Passengers, Check Your T-Shirt Before Boarding (nytimes.com)
ALONG with lighters, penknives and other forbidden objects on airplanes, you can now add something entirely new: T-shirts with objectionable messages. On Tuesday, Lorrie Heasley was forced to leave Southwest Airlines Flight 219, departing Reno, Nev., because she was wearing a T-shirt that featured pictures of President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and an expletive phrase playing on the title of the popular movie, ''Meet the Fockers.''

This is just too much.
Why is it that everywhere seems to be reverting to a high school mentality?
I remember being told not to wear offensive t-shirts in school, as well as during the orientation at work.
Those places are fine.
But on airplanes too?
Come on!
Personally, I don’t agree with the t-shirt mentioned in this article, but whether or not the t-shirt, (or others similar to it) are worn shouldn’t be that big of a deal.
It’s not like anyone’s forcing anyone else to look at the thing.
I can already see where this has the potential of going.
It’s going to have the fundamentalists, (along with a bunch of other people) up in arms, and this time, I happen to agree with them.
All it will take is for someone to get offended by a shirt that says something like “If you don’t like the heat, stay out of hell”, and the t-shirt wearer will be kicked off the plane faster than you can say Halleluyah.
This ranks up there with the story about Muslim employees in British public offices getting offended by Whinnie the Pooh and Piglet toys.
People, get over yourselves!
I suppose, though, that the argument could be made that the airlines want to make sure that the planes maintain some sort of sudo business atmosphere, and that would be fine if the only people, or the majority thereof, traveled solely on business.
I might have to pass this one on to some of the people I know who make business trips frequently to get another perspective.
But for now, the whole thing sounds pretty ridiculous.

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2 thoughts on “

  1. Yeah, I heard about this on the radio last week. The unfortunate thing is that freedom of speech is not absolute. That being said, however, I really think people and especially most Americans need a serious skin-thickening and perhaps to just go get over themselves in a big way. We seem to get offended much too easily and expect those who offend us to just cave or go away, when in fact our offence is at least in part our own problem. This will improve life greatly! From what I heard from this woman, it was three rather loud-mouthed older women who were offended by the shirt. Nobody raised a fuss in the airport or at the gate, but only on the actual plane. It also makes me wonder if the shirt text was the same but the pictures were different, would people have reacted differently? I accept that people are consistently inconsistent, two-faced hypocrites, and all that stuff that ain’t so noble, but such is the political climate these days. No more Cold War, so it’s liberals that are the new devil, or terrorists. Silly Earth creatures!

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