Hijacked for God?

Posted on February 9, 2004 in Crosstalk Nipper Kettle Secularism

Two Nipper Kettle Awards in two days! Today’s prize given for a Petty Fifteen Minutes of Fame goes to: An unnamed American Airlines pilot who terrified passengers aboard a Los Angeles to New York flight by asking passengers who were Christians to raise their hands and by going on to say that everyone who wasn’t displaying the five-fingered-flesh-star was “crazy”. “You have a choice,” he went on. “You can make this trip worthwhile, or you can sit back, read a book and watch the movie.”

The act so alarmed flight attendants that they radioed ground control for instructions. Passengers dialed relatives, perhaps in fear that they’d booked a ticket on a Christian Identity suicide mission.

And what did American Airlines do?:

American Airlines spokesman Tim Wagner said the incident was being investigated.

“It falls along the lines of a personal level of sharing that may not be appropriate for one of our employees to do while on the job,” he added.

I’ll say!

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This is all over the blogworld:

• I saw it first on Bird on The Moon.
• Jeanne of Body and Soul wondered how the story would play if the pilot had been a Muslim.
• Deborama also expressed shock.
• Andrew of Byte Back said that “being afraid is part of what it means to be an American. Of course this pilot is a rarity – but it’s an inkling.”

ncident. First, that the pilot felt that his mechanical control of the jet gave him control of the minds of the passengers within in, that he could use his “free speech” to tell the passengers what to do without going through the labor of having them respond. Second, that so many bloggers have turned this into a national crisis even though the jet landed safely and no one stormed the flight cabin.

This is one of those events which, like Janet Jackson’s breast and Nick Skolnick’s middle finger, gets people who might otherwise have little to write to fill their blogs. For me, it’s an internal matter for American Airlines now. I am not being a corporatist lackey when I say this or when I add that we’re better off writing about our real lives as the genuine reflection of our times.

The reaction to the event indicates that we live in a muted society, one without much interaction between people. “Don’t discuss either politics or religion” goes the old saw which long ago cut through the log and sent it clattering onto the floor. But in blogs, we do both, which isn’t such a bad thing when we don’t run in the herd, when we truly question our beliefs and the publically disseminated fears that we base our lives upon. But we do run with the herd, we seek semantic loopholes for giving in, we uphold the values of th age which are predicated upon self-terrification.

The response to the incident shows Andrew to be correct: Americans, right and left are running scared. We let fear dominate our utterances. Sticking my nose out on this, I must predict a rash of atheists declaring that this shows that religion must be abolished, of conspiracy theorists who believe that this shows that corporations are out to brainwash us, of Democrats who argue that this is yet another sign of a Bush apocalypse from which there is no return, and of Republicans who will insist that all the guy was doing was witnessing his faith, ignoring of course that the passengers were essentially held hostage and unable to present counter-opinions.

Let’s just watch to see if American Airlines does the right thing and sends the fellow to a psychiatrist for treatment. OK?