Look! Up in the sky! It's ... politics — Matters of Fact

Calling all platforms!

Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, print, radio, and cable TV — all were on fire with the news of the FBI's momentous raid at Trump's Mar-a-Lago compound on August 8.

And the messaging was lively. At both the red and blue ends of the spectrum.

The shocker that the FBI had deliberately planted top-secret documents in Trump's lair was galvanizing to the far right — as was the equally dubious yarn that the documents were really declassified all along, or that former president Barack Obama had done the same thing, only worse.

The left was just as appalled by the news — not proved — that Trump was guilty of espionage.

“Civil war! Pick up arms, people!” "Getting Ready for an uprising!" tweeted the MAGAs.

"Rosenbergs were convicted for giving U.S. nuclear secrets to Moscow, and were executed June 1953" hinted frequent MSNBC guest, historian Michael Beschloss, in a tweet that delighted anti-Trumpers.

More:We're exhausted: Stress and social media are taking their toll

Meanwhile, there was another media platform heard from. One a lot older that Twitter, Facebook, or even broadcast TV. And the message it proclaimed was the most succinct of all.

"HA HA HA HA HA HA."

The platform was the sky.

And the message was on a banner being towed by a small plane that flew over Mar-A-Lago on August 10. A group of Democratic activists in Miami paid $1,800 to fly that banner over the Trump retreat where a handful of the former president's supporters were then demonstrating.

"This is how you treat wannabe authoritarians like Trump," tweeted Thomas Kennedy, who masterminded the stunt. "You ridicule and mock them."

Above it all

We don't normally think of airplane banners as media. But this message — delighting Trump haters, and infuriating supporters — hit home.

For three reasons. One, it was short.

Two, it was flown over Trump's airspace, implicitly — though not illegally — violating his private fiefdom.

Three, it was spiteful, childish, mean-spirited. Almost like the kind of thing that the former president would do himself.

"It brought me a lot of joy," Kennedy told NBC 6 in Florida. "I would do it again."

Matters of Fact | A column about our lives in the age of media

It does not bring joy to Barbara Tomalino, the recently-retired owner of Paramount Air Service in Cape May County. The Trump stunt, she says, wouldn't have flown with her.

"I think it's obnoxious," Tomalino said. "That's the nice part of having my own business. I can choose when I'm too busy to fly."

Everyone has seen the planes that drone along the Jersey shoreline in the summer months, dragging banners like "THE SAFEGUARD INSURANCE GROUP" or "BABY BACK BASKET $8.99 HOG HEAVEN BBQ."

Tomalino's company, winding down this year, was founded in 1945 by her father, Andre. It is reputedly the oldest in the country. They've towed a lot of banners, over a lot of summers.

Usually the messages are innocuous — as are the messages of banner-towing's older cousin, skywriting, introduced in 1919, and less common now because it requires special flying skills. There might be an occasional divisive message −"SURRENDER, DOROTHY," say. But Wicked Witches are not your typical client. And even she was persuaded to tone down her rhetoric. In the original script for "The Wizard of Oz," she had written: "SURRENDER DOROTHY OR DIE."

In recent years, though, the friendly skies have been getting less friendly.

"STOP MAD COW DISEASE...DEFEAT HILLARY." "GOP GROW A SPINE AND EXPEL TRUMP." "DI BLASIO OUR BACKS ARE TURNED TO YOU." "TRUMP WORST PRESIDENT EVER." All those, and many more, have been spotted overhead by unwary beachgoers and stadium crowds. These messages, unlike those of an online platform, can't be blocked.

Before social media

Sky banners are the pre-Twitter Twitter. Like a tweet, a sky banner has to convey its information as briefly as possible. There is even a limited number of characters. "HA HA HA HA HA HA" is exactly 12.

"We like to keep them between 35 to 40 letters, because of the drag," Tomalino said.

Her business has always been 90 percent advertising. But sky banners and aerial billboards (a full-graphics poster, as opposed to the interchangeable block letters of a banner) have sometimes been pressed into service, especially in the days before cellphones, as a kind of crude social media.

"JOANNE WILL YOU MARRY ME." "CONGRATULATIONS SHERRY AND DAVE — IT'S A BOY." You still see such bulletins towed behind a plane, now and then. But some clients, in a pinch, have gotten more creative.

There are messages about lost cats. There are messages to runaway children: "BOBBI, I LOVE YOU, PLEASE COME HOME." There are alerts, of various kinds. These can be surprisingly effective: the lost cat was found, Tomalino recalls.

"There was a French-Canadian family that was trying to get in touch with a family member in the Wildwoods," she remembered. "This was before cellphones — probably 30 years ago. They didn't know where he was staying, but they knew he was going to be on the beach. The message on the banner was, 'JACQUES CALL GUY.' " Which Jacques did.

"Jacques father had died," she said. "They called and thanked us for helping him to get in touch."

But these days, everyone is airing their grievances on every available platform. It was inevitable that sky banners would be called on to do their part, in making the world just a bit more rancorous. "GOODBYE GOVERNOR BAD TOUCH" (this about Cuomo). "CONVICT TRUMP AND LOCK HIM UP."

Keeping it civil

Should the sky have gatekeepers, like Twitter or Facebook? Should you be able to throw someone off the troposphere — the way Trump was thrown off Twitter?

It's been looked into. In 2019, during two World Cup matches at Headingley Stadium in Leeds, England, planes flew overhead bearing messages like "#JUSTICE FOR KASHMIR," "INDIA STOP GENOCIDE & FREE KASHMIR" and "HELP END MOB LYNCHING IN INDIA." The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) asked the International Cricket Council (ICC) to step in and ban the messages.

"These are divisive political messages which have no place in sporting arena," the BCCI's Vinod Rai told told ESPN.

Police in England investigated after a banner reading "WHITE LIVES MATTER BURNLEY" flew over a Manchester stadium during a soccer match in 2020.

In 2016, political airplane banners were banned in Ocean City, Maryland by the mayor, Rick Meehan, after several with messages like "AMERICA FIRST. BUILD THAT WALL" riled beachgoers. "We all got blitzed today with emails about banners flown over the beach with messages very political in nature,” the mayor explained.

More:In the case of the Buffalo tragedy, is Fox News AWOL? And why?

More:Are US churches setting the tone for reparations? How a movement is growing

For her part, Tomalino is wary of giving offense. Not for nothing did she help build up a thriving business, with a fleet of some 10 Piper Cub planes, that serviced the entire New Jersey shoreline. The sky, as far as she's concerned, does have a limit.

"We are in business to service the community," said Tomalino, who flew her first plane at age 16. "We live in the community. We want to make sure we can put up something that any 8 or 10 year old could read."

She remembers being asked, in the pre-AIDS days, to fly an ad for Trojans. "I said, 'I don't think it's an appropriate venue.' They said, 'We advertise in national publications.' And I said, 'Yes, but not every 10-year-old child is looking at their parents' Newsweek or Sports Illustrated. But they are looking at the sky.' "

As for political ads, her simple rule is: Nothing negative.

How's that for an idea, in 2022?

"We've been asked to fly negative political ads," she said. "I've said, let's take that same message and make it positive. I will be glad to fly it. Vote for. Not against."

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Why sky banners are becoming a platform for politics