At least we can all agree that this guy wasn't harassed for the content of his speech.
I'm sort of surprised that this would happen in SEA-TAC. I'd think the place was lousy with Indians.
ogged is right: whitey sucks. If this had been a lilywhite boy jabbering in Basque or Jčrriais or some other white man's language nobody speaks within 5000 miles of Seattle, nobody would even have noticed
Why isn't the damn rule this? if we've all gone through security, and you're still nervous about flying, you get off the fucking plane.
Also relevant to the free speech discussion is this story- no hypotheticals necessary!
According to the lawsuit filed at U.S. District Court in Denver, Howards and his son walked to about two-to-three feet from where Cheney was standing, and said to the vice president, "I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible," or words to that effect, then walked on.
Ten minutes later, according to Howards' lawsuit, he and his son were walking back through the same area, when they were approached by Secret Service agent Virgil D. "Gus" Reichle Jr., who asked Howards if he had "assaulted" the vice president. Howards denied doing so, but was nonetheless placed in handcuffs and taken to the Eagle County Jail.
Whitey sucks.
Once upon a time we roamed the world crushing you brown motherfuckers at will. Now we jump at shadows. For shame.
Don't jabber on your cell phone... in a language that no one but you understands.
I demand jokes about the private language argument!
Hindus claim to be non-Muslims, but screw them. I don't care what kind of Muslim they are. You can tell to look at them they're the same. And the guys with turbans, too. Parsis, Jains, Druze, whatever you call them. I know them when I see them.
And Mexicans.
I'm sorry, we regret that there are no private-language jokes in the database.
Why isn't the damn rule this? if we've all gone through security, and you're still nervous about flying, you get off the fucking plane.
Because we must be Vigilant and protect our fellow whitey from the threat of brown people with flight passes.
A bit obvious, but: What's the point of jabbering into your phone in a language no one but you understands?
I'm sorry, we regret that there are no private-language jokes in the database.
I have no idea why the link isn't good.
Because the "l" got left off when I copied, that's why.
http://consc.net/phil-humor.html
5 is obviously correct, but it's not just American carriers that won't play by that rule - the British and Canadians are equally ignorant.
I'd think the place was lousy with Indians.
I will imagine all SCMT comments from now on as being uttered by John Wayne.
14: I get unlimited anytime minutes when talking to myself.
I really wish people were not so dumb. Honestly, before getting someone thrown off a flight, it might be worth reflecting on whether you know about something the screeners missed. "Speaking a foreign language" is not going to cut it.
(On the other hand, it would be funny if his remarks about the "sporting contest" were "we're going to kill them, totally destroy them, and I can't wait to see it.")
re: 7
"Once upon a time we roamed the world crushing you brown motherfuckers at will. Now we jump at shadows. For shame. "
The whole 'crushing' operation was largely sub-contracted out to a particular (poor and violent) subset of 'whitey'. Members of that subset aren't at all surprised at the other whiteys jumping at shadows ... it was ever thus.
largely sub-contracted out to a particular (poor and violent) subset of 'whitey'
You aren't going to just come out and say the Scots? Be loud and proud, nattarGcM.
7, 21, 22: Oh yes.
And I hear the title of this post sung with Elvis' voice: "We can't go on together..."
re: 22
We Scots favour subtlety. Anyway, there were other poor and violent subsets of whitey involved. Ulstermen, Welsh, Afrikaaners and the like.
Well, I go back to "be proud": the Scots and the Irish were both massively overrepresented in India, but the Scots were something like half the East India Company and the officer corps, while the Irish were something like half the lower ranks of the army.
Arg. 5 is right, but all over the airports are 'if you see something, say something!' Maybe we should have a little asterisk next to it: we're talking about bombs, not people speaking a foreign language in an international airport, whitebread.
20 is funny. 'We killed them last time, and we'll beat them this time, too, there's no way they can stop us.' 'Go Irish!'
re: 25
Yeah. My paternal grandfather spent half his life as a soldier in India during the 1920s and 30s and then spent the 1939/45 years fighting across North Africa and up Italy. So I heard a fair bit about it growing up. I'm the first guy in that 'line' of the family that didn't join the army.
It's one of those things that's difficult to be proud of, though, since it was basically a 200 year exercise in robbery and oppression.
Still, the Scots make damn *good* robbers and oppressors.
It's always been a dream of mine to able to just clap my hands, just for no reason at all if I feel like it, and shout "Take him away!" and have armed guards drag a guy off somewhere and rough him up. That thrill used to be reserved for the Dick Cheneys of the world; now it's been democratized. Don't take it away from me, people.
SeaTac is always suspicious. Especially if you have a morning or evening flight, when the place is practically deserted. Eerie, I tell you.
And of course, like everyone, I think 5 gets it exactly right.
28: I heard about it growing up too, and share your ambivalence. Our line also ended with WWII — well, with me in the sixties, but that was farce by comparison. No more tams on these rug-headed ruffians.
re: 31
Yeah, my Dad was in the army in the 60s. He left in '71 I think as he couldn't face the idea of being sent to Northern Ireland (and he'd already decided that he was more of a hippy than a soldier).
So, lots of stories growing up but I was always encouraged *not* to join the army [not that the idea ever appealed anyway].
Well, now that everyone is agreeing with me, I feel compelled to note an objection. Folks say that they don't have faith in the security screening, so even though we've all been through security, it's not unreasonable to voice suspicions and have people checked out again, or removed.
Ogged has been culturally colonized by whitey!
33- it is unreasonable if "reasonable suspicion/grounds for removal" = "foreign"
re: 37
Especially given that it's an international airport, ffs.
There's a difference between reporting something genuinely suspicious and reporting something because you're nervous about flying and don't realize that there are lots of languages in the world and that most people aren't pale. And security should know that, even if Terrified Flyer doesn't.
Right, I'll settle for the general rule that passengers report what makes them nervous, as long as I also get the rule that security people will consider what features the suspicious passenger is pointing out.
I mean, no one up or down the chain of command wants to be involved with letting an actual terrorist on the plane once suspicions were voiced, but there's no incentive to avoid the false positive, since (white) people are very tolerant of removing (nonwhite) passengers just to be safe.
Is the only solution here for brown people of various sorts to start complaining about the suspiciousness of completely normal whitey behavior?
38: Technically it's an international airport. It's the least international-feeling international airport I've ever been in, though.
41: Or white people could stage guerilla free speech protests in airports by jabbering on our cell phones in languages no one understands.
I'd like the security people to be trained to ask probing yet obnoxious questions. "Did you understand what he was saying?" "Then what made you suspicious?" "Was there anything about his behavior other than that he was speaking in a language you don't understand that made you suspicious?" "Ah. His ethnicity? What about his skin color concerned you?" And so forth. But I realize the program of hiring only smartasses as security guards is probably doomed to failure.
ffs
If this is not a universally accepted internet abbreviation, it should be.
trained to ask probing yet obnoxious questions
A smartass is born, not made.
JM: Did you see the Hazlitt block quote in CT comments this morning?
...gonna be a sudden craze,...bound to be the very next phase!
45 -- for what? I was confused by that but did not ask, not wanting to show my ignorance -- but now that you've so to speak forced the issue.
45: It's standard txt over here, so if it's not accepted yet it soon will be.
If the Scots were still murdering and pillaging, at least they would be off the streets and not causing trouble. The crime rate would be way down.
Semi-related: I was just wondering what would happen if I called up the Department of Homeland Security with a "tip" that this whole unfogged project is really just a big Iranian terrorist plot, coordinated by ogged. (Like all the talking in secret code that only insiders can decipher, and the need for all the "meetups". And how the constant references to the "cock joke" are obviously just code for ogged's big plan to kidnap and castrate the president. On videotape. I'm still trying to figure out what everything else means.) Honestly, in these weeks before an election I suspect they'd like nothing more than to disrupt a major terrorist plot against the president, so they might be willing to adopt a rather low burden of proof, and ogged might be basically SOL. Which is really scary, this police state in which we now live. Remember, ogged, make it easy on yourself - they'll only waterboard you until you confess!
What difference is castrating the president supposed to make?
50: The underlying phrase is perfectly comprehensible, but not standard American English (at least not in my dialect), so it's probably not going to develop an abbreviation over here anytime soon.
Brock, you'd lose my husband his job and here we would be, with a massive rent payment and no income.
In other words, fuck the legal defense fund: I'd do a fundraiser at my place in order to hire someone to kill you.
54: WASP, wasp, waspy wasp wasp. FFS, LB, everyone says that.
If the Scots were still murdering and pillaging, at least they would be off the streets and not causing trouble.
They are. They just do in in Glasgow these days.
55- huh? Why would your husband lose his job?
Also, please don't hire anyone to kill me. It was a hypothetical.
Actually, MY reminds us today we ought to be prepared for an October surprise from their co-conspirator, Bin Laden
56 -- how does LB, a Welshman from Queens, get considered WASP? Just because she knows what Kip is short for?
Yes. Happy whatever to whoever. Ramadan mubarak (sorry, that's late).
45: It is, to the best of my knowledge.
61: B- we've been over this before: now once and for all, are you blonde or are you Mexican? You can't have it both ways. If you're blonde, no worries, you won't be caught up in the DHS sweep -- nobody wants to see a blonde girl being arrested as a terrorist, at least not without some sort of evidence against her.
(If you're Mexican, well... it was bound to happen sooner or later anyway.)
Really? It sounds very British, or American-trying-to-sound-British (people who say 'wanker'), to me. 'What the fuck'? Sure. 'Are you fucking kidding'? Absofuckinlutely. But 'For fuck's sake' sounds off to me -- people I know say for 'For Christ's sake' or 'Jesus' sake'.
I'll take WASP -- I'm just not a New England Yankee, which is what you were saying in the last thread.
65 -- I don't get equating "Whitebread middle American" with WASP. They seem like to totally different (if overlapping) stereotypes to me.
52 was actually semi-serious: how trigger happy are those guys? Especially before an election? (Which of course should play no role in their decisions, but I suspect does.) What are the odds that ogged would actually be arrested? 10%? That seems way, way, way too high for a sane society, but I'm not sure it's unrealistic.
It sounds very British, or American-trying-to-sound-British (people who say 'wanker'), to me. '
In this new Intertube age, we're all trying to sound British. So I could see it taking.
Why don't we already have an acronym for "for the love of little apples"? That really should have caught on, not least because it so nicely sets up the "for the love of big melons" rejoinder.
69: Agreed. The Yankee parts of my family are so rooted in local, rural culture that the kind of rootless, amnesiac blandness implied in "white bread" doesn't cut it. Maybe "brown bread?"
30: The first time back through Sea-Tac after moving to Hawaii, I had the vague feeling that something was really bizarre. Finally I realized that what was seeming strange was the over-abundance of chunky white folks. It does seem to be getting a little browner, but it's got a ways to go yet.
"For fuck's sake" is very common around here, I'd just like to note. Still, I had to see it stated explicitly in this thread to realize that's what MM was indicating with his acronym.
47.--He was good on invective, wasn't he. Thanks for the pointer!
He was good on everything he wrote about. Ever read Libor Amoris? His philosophical writings are breathtaking in their shrewdness and incisiveness. Bromwich gives a good indication of their flavor, if you've read his book.
Hrm. Maybe I just don't know anyone who says it. I wonder if it's regional.
I've not just read his philosophical writings, IDP, I've studied and compared and written on them!
Awesome! We should go private with this.
78- of maybe you really are just waspy whitebread?
*or*. Fuck. That really stole the thunder from my insult.
69: I'm not. But LB is definitely east-coasty, rather than "middle America."
I mean, she doesn't wear makeup. That's so not middle America. (Although that's starting to change.)
I thought middle America didn't wear makeup, and the South did.
The South wears *lots* of makeup, and big hair. Middle America, it depends. If you're a working woman, you wear at least some makeup, though like I said, this is changing. And in Middle America, the "eh, the kids will live" attitude we all so admire in LB just doesn't wash.
LB just doesn't wash.
Hey, I may not wear makeup, but I'm clean.
I think she meant you don't wash your kids, not yourself.
If you think Southern women wear a lot of makeup, wait until you see our drag queens.
I haven't spent a lot of time in the South, but every time I have visited, I feel ridiculously under-prepped. I'm not wearing eyeliner, my hair isn't highlighted, I don't have my nails done. So dowdy! Then I realize it's very weird to dress up to go to the minimart.
87: Women in New York and L.A. don't wear makeup?
In New York, the real sign of wealth is skin that looks that it just emerged from the dermatologists' careful attention. Then maybe some lip gloss.
I had dinner last week with an Iranian woman who lives most of the time in NYC but went back to Tehran to make a documentary of sorts. Apparently the Tehrani ladies looked critically at her lack of makeup and her not-particularly exciting clothing and asked, disbelievingly, "You're from America?"
92 - The girls I know who have amazing skin like that were actually just very adept with the right foundation. Of course, I do come from flyover country.
94.--Well, yeah. That's the desired look these days, though, however it's achieved.
And in Middle America, the "eh, the kids will live" attitude we all so admire in LB just doesn't wash.
Around here it does. Though my niece doesn't believe that falling down a flight of stairs is harmless, just because all seven of us did it at least once. Perhaps she thinks we're all damaged.
LA is kind of weird. I think that the deal is that you can do the made-up, high-heels thing, but it's got to have a kind of slutty/funky aspect to it, like a closely cut leopard print jacket and big crazy sunglasses. But the no-makeup, ponytailed, fit look seems to dominate, in both outdoorsy and I'm-too-busy-for-that-crap cellphone-toting modes.
That's the desired look these days, though, however it's achieved.
As well it should be. It looks great, even if it tastes pretty awful.
Because your guys won again? The Great Satan does produce oodles of first-rate science. Hopefully at least all the suspiciously brown brilliant scientists will come to Europe in the future.
It was a sweep for the US this year, wasn't it?
Too bad we'll all be re-education camps in a year.
Hey, is that the Smoot who was used to measure the Mass Ave. Bridge? Because that would be awesome.
I had the same reaction. THE Smoot?! Drat, it wasn''t him. I do like Olllie's fate: he became head of ANSI and ISO. There's a moral there somewhere.
Extra apostrophe in honor of the Hero and Ambien.