Richard Turen
I wish I had the time to do it. Just imagine taking seven months to celebrate this nation's 250th Anniversary by taking your family and experiencing some of the best of our nation, its sites and its culture on a historic road trip.
Where would you go?
Perhaps snowmobiling in Montana, or a Mississippi River cruise out of St. Louis. Certainly, you would stop in Philadelphia to check out the Liberty Bell and the steps where Sylvester Stallone once stood as Rocky.
You would certainly head to Boston to see ......ummm........the firehouse where the cast of The Real World Boston reality series lived. Your dream American road trip would surely take in Nashville so you could visit the homes of "singers" Kid Rock and John Rich.
There would be lots of other stops along this seven-month journey visiting genuine historic sites for photo ops, diners to meet "real" Americans, open fields, and sprawling cities.
Of course, running a busy travel agency or any other type of business would simply not allow for a seven-month road trip. Perhaps down the road, when retirement comes and the fingers can no longer type on the keyboards in front of us.
If we don't have the time for this kind of road trip, we surely imagine others in this nation would also not have the time to do it. For instance, our Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy. He must have his hands full overseeing the entire nation's transportation system, including aviation, rail, maritime and even pipelines. On top of that, he oversees regulating safety standards for each of these systems and for managing federal transportation funding and infrastructure. Gosh, he must be busy.
Well, apparently not. Duffy spent the last seven months filming "The Great American Road Trip," a patriotic, sponsor-stuffed, intermittently shot travel series originally slated to air in June, and now moved back "later this year." This is not new to Mr. Duffy, who rose to fame as a house guest on Real World Boston.
In response to questions, Mr. Duffy's office said that he did not travel with his wife and kids for seven straight months while filming and, no, the nation's transportation system did not run on autopilot. Instead, the department spokesman explained, he filmed the show in short bursts--weekends, school breaks, and one-day shoots--stretched across seven months.
OK. I will buy that. But this was a long-distance road trip across the entire United States. Wouldn't that have meant a rather busy flying schedule from Washington to do the one-day shoots and weekend filming?
DOT ethics officials signed off on the venture after making sure that the Secretary of Transportation could respond to e-mails and be reached in an emergency from the seat of a snowmobile.
I was wondering who paid for all of this. It turns out that companies that build planes and cars, fly passengers and operate cruise ships were among those that jumped in to help. "The Great American Road Trip" is partially sponsored by Boeing, Lyft, Toyota, United Airlines, Enterprise and Royal Caribbean. As none of these firms would ever be affected by a ruling by the Secretary of Transportation, I can see no conflict of interest at all.
Our leader appears briefly in the series trailer, offering Duffy a send-off from the Oval Office. "Taking a Little Trip?" he asks with a smile.
Throughout the filming period, Duffy was essentially responsible for anything that moves in this country -- with, apparently, the exception of snowmobiles.
The larger question, I think, the one that hovers over the entire project like a drone seeking FAA approval, is what, exactly, is this TV show meant to accomplish. Is it a patriotic celebration, a family travelogue or a seven-month demonstration of the Secretary's ability to multitask?