- “HE’S NO ANGEL” – How victim blaming saves us from our terrifying reality by Windbag Miles. Really good read, even if you’re sick of the whole united scandal.
- Harland Clarke Buys Online Coupon Site RetailMeNot For $630 Million by PYMNTS. RetailMeNot used to be my favorite site for coupons, I’ve found it has gotten less and less useful in recent times, will be interesting to see how this buyout affects the site.
- Flight takeoff view from the flight deck by reddit. Such an awesome gif!
Thanks for posting the link to the article. My favorite line: “everyone is fucked all of the time, and it’s just a question of how and when you find that out for sure.”
What’s your goto coupon site?
See above
Same thoughts on retailmenot. What’s your best go to coupon site now? I’ve been struggling to find a good replacement.
Honestly I don’t have one anymore, i usually just google the specific site + coupon code but I always get angry at the results. No I don’t want to have to open a page to be able to see the coupon, please stop trying to cookie stuff.
Re: “He’s no Angel,” The bottom line is that the situation doesn’t involve a party who acted 100% “in the right.” So it’s an issue of comparative fault. Attempts by blogs/media to place 100% of fault on either party are disengenuous, and tend to be motivated by the proponent’s emotional identification with a party rather than a neutral review of the facts. Make no mistake, dude’s gonna get a big payout.
This is pretty much spot on Wes.
Also, after reading #Bump-A-Lago several times, I thought maybe I missed something over the past few days, so I googled it. This blog is literally the only 2 hits across the whole internet with that term. Apparently, his previous post said this: “First of all – let’s make “-A-Lago” the new default scandal suffix, instead of “-gate.” I mean, it’s only a matter of time before a generation-defining scandal takes place there, right?”
Gotta love travel bloggers, right?
Clarification on my last sentence. I should have said, “Don’t you love travel bloggers that can’t help but slip their politics into their posts?”
I shouldn’t have hated on all travel bloggers. They don’t all do this.
I’m pretty up front about my politics on the blog. I admire bloggers who are able to be apolitical, but my goal on the blog is to be myself… with the understanding that I’ll probably alienate some readers, be it through politics or just my terrible jokes.
That’s fair. You’re the only blogger I’ve seen bring up black lives matter, Trump, and occupy wall street in their posts about the United fiasco. That’s as upfront as it gets!
Most people visit travel blogs for valuable information, not so they can read your personal diary entries. I’m sure your page traffic reflects that. Never even heard of your blog before.
@Sam – thanks, you just gave me a new Twitter bio.
Well, you got me to visit your twitter page to admire my work. Still haven’t gone to your blog though. Any time, fruitcake
Agree. The guy is and was an idiot. He deserved to be removed from the plane and arrested. He didn’t deserve to be bloodied in the process. Likewise, United and airport security were idiots for letting things escalate in that manner. They’ll pay a deserved price for that. But the write-up from Windbag Miles just struck me as stupid. When both sides are guilty of being complete idiots, I have a hard time being sympathetic towards either or siding with one or the other as the lesser of two idiots.
Witnesses are clear that the good doctor did nothing except politely refuse to give up his seat, whereupon he was assaulted by a uniformed thug. Even the airport police thought the officer was so out of hand that they suspended him from duty.
Sorry that doesn’t fit your narrative.
No need to apologize. I knew people would disagree. It’s just a little more complicated than you’re making it. He was asked politely to get off the plane. He refused. He was asked more directly. He continued to refuse. He was warned he would be physically removed and still refused. He had no legal right to remain on the plane, and he was delaying every single person on that flight. He didn’t care, and he was utterly and completely out of line. So was airport security, as I already said. His action was the equivalent of sitting in the middle of a freeway at rush hour and politely refusing to leave the roadway. It doesn’t bother me in the least that you’re siding with him. Many people will. He’s still an idiot.
Actually, he did have a legal right to remain on the plane under the United Contract of Carriage. United had no legal right to remove him. See this analysis from a law professor. http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/united-cites-wrong-rule-for-illegally-de-boarding-passenger/
So, no, the passenger was not “completely out of line.” He was well within his rights.
Is this such an American thing? So overly litigious, so willing to submit to authority, regardless of how asinine the circumstances and policies may be. It’s mind blowing to see this in the churning world, given how well-travelled you expect others to be. You’d think they’ve experienced how consumer relations work in other parts of the world; and how paying customers should be valued by a business.
Except your analogy of the freeway has absolutely no relevance to this situation:
He was doing something that a) he legally paid for and was resisting doing something b) expressly prohibited by United’s own contract of carriage policy – and this isn’t the legal analysis of two fools on the internet (i.e us) it’s by a legal professor.
It’s not complicated at all. United had no right under its contract of carriage or under the law to force him to leave. He was 100% right to refuse and the airline was 100% wrong to physically remove him from the plane. Their order to him was unlawful and he was under no obligation to follow it.
To me, victim blaming is about the incongruity between the action (disobeying crew orders) and the result that’s supposedly deserved (getting brutally beaten). You yourself said he didn’t deserve the latter, so I’m not sure we disagree all that much, despite how you feel about the post.
To the extent that anyone says something like “he deserved it”, then, yes, your definition of victim blaming applies. I do think, however, that there are some people simply voicing that while the doctor should not have been forced to give up his seat; that United was in the wrong and 100% should’ve found another solution; that the security response was wildly out-of-line; that the doctor did not deserve any physical handling at all, much less the violence he experienced; and that the doctor deserves ample compensation for his treatment, it is nonetheless possible that, as a matter of simple expediency, the doctor exiting the plane and dealing with United’s incorrect actions elsewhere might have been preferable.
If my child is cornered by 3 bullies, I’m not advising she stick out her chin to take a few punches. I’m telling her to do whatever she has to do to get out of a terrible situation as safely as possible. We can figure out how to deal with the bullies once she’s safe.
Yes, there are some people victim-blaming. But there are others who are simply saying that, given the cirumstances (aggro security, moronic airline, etc.), your best bet in the situation may have been to de-board.
Except this guy was nit “brutally beaten” thats inflating what really happened. Rodney king was beat this guy was injured as a result of not obeying a command by someone given authority. He was told he would be pulled out of seat if he did not comply and that’s what happened. The fact that his head accidentally hit a hand rest does not constitute a beating. This keeps getting blown up.
I’m wondering what the odds are that the computer picks a guy and his wife who earlier volunteered but withdrew when they learned they wouldn’t get home in time for work? They are both drs and both had appointments the next day.
If anything, his sketchy past better explains his need to get home in time. His limited license meant he could only see patients at the hospital one day a week. Rescheduling is probably much more difficult when you only have one day a week to work with.
A news article reported that the aviation security team wasn’t even suppose to go onto the plane unless a situation wasn’t stable. They were to remain outside the plane and ready, in case a situation became unstable, until the police could arrive. They also were no longer allowed to wear clothing items that said “police” on them as of 7 or so months ago because of the confusion it caused. Yet one of them had such a jacket on during this event.
Plus finally, United admitted the plane was not overbooked. Wanting to put on employees at the last minute does not qualify for the same rules as overbooking. I am unfamiliar with what rights an airline has for bumping off a customer for reasons other than overbooking and/or the rights a customer has in that situation as well. I guess we will all be finding out soon.
His lawyer said today that he has a concussion, broken nose, two broken front teeth, and damage to his sinuses. I think people keep forgetting too that this is nearly a 70 year old man.
I also wonder for all the people who are saying that he brought this on himself by not doing as asked. If they comply with ALL requests when they feel they are being unfairly treated? Do they always calmly walk away, deal with the immediate consequences themselves and bring the issue up at a later date, a later time, or a later place? Always? They never question any of it while it’s happening?
For the ones who aren’t concerned with having an unpopular opinion and aren’t hesitant to be outspoken, I’m finding it hard to believe that they never speak up if they feel they are being unfairly treated, and always calmly comply.
I don’t mean freak out. You can calmly speak up and that’s what this dr was doing. He didn’t scream until they got violent with him. I don’t know about you, but I speak up when I feel I’m being unfairly treated. Still feels like victim blaming to me.
Great article Windbag Miles
I’m about 95% on the side of United here, and it’s not because I identify more with a corporation than a frustrated traveler (in fact, I identify much more closely with the latter). This being said, this man confronted a situation that over 100,000 other people encounter each year in the US (involuntary bumping), and he took it upon himself to turn it into a national spectacle. The man’s behavior was absurd and beyond the pale. The part where United maybe shares some blame is the way in which force was applied on the man (seemed to be careless), and it led directly to his injury. But I don’t even think the officers’ actions can be pinned fully on United.
All the people saying United needs better scheduling or procedures just don’t understand how the airline industry works. The airlines are incentivized to overbook so they all do it. This is the norm, and its all in the contract of carriage with regard to bumping. There exists no right anywhere to be entitled to a seat on an aircraft regardless if one has boarded or not. The man in this incident didn’t understand this, which means he didn’t understand the terms of the service he had voluntary participated in, and his behavior reflected that.
+1.
Same could be said about Rosa parks. She should just have moved to the back of the bus as many other blacks probably did that day.
That was the law that day anyway.
If Asians were being systematically discriminated against with biased treatment because of their race, treatment that other passengers were not subject to, then i might agree with you that this act of civil disobedience was warranted and this man will be a future civil rights icon. But that’s not the case, in fact, this man was treated the same as thousands of other people of all races, gender, etc and he wanted to be given some sort of special treatment. The greater service that might have been done through all of this is that now his patients know his terrible and unethical background as a physician, so maybe now they will take their business elsewhere. Not relevant to the United incident, but maybe a bit of a silver lining, if you will
But this is not about race. This is about rights of passengers.
Not letting people wearing uniform getting away with any bullshit. Someone, sometime has to resist. He is a symbol of the average passenger, his personal traits are unimportant.
Except they weren’t overbooked.
CNN article from today.
By Thursday, United conceded that the flight was not overbooked or oversold, despite its initial claim.
+1
This is why governments and corporations get away with crap. People are more interested in tearing each other apart than sticking together against the corporations.
Capitalism is a nice guise under which to be callous, aka your real self.
So is your issue with the non-governmental ownership of businesses? Do you think things like this wouldn’t happen if government owned all businesses? Why is it us versus the corporations? Corporations provide many goods and services that people voluntarily purchase/participate in, and you can choose to voluntarily not participate. That’s the beauty of capitalism. Things get hairy when you have the government forcing people to participate in commerce, such as with the failing Obamacare legislation. Things prob would have turned out a lot better if the United flight crew could have just strapped themselves in the back of the plane with some makeshift restraints in this one-off scenario where the crew needed to get to their destination. The airline industry is one of the most regulated industries in the US, and we unfortunately have too many regulations preventing sensible solutions to our problems.
I agree. Open the skies. Let foreign airlines operate in the usa freely. Let them bring their own crews here and pay as much as they want. No visa requirements or border control. Anybody that wants to work in usa for whatever wage they are willing to take should be allowed to come. I should be allowed to choose if I want to pay my share of taxes to pay for the expensive military.
I think most anti regulation types are selectively anti regulation. They want regulations that protect them. They dislike regulations that protect others from them.
Hmmmm sounds like we agree more than I thought… I’d be a strong proponent of open borders if we didn’t have such a massive social-welfare state (you need border control not to be flooded with people seeking all the benefits of living in the US, especially low income people). Otherwise we’d have boatloads of people coming in from mexico, central america, africa, etc. So get rid of the taxpayer subsidized incentives to come here, and I’m all for it