Mar 30, 2012 4 min read

Hell hath no fury like an Alec Baldwin scorned.

If you recall your celebrity gossip from December, the star of small and silver screen was booted from an American Airlines flight for refusing to quit his game of “Words with Friends” (think Scrabble without the licensing rights) prior to takeoff.

Now, the actor who plays the inimitable Jack Donaghy on NBC’s “30 Rock” has recently poked fun at the incident in a new ad for Capital One, where he shills credit with the card’s inexplicable barbarian/viking/raider mascots. (Whose idea was it to have the image of a credit card company be a bunch of guys who like to pillage?)

But that doesn’t convince me that Baldwin has allowed this phone-gate incident to become so much water under the bridge. Especially considering the Associated Press reported last week that the Federal Aviation Administration is taking “a tentative step toward making it easier for airlines to allow passengers to use personal electronic devices such as tablets, e-readers and music players during takeoffs and landings.”

Now, no one is reporting that the most successful (and handsome!) Baldwin was the impetus behind this startling turnaround by the aviation industry — but no one is saying he wasn’t, either. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

Regardless of whether this new push to loosen the rules on the use of electronics in the air is the result of what people (people being me) are now calling the “Baldwin Bump” isn’t the point. What’s the point, then, you ask? (Geez, I’m getting there; calm down, will ya?)

The point is that we now will have about 15-30 minutes less that we have to fill doing something other than stare at a screen!

If this loosening goes into effect (and that’s still an if, mind you), no longer would we have to spend that roughly half hour of take off and landing in the real world. Instead of having to read a book, flip through SkyMall, stare out the window, get lost in thought or — dare I say it — talk to somebody, we can retreat safely into the confines of our iPads, cell phones and Kindles.

(Whew.)

We’ve all heard the reasoning behind this temporary need to be Luddites: the use of electronic devices can cause havoc with the sensitive (and important) equipment up in the cockpit. Of course, many have long thought that was bupkis (though I’m not seeing anybody lining up to be crash test dummies in case they’re wrong).

Nick Bilton of the New York Times has perhaps the most damning evidence on this front: “Reporters I’ve spoken with who travel with the president of the United States on Air Force One told me that the Secret Service never requires anyone to power down their electronics before takeoff.” If it doesn’t endanger the president then…

Or, maybe you’ve heard that you should power down before takeoff to ensure you are paying attention to safety procedures and are alert if anything were to go wrong. But if that were true, you’d need to mandate everyone put down their copies of “Hunger Games” and “US Weekly” too. (Of course, as I’ve written before, you really, really should pay attention to those briefings. No matter how often you fly.)

Thankfully none of these discussions includes even the remotest chance that cell phones would be allowed to be used for calls in-air. Since much of humanity loses the ability to use their inside voices as soon as they make a phone call, you can understand why no one — no one — wants that.

Imagine being stuck on a plane with a Chatty Cathy talking way too loud — and then multiply that by the entire plane, and you’ll understand why.

So next time you find yourself on a flight having to endure those few non-iPad minutes of takeoff and landing, you can at least pass the time by thinking about how, statistically speaking, the takeoff and landing is the most likely time for a plane crash.

See, with that tidbit in your back pocket, now you don’t need your electronic devices to keep busy; you’ll have your thoughts occupied by fretting over the crushing weight of your own mortality.

You’re welcome!

Brandon Szuminsky, who can be reached at bszuminsky@heraldstandard.com, would be remiss if he didn’t mention the birthday of the son of his No. 1 fan: Happy birthday, Ferd.