DEATH BY PC - article 6

In October of 2010, Juan Williams, a news analyst for NPR radio for 10 years, was fired. He was being interviewed by Bill O’Reilly, who coincidentally had his own kerfuffle on The View days earlier, causing Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar to walk out on the interview. O’Reilly was making a point about Muslims being behind the 9/11 attacks (ok, so…) and apparently he forgot to qualify the word Muslim, with the word extremist. Shortly after the incident on The View, Juan was on Bills’ show on Fox News Network and is quoted as saying the following:

"Look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

Really? Really? I must be missing something but did we become so pc? (politically correct)

Let’s do some role playing for a moment. You’re a woman; your car has stopped on the road. Your cell phone is dead, you forgot your charger in your other purse and it’s after 11pm. You notice the stores and eateries lining the street are closed except for the local bar a block up. You walk in, hoping someone will be kind enough to let you use their phone. Your steps are slow and laborious. You met some friends for dinner after work and the heels you choose to wear are really starting to hurt your feet.

You walk into the bar. Your eyes are irritated by cigarette smoke and your nose is assaulted with the smell of cheap liquor and backwoods beer. As you wipe the sting from your eyes, you notice you are the only female in a sea of inebriated, tatted up, no shaving, mullet participating, beer gut proliferating, testosterone filled balls to the wall men. They are silenced by your presence. They look you up and down like you’re the last biscuit at Hometown Buffet - and they are starving. Do you:

A. Inform them you are in need of assistance and therefore at their mercy.

B. See this as a neat dating opportunity.

C. Back out slowly, mentally calling upon your invisibility shield. Once outside you rip off your heels and run 4 blocks to the mini-mart.

My point is, we all have out secret prejudices. The judgments we make, right or wrong, on appearance. Those men at the bar could have just as easily been a group of Christian crusaders or meeting for their book club.

When faced with out of the ordinary situations where we are out-numbered and out-gunned, our survivor switch goes on. This is ideally where our instincts begin and PC ends.

In 1999 there was an incident on an American West flight going from Phoenix to Washington. 2 Muslim college students tried to push their way into the cockpit. They spoke loudly in Arabic, moved from seat to seat and walked up and down the length of the plane. They asked the flight attendants strange questions about the plane, flight patterns…etc. In other words, they made complete spectacles of themselves. The authorities didn’t have enough to hold the 2 men, so they were released. The 2 men filed racial profiling suits against the airlines.

Later on, this incident would be thought of as the dry run for the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

The 2nd incident was in 2006. The ‘Flying Imams’, they were called. No this was not a dance crew, but yet another group of Muslim men; six this time. It was a US Airways flight to Phoenix. Again they spoke loudly in Arabic, speaking across the cabin; they spoke against America and praised Bin Laden. They played musical chairs with their seating arrangements and roamed freely about the cabin as if they were at a shopping mall. The 6 ordered belt extenders; they didn’t need or use. They considered their behavior to be completely innocent and were completely stymied as to why Airport Security held them for questioning for several hours when the flight landed.

They were prevented from booking a later flight on US Airways. The Flying Imams sued for racial discrimination. They won and the case was settled for an undisclosed amount. This was considered a victory for civil rights. This was a dry run.

On November 17, 2009, there was flight Airframes 297 going from Atlanta to Houston; Houston we have a problem. This time there were 12 Muslims. This time the place didn’t even get the chance to take off.

As the plane taxied, the 12 men wearing Muslim attire stood up and began talking loudly in Arabic. They cursed America and Bush (well, a lot of American cursed Bush but that’s another issue). They walked in the aisles. They ignored the flight attendants who asked them to sit down and put on their seat belts. They took pictures of passengers and flight crew with their cell phones. They made ‘gun gestures’, as if they were shooting certain people. Naturally this freaked everybody out. The crew declared an emergency and the plane returned to the terminal.

10 of the 12 were allowed back on the plane. A dozen or so of the passengers, as well as some flight crew, decided to not continue on flight 297 (can you blame them). The plane then took off, business as usual. Both the investigators and the lawyers representing the Muslims, attribute the disturbances to a language or culture barrier.

Again I say, really? On flights in Muslim countries, instead of flight attendants at the beginning of the flight pointing out the front and rear plane exits and demonstrating how to use the masks that will fall from above in case there is a change in cabin pressure, what are they told? Does the attendant stand in front, complete with hand gestures, and say…

“Welcome to Islamic Jihad Airlines; on your left is the east side of the plane for praying to Mecca; the aisles are open for re-enacting your favorite Bollywood movie scenes and please feel free to roam about the plane. We don’t distinguish between personal space here; so please get in the face of your fellow passengers. Use your cell phones; you probably won’t get reception, but you can always try. And we here on Islamic Jihad Airlines, want you to be as loud at possible. If they can’t hear you in first class, you’re not being loud enough. Run, don’t walk to the cockpit and visit our pilots. They would love nothing better than turning their attention from the sky and all that stupid flying equipment then to have deep and philosophical conversations about religion, burkas and how America sucks.”

There are opportunities to share your faith or lack thereof with the person sitting next to you, but I think trying to cover ground with the entire flight may be a little too ambitious. No one at anytime, other than the flight attendants, should be going to the cockpit. The pilots are suppose to be flying the plane not listening to how you want to die so you may partake in the nectar of the concubines awaiting you in heaven. They’re not by the way.

I have a thought. This may seem wacky, but when flying…how bout you sit down. It doesn’t matter what race, culture or religion you may be. Sit Down. Stay Down!

I don’t care if you’re Christian; walking up and down the aisles singing, “This is the day that the Lord has made…”; speaking loudly in English or in tongues, anointing passengers with blessed olive oil and doing alter calls in the cockpit. Sit your Holy Spirit filled behind down!

And as gentle and irrelevant as they may be; I don’t care if you’re Hare Krishna’s dancing up and down the aisle in your flowing and richly colored fabrics, banging on the tambourine, chanting, “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna. Krishna Krishna Hare Hare”. Sit your dot-on-forehead, no shoes wearing behind down!

Oh yeah, and Scientologist, I didn’t forget about you. I don’t want to see you walking around the plane offering auditing or clearing classes to passengers or asking those weird questions from your personality test such as; "Would you make the necessary action to kill an animal in order to put it out of pain?" or “Do you browse through railway timetables, directories or dictionaries just for pleasure?” What the h!

I’ll admit I’m nervous about flying and if you poll the other passengers on your flight, I’m sure you’ll find several others. I don’t care about the numbers that say you’re safer in a plane than driving a car. A car accident happens in an instant; in a plane crash you have several agonizing minutes. In the case of the 9/11 flights, you have much longer. I can’t even imagine.

God help us on the day when a group of Muslims in a plane, stand up; speak loudly in Arabic, cursing the land in which they’ve probably been living illegally, knocking on the cockpit door, and the passengers simply turn up their ipods, saying, “Oh those wacky Muslims extremists.”

Let’s role play one last time:

You’re a woman, a mom to be exact. You’re in a plane and your son is sitting next to you. You’re reading a novel on your ipad and your son has on a set of earphones watching the in flight movie; some Disney animated flick.

Son: Mommy, why are all those men in robes standing up and what are they yelling.

You: They just want to stretch their legs. I think that’s Arabic. Don’t stare at them, just watch the movie.

Son: Why is everybody crying? Can’t somebody do something?

(You look up from your novel. One of the flight attendants just got violently shoved and one of the men has a box cutter to her throat)

You: Well honey, people from other cultures tend to do things differently then we do here in America. We must embrace all cultures and their religions. We shouldn’t judge whether these are Muslim extremists or regular peace loving Muslims.

Son: Mommy, I don’t think these are the peace loving ones. (Looking down the aisle at the cockpit) Why is that man putting play-doh on that door?

You: No dear, it’s not play-doh, that’s C4.

Son: Mommy, are we going to die?

You: Politically correctly; yes.