Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing but the might of America’s military-industrial complex—air shows feel like a relic of the past. (Doesn’t the Obama era call for an outdoor drone show?) But that won’t stop more than 1.5 million people from crowding the lakefront this weekend to watch the Blue Angels ride the highway to the danger zone during the Chicago Air & Water Show.
Plys detailed the hundreds of people who had died in air show crashes from the previous 40 years, as well as the millions of taxpayer dollars wasted. Following the Rammstein accident, Chicago alderman Burton Natarus tried to end Chicago’s show. “I worry about one of those mechanical errors happening in which hundreds of pounds of flaming metal crashes into a high-rise apartment building,” he said.
