andrewducker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2003-07-19 09:01 am
andrewducker) wrote2003-07-19 09:01 am
You and me. We're in this together.
John Gilmore: I was ejected from a plane for wearing "Suspected Terrorist" button.
I'm glad that someone has the moral pigheadedness to stand up for themselves. Because I suspect that I wouldn't.
I'm glad that someone has the moral pigheadedness to stand up for themselves. Because I suspect that I wouldn't.
part 2
John Gilmore had no responsibility to make people less nervous. As he clearly felt. The BA staff did have a responsibility to make people less nervous, and carried this responsibility out.
One of those people could easily have come forward by now if they disagreed.
Well, that would depend on any of them having heard anything about this incident. I'd never heard of it till Andrew posted the link: I google-newsed on it and got nothing, and I googled on it and got few hits, and those mostly on libertarian websites or small US news sites. If it had made major headline news, you'd have a point. I doubt if any of the other people travelling on the plane even knew John Gilmore's name.
And he is almost certainly reliable, because it would be too easy and too politically expensive for him to be proven wrong.
That's a feeble argument. Sorry, but it is. To argue that so-and-so wouldn't lie because it would be "too politically expensive" when he was found out, would mean that George W. Bush would never have lied about uranium sales from Niger, for a topical example.
So, you admit that it doesn't matter if people are nervous or not -- that the issue is whether airlines have the right to choose what messages people wear on their planes.
No. The issue is whether or not cabin crew have a right to decide, before take-off, if one passenger is likely to make the rest nervous. If they make their judgement based on bigoted grounds of race or religion, I'd be the first to protest.
If they make their judgement on grounds that later look unreasonable, but not bigoted, they can then argue about whether or not it looked unreasonable in the few minutes they had to make that judgement. It's like umpires at sports matches: their decision is always final even if later proved wrong by frame-by-frame inspection of the visual record, because a game becomes unworkable if an umpire's decision can be appealled against the camera's while the game is being played. Similiarly, the staff on an aeroplane, especially the captain, get to make final decisions and are required to make them fast: delays mean they lose their take-off window and 400 passengers are further delayed, rather than just 1. (Or two.) I back an experienced flight attendant's judgement about what is likely to make other passengers nervous against an individual passenger who thinks he has the right to read out loud from the Anarchist Handbook (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0879471646/ref=ase_bridgebooks/002-7622304-5304021?v=glance&s=books) because that's a political statement and therefore sacrosanct.
Re: part 2
... but not at the cost of freedom ...
I said:One of those people could easily have come forward by now if they disagreed.
Yonmei replied:Well, that would depend on any of them having heard anything about this incident. I'd never heard of it till Andrew posted the link: I google-newsed on it and got nothing, and I googled on it and got few hits, and those mostly on libertarian websites or small US news sites. If it had made major headline news, you'd have a point. I doubt if any of the other people travelling on the plane even knew John Gilmore's name.
It was on the daypop top 40, for what that's worth. Anyway, he didn't know how big a story it would be when he wrote the post to politechbot.
That's a feeble argument. Sorry, but it is. To argue that so-and-so wouldn't lie because it would be "too politically expensive" when he was found out, would mean that George W. Bush would never have lied about uranium sales from Niger, for a topical example.
It's a strong argument when there's no evidence that Gilmore lied other than your wishful thinking. If you want to doubt the whole article, fine -- maybe he made the whole thing up. Maybe Joey Skaggs made the whole thing up -- but you're trying to change the facts to suit your argument by selectively believing and disbelieving Gilmore.
No. The issue is whether or not cabin crew have a right to decide, before take-off, if one passenger is likely to make the rest nervous. If they make their judgement based on bigoted grounds of race or religion, I'd be the first to protest.
IMO, politics is right up there with race and religion. And this was clearly a political statement.
It's like umpires at sports matches
Except that sports are just a game -- air travel is a necessity for international business. If an umpire makes a bad call, oh well. If a captain makes a bad call, someone is potentially stuck miles from home (although in this case it happened that Gilmore wasn't, although I don't know about the person he was flying with).
their decision is always final even if later proved wrong by frame-by-frame inspection of the visual record, because a game becomes unworkable if an umpire's decision can be appealled against the camera's while the game is being played.
Do you think that air travel would be unworkable if people were allowed to wear whatever buttons they liked (excluding those constituting "true threats" (sorry for being American here, but I happen to think this standard is justifiable without reference to the rest of US law)).
Similiarly, the staff on an aeroplane, especially the captain, get to make final decisions and are required to make them fast: delays mean they lose their take-off window and 400 passengers are further delayed, rather than just 1. (Or two.)
In fact, by driving back to get Gilmore off, passengers *were* delayed.
I back an experienced flight attendant's judgement about what is likely to make other passengers nervous against an individual passenger who thinks he has the right to read out loud from the Anarchist Handbook because that's a political statement and therefore sacrosanct.
Reading aloud is clearly a different case -- you wouldn't let someone read aloud from the bible or Harry Potter or Dr. Seuss or anything else. I back an individual's decision to choose what political messages to display (modulo the usual libel/true threat/fighting words stuff).