Political satire allows us to poke fun at our elected officials, the decisions they make, and sometimes the absurdities of the political process itself. It doesn’t mean the issues are any less serious. Rather, it gives us a different way of looking at them, taking some of the sharp edges off discussions that can, at times, feel very starchy and maybe a bit too blunt for regular people to digest.
Having watched Hawaiʻi politics over the years, and the events that have shaped its political landscape, this blogger asks: Is there really a political revolution brewing in Hawaiʻi, or is this just another election cycle where the hopes for change are running ahead of the political realities on the ground?
Over the past several weeks, a series of articles in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and Honolulu Civil Beat marked a quiet but consequential shift in who is interpreting Hawaiʻi politics for the public. Two farewells and one arrival point to a change not simply in political voices, but in how the state’s political narrative is being shaped and understood.
Indeed, if you go back in the history of Hawai‘i aviation and the issues of ownership and who operated, the mere fact that an airline that was not “Hawai‘i based” came in to buy a “Hawai‘i based airline” that didn’t elicit an immediate hearing in the State Capitol on the merits of it told me that, indeed, the relationship between the people of Hawai‘i, its government officials, and its aviation options, has very much changed.
Skyline cost a lot, and the people who “drove the train” if you will – the leaders of Honolulu and even the state – paid pretty high prices for Skyline.