Last year pilots were making announcements “Let’s Go Brandon” and that made it into air traffic control chatter too. I thought this had died out, and was now being crowded out by the counter Dark Brandon meme but pilots are still bringing their politics on board with them.
Here’s a Southwest Airlines pilot with a “I used to be liberal / Then I left home and got a job” sticker on his bag.
.@SouthwestAir is this really the type of garbage you allow your pilots to have on their work bags? As a liberal woman (with a job, thanks very much) who flies your airline often with my kids (who are of reading age), this is downright offensive. pic.twitter.com/H8ODcXoSit
— Theresa (@theresalenz) August 25, 2022
Shortly after Donald Trump was first elected President, a United Airlines captain went viral for asking passengers not to get political on the airplane regardless of which side they were on. Everyone cheered.
Beyond Southwest, airline uniform standards generally speak to stickers on the outside of luggage, but conformance with such standards is more likely to be applied against cabin crew than pilots. Pilots have a lot more leverage than flight attendants.
Airlines themselves are highly political. They lobby to pick taxpayer pickets for bailouts. They lobby to keep competitors out of the U.S. and to keep domestic airlines from accessing space in the airlines they operate – limiting consumer choice and raising prices. They want government subsidies for alternative fuels. Already shielded from state regulations, they lobby to limit regulation at the federal level too. We’ll never keep politics out of airlines – but time inside of airports and inside of metal tubes at 35,000 would sure be nice as a politics-free zone. Let’s stick to puppies and kittens while on board.
Do you think pilots ought to be able to express themselves – politically – on the job, even if just through ‘flair’?
How easily this Karen was offended. She just needs to lighten up. Whichever side you’re on, please respect others’ opinions.
This womxn’s husband (or whatever the hell it’s married to) needs to start doing their job.
@ 1KBrad
Your quote probably not Sir Winston Churchill – which completely changes the original context and thereby meaning (probably a good thing since Churchill expediently changed from Conservative to Liberal and then back to Conservative).
Try French politician, Francois Guillaume Gizot, in the lead up to the 1848 French Revolution: the original referring to whether you were for a republic or monarchy.
That then begs the question of whether you are content with USA being a Republic or would rather subscribe to MAGBA – Make America Great Britain Again to enjoy colony status under HRH QE2?
I find all this outrage against people who say/do things you don’t approve of to be almost comical. Are the liberals so threatened that they can’t just stand up for what they believe? Instead, they scream at people they don’t agree with? One of the vast downsides of the internet and instant ‘communication’ … these screamers have a perfect way to express themselves with nobody knowing who they are. People who are too weak to stand up for themselves need to figure life out. We’re not all the same, and we never will be. This is a GOOD thing. So deal with it and stop screaming about how your kids are being corrupted by a pilot’s statement of what he believes. Why not explain the situation to your children so they can be informed and have their own opinions?
thank you, Judy,
People are being increasingly fed up w/ being told what they can or can’t say do or think because it might offend someone – and it isn’t partisan.
It is the result of trying to stifle individual thought in the name of a common narrative and anyone with a grain of intelligence can see that such practice will bite them in the backside some day.
The idea that this was a private account and a private tweet, therefore it shouldn’t be publicized is just wrong. This was an attempted mobbing, she tagged Southwest in an attempt to get him fired. That then backfired when people started mobbing her in response. Then she went private.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
No problem with pilot dishing it out, I just hope he can take it, too.
The pilot is using this insulting bag sticker because he’s clearly angry and spoiling for a fight, likely due to his diet of nonstop Fox “News”. Ignore his immature cry for attention and let him get about his work for a second-rate airline. As long as he’s a competent pilot, yawn.
@ huey judy
“I find all this outrage against people who say/do things you don’t approve of to be almost comical.”
Yes, the cult of outrage is comical. But it cuts both ways – your perceptions of such depend upon your political position, at least they very evidently do in your post.
But the question posed in this case was whether an employer (airline) should or should not have the power to dictate the actions of their employees (in expressing a political partisan position) when at work.
An attendant question is whether such control should extend to their social media accounts.
Those questions exist regardless of your political persuasion. They are relevant to the concept of free speech.
“Are the liberals so threatened that they can’t just stand up for what they believe?”
Judy, people of non right wing politics make their core beliefs very plain.
Where the right wants private health, the non right wants equality of access through some sort of universal health care system. The non right want equality of access to education, where the right wants the cash to grant that access. The non right seeks to take responsibility for the environment whereas the right refuses to countenance such. The non right seeks to guard peoples’ working rights and the right seeks to favour the employer. The list goes on. Essentially, the fundamental differences are evident and expressed.
FWIW you can be “liberal” and disagree with some of the histrionic stuff about pulling down statues and renaming everything, just as you can be “right wing” and see through the fakery of of the Orange Muppet and be uncomfortable with his dog whistle racist narrative (I have Republican friends who are members of her GOP and have refused to vote for the man).
“Instead, they scream at people they don’t agree with?”
Seems to me that people will scream regardless of their political persuasion. There are plenty of evidently and self confessed right wing screamers on this very website.
“One of the vast downsides of the internet and instant ‘communication’ … these screamers have a perfect way to express themselves with nobody knowing who they are.”
IMHO, so very true.
“People who are too weak to stand up for themselves need to figure life out.”
Isn’t the real weakness when people don’t stop and think about stuff?
Perhaps what people need to figure out their own understanding of free speech (since this is the subject of the article above), its strengths and limitations and the effective way to use such a freedom.
I would argue that free speech is all very well until it is used to harm another person. Some jurisdictions respect this and have laws against incitement. There are examples above of a couple of posters making vile comments about women – such comments have the potential to invoke discrimination – where do you draw the line?
In other cases, claims to free speech are used to justify presenting information which is inaccurate. Gary on this very blog often gets his facts wrong – and then won’t change them when challenged – when you read articles do you assume that the content is true or accurate or do you assume it’s riddled with errors and not take the article seriously and say, no problem, that’s just his right to free speech in action? To note, there can be a difference between a media article which purports to offer news rather than opinion.
The problem is that some people read stuff uncritically. We’ve had examples on his very blog of people making wild claims about masks and vaccines based on stuff they have read (in their case right wing sources) – when I’ve checked them out I have found misreporting of the original science and medical research.
Free speech can be viewed differently in the context of comedy. By way of example, in Australia there is greater latitude in defining what is discriminatory, if the context is comedic.
The final point is that a right to free speech is not unlimited. It does to apply, for example, to this very blog. Some of the vilest comments are legally deleted by Gary.
“We’re not all the same, and we never will be. This is a GOOD thing. So deal with it”
Sure. But per the above, there are limits – the question is where do you define them?
“and stop screaming about how your kids are being corrupted by a pilot’s statement of what he believes.”
Why? Is that not in itself an expression of free speech?! But one you don’t want to tolerate, dare one suggest, scream about yourself, because in this instance, it’s anti-right wing?
Were you screaming the same stuff a couple of weeks ago when the airline employee had reposted cartoon of t*RUMP in a KKK mask?!
“Why not explain the situation to your children so they can be informed and have their own opinions?”
Yes. And maybe that is exactly what the woman did. We just don’t know. Interestingly, too many assume they know stuff that they don’t about a cited incident, right? The judge the other individual without the full context.
@C_M
“The idea that this was a private account and a private tweet, therefore it shouldn’t be publicized is just wrong. This was an attempted mobbing, she tagged Southwest in an attempt to get him fired. That then backfired when people started mobbing her in response. Then she went private.”
Maybe you’re right.
But you don’t have any evidence for your interpretation of events, do you? You are making a number of assumptions, which appear (yet again) to line up with your political persuasion and attenuation towards hatred.
On the one hand, (on one extreme) for example, is there any evidence that this event even actually occurred (e.g. an undoctored photo) and wasn’t entirely manufactured – if fake, the woman could be subject to legal redress by the airline (the post removed accordingly by demand from the airline)? If so, Gary is republishing a post, which could become entangled in a legal case (and thereby perhaps best left well alone).
On the other hand, for example, (the other extreme) the pilot could have indeed made a political statement, not compliant with the employer’s regulations. In such case, it would be up to the employer how to handle the situation (discipline or not, if so, how to discipline). Crucially, it wouldn’t be up to the woman, whatever her intentions and whether you are correct and incorrect in ascribing them.
Perhaps compare the posts in response to the previous article of an airline employee disciplined for reposting a cartoon about the Orange Puffhead in a KKK mask, with those appended to the current article.
I don’t see anyone baying for the blood of the pilot like they did for the other employee – such is the nature of political bias, and, perhaps, why employers may be prudent in removing political statements from the workplace.
Anyway, and as Gary points out, probably different standards applied to pilots since they are currently in high demand (which begs the question about equally applied rules in the workplace).
Blah, blah, blah… Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
To repeat, if my dog wrote like you, I’d shave his butt and teach him to type backwards.
@ C_M
You have some very unhealthy fantasies about your dog.
You have an inflated sense of ego that you’re writing “Decline and Fall Of The Roman Empire” in the comments section of a travel blog.
Sometimes you have a point, but brevity!
@ C_M
PS…Hurry up, batter. It’s gonna be a short game, and I gotta get home for lunch…;)
(Dumb baseball movies for juvenile minds!)
Ha! So funny to hear stuff like this from conservatives:
“People are being increasingly fed up w/ being told what they can or can’t say do or think because it might offend someone – and it isn’t partisan.”
Conservatives are the ones who ban Critical Race Theory because white people are offended by history they think paints them in a less than favorable light.
@ john
Add the various attempts to stifle the teaching of evolution to that list over a number of decades.
Oh, and, another delicious irony is that the regular anti-science poster, @ James N, quotes a novella Herman Melville in a post above, perhaps without realising (apart from the oft discussed potential homo-erotic undercurrent of the content) that the sailor hero of said text (Billy Budd) its sentenced to death in order to preserve the old fashioned orthodox conservative ways of the time (to avoid any chance of mutiny).
Wow…looking at the discourse her it’s pretty amazing how radically divided Trump was able to make America…you do have to wonder what his next move was gonna be given he has been caught red handed with so much Top Secret information that was of such value to our enemies…
Just a thought:
Overly-politicized pilots flew planes into the world trade center.
Do I want my pilot radicalized? No thanks.
1. If you can’t tell the difference between religious radicals and ordinary political discourse, you also can’t tell the difference between people who knew how to direct an aircraft in flight from real pilots who know how take-off and land. You’re an obvious idiot.
2. You know the difference between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump – Trump had his classified information stored in boxes in his home, where you would need to break in to get it. Clinton, meanwhile, had hers stored on a server where any half decent hacker anywhere on the planet could access it and spread it to the world. Neither is good, but one is monumentally stupid. You need to be complaining about both.
3. The only use evolution is to the left is as an issue to club religious fundamentalists with. They no more believe in the implications of evolution than do the right, although the right seem to like the implications of evolution without the evolution itself. At least the right gets biology correct, something some on the left seem to have thrown in the chipper because it conflicts with their ideology.
4. CRT isn’t history, and anyone who thinks it is has no idea what CRT actually is. Put simply, it’s a neo-Marxist framework that substitutes race for class and is anti-individual rights and anti-Enlightenment. That’s why people on both the left and right oppose it – if you support it, you are fundamentally opposed to liberal democracy. You cannot be for both, any more than you can be a Catholic atheist. One can create a Marxist history or a CRTist history, but CRT is a lens that one views history through, not history itself.
@ C_M
ZZzzzzz….brevity?
1.I wouldn’t want somebody who was part of the t*RUMP inspired murderous mob storming The Capitol flying my plane.
“People on ludes, shouldn’t drive”.
2. How do you describe Donald Duck’s actions then? Perhaps extremely disturbing given his record to subvert your democracy.
“Mathmagic land? Never heard of it.”
3. In western countries being anti-evolution is a right wing idiopathy (the US right wing want the science banned from schools). IME most folk have a very superficial grasp of evolution, let alone science, or their applications.
“What I came to understand is that change is not a choice. Not for a species of plant, and not for me.”
4. Whether perceived as a lens or not, the strength of CRT (or any other approach) can be judged by whether it / they provide insights of practical merit.
“Make your choice”.
Gotta walk the dog – he’s not happy – some idiot saved his butt!
Funny because I was a die hard conservative until I left home and now I’m insanely liberal.
@Danny I don’t find it funny that you have a mental disorder. I feel bad for you.
@Danny: Don’t worry. You’ll grow out of it.
Right about the time you stop taking from the government and start paying taxes and are unhappy that others are taking your money.
Funny how that works.
Gotta love the liberals. They go through life assured that they know how to spend MY money better than I do.