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Lucy Nobbe's message to Congress over NYC yesterday
The woman, Lucy Nobbe, works in finance, and her disgust with Congress reached a fever pitch Friday when Standard & Poor's downgraded the country's credit rating.
She wanted to send a message. So she did, in giant red letters, trailing behind a plane, over one of the planet's financial epicenters:
"THANKS FOR THE DOWNGRADE. YOU SHOULD ALL BE FIRED."
She tells the Associated Press that she'd hoped to remain anonymous, but within five minutes of the plane she hired going over New York, Fortune magazine called her. She says the message is for everyone in Congress, on both sides of the aisle.
"I'm very apolitical," Nobbe told the AP. "But the fact that they won't compromise angered me. They're acting like children. They leave the place in a shambles and go on vacation. It causes the market to crash. I know they're tough issues, but they have to be dealt with. Get us back in financial shape."
Initially, she'd hoped to fly her message over Washington, D.C., but the company she hired -- for $895, according to the Post-Dispatch -- told her that it would be impossible because of airspace restrictions. So she went with New York, which is home to Standard & Poor's -- and a whole lot of bloggers, newspapers and television reporters.
Call us old-fashioned, call us curmudgeons, but it's pretty cool that in this era where anyone with access to the internet can holler anything they want across time and space through poorly-punctuated bleats of 140 characters, someone took the time and expense to make their point in such a big, high-flying way.
