So you think you can fly?

• Author: Clinton, Kate
• Position: Unplugged - Column

I saw Up in the Air , and it's an unsettling film for a frequent fellow traveler. It's not to be confused with the animated film Up -- with the old guy and the helium balloons that I always thought we should have attached to Dick Cheney's Inaugural wheelchair when we had the chance.

Anyway, Ryan Bingham, played by George Clooney, averages 322 days per year in transit as a professional ax-man hired by companies too chicken to fire their own employees.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

As I got up to leave the theater, I almost reached to unfasten my seatbelt. I had a lot of personal I.D. I know the sound of Bingham's smug final zip-up of a minimalist but well-stocked bag. I know how to strap a personal carryon item to a roller-bag, for a near-weightless, resistance-free luggage pull. I know how to pick the fastest security line at JFK for a Florida-bound JetBlue flight crammed with excited families on February pilgrimage to the Magic Kingdom. Hint: Avoid tiny pink Hello Kitty carry-ons.

Bingham is good at his job. Critics speculate about his sangfroid. Is it existential detachment? From personal experience, I'd bet it's the jet lag. But Bingham never seems to get that. Or H1N1. He never overshoots the Minneapolis airport, never sits next to the crotch bomber, never lands on the Hudson, and never has to go through the full-body scan machine that, in the ditched health insurance reform bill, would have doubled as mammogram, sonogram, and virtual colonoscopy machines.

Bingham is able to dissociate from his job as a professional remote-control drone by secretly pursuing his personal goal of racking up ten million frequent flier miles. I was able to detach from his pleasant lethality by thinking, "It's George Clooney; he's a U.N. messenger for peace; he cares about Darfur; he's produced a celebrity telethon for Haitian earthquake victims."

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