomes federalized shortly, no longer under control of those elitists at American, we can be sure that such unequal treatment will come to an end…