Airline Employees Still Wearing “Let’s Go Brandon” Pins

Pilots tend to be more conservative than flight attendants, overall. So after NASCAR driver Brandon Brown at Talladega Speedway on October 2, and a reporter mistook the crowd chanting “F- Joe Biden” as “Let’s Go Brandon!” the slogan took on a life of its own… in the cockpit.

It seemed like it should have died out by December but was still going on over air traffic control at the end of the year.

Still I’m surprised to see it in the cabin on American Airlines in May 2022:

More than bringing politics into the aircraft cabin, the problem here is that Let’s Go Brandon has simply become derivative. It’s so 2021. Wearing a Let’s Go Brandon pin isn’t just a juvenile way to express yourself, it’s a way of saying I’m 8 months behind the meme.

It was cute back in early fall when a passenger recently had American Airlines page “Let’s Go Brandon.” But haven’t we already done this one to death?

Six years ago a United Airlines pilot announced that everyone had to keep politics off the plane. Passengers cheered. No matter your feelings about silly memes or the President of the United States, there are some places where we should be left alone. Stuck in a metal tube, you can’t escape a pilot’s politics.

The American Airlines flight attendant was violating uniform standards. There are approved pins that cabin crew can wear. There’s a process for adding more of them. This is not approved flair.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Of Bidens 22 million twitter followers over half are bots.
    I wonder if 41 million of his 82 million votes in 2020 were fraudulent?

  2. @Steve

    Facts don’t care about your feelings. Your false narrative and history has already been called out as has your debunked and ahistorical view of the senate and democrat gerrymandering.

    Gerrymandering if a democrat thing, It was their way to win elections up until 2010 when they lost their majorities on the state levels because of massive failure of the unqualified barrack hussein obama.

    Democrats cry about it but in 2021 have used and abused gerrymandering more than anyone. Over the past 30 years the gop has steadily increased their vote fairly and on the ground level while democrats have used every dirty trick to maintain power. Even bussing homeless people to polls.

    Democrats rely on the poorest most ignorant people to vote for them. The most successful people in life vote republican because they contribute the most. Democrats are the party of crime, welfare and pedophilia.

    Being a reactionary is a good thing especially when you have the party of pedophiles and sexual deviants grooming children you mutilate their bodies based on junk science. We need more reactionary people in office to keep the sick groomers in the democratic partying from sexualizing school children.

    democrats always push the BLM lies and conspiracy’s that are easily debunked and push their war on police but given the surge of democrat crime they have now had to abandon the BLM terrorist groups since it’s hurting their election chances.

    The reason you mental midgets hate Fox news is because it exposed the liberal media and their bias. You no longer can brainwash people with your far left propaganda.

    Kyle Rittenhouse is a patriot and was found not guilty of shooting those antifa Marxist terrorists who chased and attacked him. We need more people like him.
    Blm has caused more death and destruction in their summer of love. The murders and burning of entire cities were 100 times worse than what you marxists call “the insurrection”.

    People like you are the enemy.

    Nov is going to be nasty for your side. GOOD.

  3. @Steve – No, please return it immediately for making the pisspoor arguments you just made regarding the Senate above.

    The Senate was not founded in any way to allow for the maintenance of slavery – it is the lesser democractic branch of government, intended to represent states, not the people. Why would the part of the country that was most populous be in favor of a system that lessened their power? Only 5 of the original 13 states were over 15% slave, with Delaware being at exactly 15%. A Senate that voted exactly along slave/non-slave lines would be anti-slavery. Furthermore, the 3/5 Compromise was an explicitly ANTI-SLAVERY measure – recall that it was the slaveowners who wanted full counting of slaves (there are tax issues also involved), but you can’t complain about the 3/5ths rule on the one hand and not be tied to slave-owners if you argue it was immoral to count them that way – for that you would have to argue that they shouldn’t be counted at all.

    Furthermore, except for the odd Elections of 1796/1800 and subsequent election reform, the Electoral College didn’t really come into play, presidential elections were pretty much non-competitive until 1824 when things started to get really interesting and the modem political system began to develop, completed in 1828 with the election of Andrew Jackson.

    Furthermore, the anti-slavery movement was really in it’s infancy in 1787, only Massachusetts/Maine had completely abolished it and most movements against slavery were more against the slave trade, not slavery itself. The idea that the slave states could see into the future and construct the Constitution in such a way as to prevent the victory of a fringe political movement when they held all the cards in the first place is laughable. Recall that the Constitution even gave Congress the power to ban the slave trade after 1808, 20 years after the adoption, and the slaveowners agreed to this, so it’s not like they saw the anti-slave trade movement as much of the threat.

    Were there subsequent moves made to protect slavery and did the Constitution almost guarantee Civil War – sure, you can ague that, but why would the Convention adopt a Constitution that guaranteed Civil War if they could see it was going to do that? You really need to put down your copy of The 1619 Project and read some real history.

  4. @Flying.While.High.Again – To be fair, Elon Musk’s followers are an even higher percentage of bots, so I think the only thing we can say is that Twitter may be a huge fraud upon advertisers and Musk is smart to look for an off-ramp and/or discount price. It may implode in a wave of lawsuits if he doesn’t buy it and I’m not sure he’s going to want to take on the existing liability. We all know it’s not real life, even if the people who live there think it is.

  5. I agree that political pins, buttons have no place in the workplace when those items are in public view or on an official uniform. That just makes common sense as you don’t want to alienate any of your customer base. However the left is equally guilty of this as we still see the “fu.k Trump” buttons bumper stickers pins etc and other left wing propaganda. Let’s not pretend please that this is only a right wing issue

  6. I’m all for these pins. Just like the comments section, you get to find out who the morons and a-holes are.

  7. @C_M I was willing to accept your argument, and I said so. I figured that would be the end, but apparently, you decided, NO, I’M GONNA SAY THE SAME THING, EVEN LOUDER. I don’t know what the point of your second posting even was, it was a lot of work for no additional point. I guess you felt so good finding an acorn, you just kept on a diggin the same hole.

    None of this changes that NikoZ was right in the core of his statement. The reference to slavery is incidental to the point about the present. The Republican party’s power exists in the country mainly because of an undemocratic Senate and Electoral college. It privileges land over people. and my points still stand as to how those institutions have cascading impacts on other branches of government.

    None of that would stop Koggerj from his usual unhinged rants.

  8. K Helldoge says. “If the world wasn’t pull of bigoted, racist, delusional A**HOles like yourselves, there would be no need for BLM. And insofar as FJB, he won. Get over it, losers.”

    You are the loser my friend. Everyday when you pay$5-$6 for a gallon of gas, empty store shelves, rising inflation, rising interest rates, illegal immigration and so on. Do you now understand how stupid your comments and those of the other Sleepy Joe fans are? We are all losers under the current administration except maybe those of us who are on welfare.

  9. @C.Morgan – I think you are missing the point. When did airlines say it was alright for their employees to have “fu.k Trump” pins or buttons? Never. I don’t even know if there is a reported case of an employee wearing such a button against the rules. That something you deem to be “the left” might have had such pins or buttons is irrelevant to the blog post, which is about employees wearing an LGB button.

  10. @Steve – Be careful what you wish for, you might get it. And you’re wrong again.

    Total national votes for the House of Representatives favored the Republicans in 2016, 2014, 2010, 2004, 2002, 2000, 1998, and 1994.

    Admittedly, that is a flawed statistic, for many reasons, primarily lack of an opposing candidate or viable candidate in many races, but the same can be said for the presidential vote, where no Republicans are often on the ballot in lower California elections due to their jungle primary, and everyone knows the state is going for whatever D is on the top of the ballot, so why would Republicans even show up? But even so, it indicates your argument that Republicans don’t win elections through the popular vote is a lie.

    But thanks for playing our game.

  11. @Steve

    No you and NikoZ were both proven wrong and you still refuse to acknowledge reality. Like most lefties you speak of a script of talking points you’ve memorized.

  12. @C_M
    Dude, you can’t say “You’re wrong” and then argue against something I never said to prove your point. I said the GOP lost the popular vote in the last 7 of 8 Presidential elections. That’s what I said. You then went to discuss the House votes. Had nothing to do with what I said. Then you said, “it indicates your argument that Republicans don’t win elections through the popular vote is a lie.” Again, that wasn’t what I said. I said the Electoral College is not democratic, therefore the Presidential contest is problematic. I also said gerrymandering is a problem, but that’s because it causes outsized victories for the GOP. I didn’t say the GOP never wins an election. But if a state has the GOP win 51% of a state’s total House vote but send 7 of the state’s 9 representatives to Congress, that’s not a working democracy.

  13. @Steve

    You’re the one with outlandish and mentally ill political opinions.

  14. Steve you are the one missing the point who obviously only reads posts associated with left wing rhetoric. There was just a case earlier this year where a FA was disciplined for having a F…Trump pin on her work bag and a customer complained. There have been multiple other incidents you simply need to do an internet search.

  15. @CMORGAN
    I said “I don’t know” because it wasn’t my point and I didn’t much care. But, sure, let’s do a Duck Duck Go search using “flight attendant fuck trump” and… hundreds of hits about bad behavior by Trump people. Nothing about flight attendants wearing Fuck Trump flare. I mean, whatever. Wasn’t my point.

  16. @Steve – You can’t even keep track of your own arguments. You said: “The Republican party’s power exists in the country mainly because of an undemocratic Senate and Electoral college. It privileges land over people. and my points still stand as to how those institutions have cascading impacts on other branches of government.” I then went on to show that the Republicans do, in fact, win majorities in some election years, wrecking your argument that they only hold power because of the Senate and Electoral College.

    Furthermore, we are not a democracy and never have been, so it’s not a surprise we aren’t one. The Founders explicitly rejected democracy as unstable and dangerous, instead choosing a Constitutional Republic with elected representatives and separated powers. The gridlock is intentional, which you will appreciate after November 2022 and 2024, just like you appreciated it from 2016-20 and 2000-08.

    As for the Electoral College, the rules have always been 50 state elections, not one national one. Again, the Founders explicitly rejected that model as placing too much power in the hands of a few large states. Even if you changed electoral votes to the number of state representatives, I’m not sure you would change many election outcomes. And it’s difficult to know the results because people didn’t vote under those circumstances. If they voted like Nebraska or Maine, always an option – but you don’t see California lining up to dilute the winner take all formula, people might behave differently. And we have never had proportional representation – that sounds good on paper, put it produces tremendously unstable governments usually controlled by tiny minorities.

    Funny think about election laws is, everyone is in favor of changing them to favor their own side until their opponent controls the levers of power. That filibuster is evil until your side is in the minority. Remember Chesterton’s Fence – Reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood. Before tearing down the newly discovered fence with no apparent purpose, you might want to find out why it was built in the first place.

  17. @C_M
    I said that “The Republican party’s power exists in the country mainly because of an undemocratic Senate and Electoral college. It privileges land over people. and my points still stand as to how those institutions have cascading impacts on other branches of government.” This statement is not in the slightest way “wrecked” by you pointing out that Republicans can win elections in the House. Of course, Republicans *can* win elections. I never said those institutions were the ONLY reason the GOP wins elections. I said they were MAINLY the reasons the Republican party holds POWER, and, indeed, the Senate and EC are the two largest levers by which the GOP holds power, far outsized of their numbers. These lever in turn affect other mechanisms of governance, such as the judiciary – nominated by a President who won the EC and confirmed by the Senate. A judiciary controlled by GOP-nominated judges then allows, via court cases, one party to have even more control over various election mechanisms, such as who votes, if their votes are counted at all, and in which jurisdiction those votes are allotted.

    The “we’re a republic not a democracy” argument is ridiculous and always has been. Of course we’re a democracy, and we always have been. We’re a representative democracy, just not a direct democracy. Power rests with the people who elect representatives, which ultimately is a majoritarian system. The question has been, who are the people? Who is being represented? The US has become more and more a complete and truly representative democracy with time, with the 15th, 17th, and 19th amendments and the Civil Rights acts. However, the Republican party continues to maintain its degree of power in the US mainly by anti-majoritarian mechanisms, activity, and arguments. Among the many forms of this is the Senate that equates the vast empty land of Wyoming and Nebraska over the huge population centers of California and New York, leading to laws that favor a political party far outside the degree to which it should based on numbers of people alone and mathematically leads to bias within the Electoral College, where even a few votes could decide the difference in who wins vast power for years and stacks the deck of other levers of power.

  18. Have the problems that led to the meme really gone away? Doesn’t seem that way.

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