Just One Question, Mr. Mayor

Filed under:Politics — posted by Anwyn on July 12, 2007 @ 7:40 pm

Mr. Giuliani, what, exactly, are “exchange programs with Arabs and Muslims?”

I don’t understand what that even means. Exchanges between … sovereign nations? Think tanks? McDonald’s franchises? Exchanges of … students? Workers? Politicians? Pets? Hats?

Answer that before you try to sell me on anything else.

H/t: I love me some Hot Air headlines.

This Kind of Thing Serves Nothing, Got It?

Filed under:Jerks,Religion — posted by Anwyn @ 2:28 pm

…but as ammo for anti-Christian people. Write your senator and tell him or her that you don’t think a country with “In God We Trust” on the currency should open sessions of the legislature with a prayer to Shiva, fine, but calling a Hindu clergyman “wicked” and his prayer an “abomination” and getting yourselves arrested for disrupting the senate chamber are the acts of puffed-up, overly sanctimonious blowhard exhibitionists with an axe to grind that, in my view, doesn’t have much to do with Christianity.

Right There at the Top of the Page

Filed under:Heh — posted by Anwyn @ 10:36 am

I may cry.

Someday I May Get Arrested

Filed under:Jerks,Mothering — posted by Anwyn @ 10:32 am

Because I’ll be blasted if I’m going to shut my mouth and take it if a flight attendant ever speaks to me this way:

But Penland said when they were aboard a Continental Express plane, a flight attendant became annoyed by Garren’s personality when he kept saying three words.

“As we started taxiing, he started saying ‘Bye, bye plane,’” said Penland. “At the end of her speech, she leaned over the gentleman beside me and said, ‘It’s not funny anymore. You need to shut your baby up.’”

In disbelief, Penland asked the woman if she was kidding. It was then, Penland said, the flight attendant went too far.

“She then said, ‘You know, it’s called baby Benadryl.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m not going to drug my child so you have a pleasant flight.'”

Penland and her 19-month-old son were then–say it with mekicked off the flight.

Penland said when the other passengers began speaking up on her behalf, the flight attendant got angrier and soon announced they were turning around and that Penland and Garren were going to be taken off the plane.

“I was crying, I was upset and I was thinking, ‘What am I going to do? I don’t have anything with me, I don’t have anymore diapers for the baby, no juice, no milk,” said Penland.

The young mother said she later learned the flight attendant told the pilot that she had threatened her. Penland said that never happened.

Emphasis mine. Another sad bequest of 9/11: Flight attendants, and other airline and TSA personnel, who have elevated petty powermongering to a pitch of rage-inducing perfection, who equate the duty to help keep the plane safe with the right to order others around for the elimination of their personal annoyances.

A fellow passenger told Channel 2’s Rachel Kim none of the other passengers had problems with Garren and that Penland never threatened the flight attendant.

Penland is considering legal action.

May she carry it to the fullest extent that the law allows, and may that flight attendant shortly have to find a job that requires more than pointing to exit doors a la Vanna White and exhibiting the bare minimum of good customer service. I’m betting she won’t even pass a laugh test.

H/t: Daddyman, who saves me a lot of valuable websurfing time by filtering Fark and passing on the stuff he knows will make me see red.

Update: Her son did not show his best side on Good Morning America when Diane Sawyer was chatting with her about the incident. I’ve stirred the hornet’s nest at Ace’s before and found a bunch of rabid child-bashers who can’t bear even the thought of a little crying disrupting the audio track of their lives. But the kid was responding to Chris, who clearly knew what he was doing with little ones. He wanted to be down playing with the toys he was offered rather than confined in his mother’s lap. Big surprise. Kids behave differently at different times in different settings. Big surprise.

Bottom line: That was a commuter plane, a small plane. Everybody on it could see and hear the incident. Sawyer said they talked to some of them. If this wasn’t the way it went down they’d have found out by now. Fire the flight attendant for lying to her captain to get an innocuous passenger thrown off. Period.



image: detail of installation by Bronwyn Lace