LA Times Travel: Skip the Foie Gras, Take a Private Plane

Sunday's LA Times Travel section offered some inadvertent hilarity. Freelancer Avital Binshtock breathlessly suggested some special ways to travel, to break readers out of their usual ruts, including this gem: Forget long check-in and security-screening lines. Think private jets--and you don't have to buy one. Flexjet (www.flexjet.com) offers fractional ownership of a plane or a new Flexjet 25 Card that lets clients buy time on a Learjet (minimum purchase is $129,900 for 25 hours). XOJet (www.xojet.com) charges flat rates from coast to coast (west to east is $24,350). And this perky little tip was written straight, with no hint of irony. Later on, she also sets travellers straight about saving the earth while eating abroad: Avoid foods such as veal, foie gras and shark-fin soup that involve harsh treatment of animals. FBLA suggests some harsh treatment of writers. Have the Tribune overlords fired all the editors or does consistency of message within a section not matter? Or if consistency doesn't matter, how about common sense--is that too much to ask? In another piece, she suggests that travelers try such off the beaten path spots as Fredericksburg, VA (50 miles from the Beltway, great Civil War battlefields, and not Washington's boyhood home, despite what the piece says.) In Cleveland, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is recommended, but "leave the little ones at home"--which is pretty nonsensical in a travel section. Leave them in the hotel? Leave them outside on the street? The Hall of Fame admits kids 8 and under for free, so who knows what the Times means? In describing Tulsa, she recycles some adjectives from her blog. Binstock has turned in some haphazard work before, if the food blog world is to be believed. And the Travel section of the paper is ripe for those innovations the editors keep promising. Reader content can make this section sparkle. Everyone likes to share their vacation photos, so why show just one?

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LA Times Travel: Skip the Foie Gras, Take a Private Plane

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