Perhaps you’ve heard about the disgraceful spectacle of extraordinarily dogmatic Jewish men refusing to be seated on an airplane next to a woman. It’s a revolting exhibition of religiously-sanctioned bigotry, but there you have it…people are allowed to be bigots. We don’t usually make special accommodations for bigoted ideas, though.
But I have a solution. A simple solution.
If those ultra-orthodox men want to control who occupies the seat next to them, require them to purchase the seat. Easy. Plan ahead. If you don’t pay for the seat — heck, if you don’t buy out the whole row — you have no right to dictate who gets to sit there.
There’s even precedent: some airlines require overweight passengers to purchase two seats. Invoke the same principle and require Haredi passengers to book two.
This wouldn’t even have to be that onerous, financially. Another solution is to partner together multiple Haredi men to purchase seats a row at a time, and have them sit together. No extra cost for the individual, then. And everyone wins — the other people on the plane don’t have to sit next to demented Orthodox assholes.
See? I shoulda been a rabbi.
Our Glorious Thought Leaders would probably have no problem identifying this as rank, obvious misogyny. It’s the kind perpetrated by people with degrees and without funny hats they clearly have trouble seeing.
Ed’s idea of kicking them off the plane would have worked, too. If I had been that disruptive without a beard, curls, and yamulke, the Air Marshall and TSA would have had me hog-tied and dragged off the plane in not time flat. They force landings in the middle of flights for this kind of crap. Why not before takeoff?
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.
Jesus Christ on Two Crosses. If you’re going to be that fucking upset, use a form of transportation which matches the era of your religion, and leave modern transportation to more reasonable peoples.
And what do we do with the Neo-Nazi who won’t sit with the Jewish passengers? The Baptist who won’t sit by a gay man? Seating arrangements are going to require some serious computational power. Who would’ve imagined tolerating intolerance would be so complicated?
Surely consciousnes razor won the comments.
The thing that got me was the rabbi’s who sealed themselves in body bags, because they ‘might’ fly over a cemetery.
Do I detect a business opportunity?
HarediFlightMatch.com — fly with your fellow Haredi, so no-one else has to!
As long as you charge less than the cost of a seat for partner matching, you can charge whatever you like for the service! Surely their principles are worth the expense…
None of that matching people up, too much expense for the airline for something that’s nothing to do with them. I like the “buy an extra seat” idea, it’s a brilliant solution and allows us to tell them “well you should have bought an extra seat then.”
However, seat recliners – they need to be hogtied and dragged off the plane!
Refusing to sit next to a woman on an airplane because of the seriousness of one’s religious beliefs/sanctioned prejudices would sound unbelievable…if of course the same people weren’t already known for doing things like Photoshopping women out of their newspapers, putting pressure on clothing store owners to not use mannequins, or their long list of concerns over the use of electricity on Saturdays.
Ryan Cunningham:
Suppose you have to row a Haredi man, Greta Christina, and Sam Harris across a river, in a boat which can hold only two people…
But how would that work? All the frummers had bought _tickets:. The issue is what actual places are available when you make your _seating_ reservation. What you need to do is set up a kind of frummie-airline-seating-booking-dating website where you find other nuts flying on the same flight as you and pre-arrange to sit together. Women flying alone could do the same thing to avoid creeps. Creeps could register under false names to get close to single women. No scratch that last idea. Ok, this may need a bit of rethinking.
I’d automatically kick them off the plane. You want to ride in our expensive high-tec flying machines? You have to abide by our rules – one ticket, one seat, no exceptions, the passengers on either side of you are none of your business.
I agree with =8). Those orthox or ultra othodox should be like the Amish and live their lives in the past. If a Haredi man accepted to sit next to me, I think he would regret it.
In my last two international flights, I have been each time asked by someone to exchange seats. Each time it was someone who wanted to sit next to their travel companion. The first I did so and benefitted from the exchange. The second time was two sisters who wanted sit together. I would have changed, except there was a third person who came to sit in our row and she accepted to change. These I find reasonable.
Moggi @11
1 Internets Awarded.
When you fly with a commercial airline the clue is in the name. They are a commercial organisation providing a service to make a profit. They are not there to submit to your every whimsical belief. Each airlne has a set of terms and conditions of carriage. If they don’t suit your requirements then choose another airline or buy your own fucking plane.
I think the correct title for the good men is entitled misogynist douchebags of the religious persuasion.
Because quite obviously they show up and expect everyone else to solve their problems paying whatever price the religious douchebags deem appropriate
I say put the buggers in the cargo bay, with the dogs. We would want them to be transported in a pressurized compartment, wouldn’t we?
why wasn’t the twit also having a fit because none of their airlines dared to require that some seats weren’t sat on by menstruating women? surely he couldn’t stand to be possibly “unclean” until evening or whatever Leviticus15 says.
When I saw you’d mentioned Solomon I thought you were going to suggest cutting the bugger in half!!
I’m so disappointed!
Anybody else get a hankering for combinatorics word problems all of a sudden?
Hexidecima@19:
‘why wasn’t the twit also having a fit because none of their airlines dared to require that some seats weren’t sat on by menstruating women’
–
A: Because he hadn’t thought of it yet…good thing nobody brought that detail up…
Iyeska #4
To be fair, what with over-fishing an’ all, finding a giant fish which is (a) going in the right direction and (b) able to swallow you without killing you, and then regurgitate you at your destination, is pretty damn hard these days.
Let’s spread the word that ALL airplane seats have at some time been sat upon by menstruating women! That’s another good solution.
Instead of causing all this commotion, they should have just assumed critical postures.
Is there a hashtag for that already?
Would it be something like #AllSeats …I shudder to think of the other possibilities and hesitate to …#BloodyPlanes? No, no …
For your convenience, all seats on this aircraft are pre-installed with Gurl Cooties™.
Which is exactly why it’s discriminatory to force fat people to buy an extra seat. If someone is so paranoid about sitting next to a fat person, they should have to buy the second seat, not the fat person.
And no, before someone goes “But but safety!” there’s no genuine safety issue with fat people flying. The FAA rule is that you have to be able to buckle your seatbelt, but most fat people can do so with a seatbelt extender. Except the FAA banned people from bringing their own extenders, and a lot of airlines don’t carry them routinely even though they’re supposed to (gee it’s almost like the airlines are looking for excuses to force people to pay more). The other “safety” rule is that you have to be able to put the arm rest down. Why? Search me. I have no idea how not being able to put the arm rest down is going to mean I will die in a plane crash but if it’s down, I’m safe.
During the WWII courier flights between England and Sweden, any passenger had to squeeze into the bomb bay of a De Havilland Mosquito (the only transport able to outfly Luftwaffe) while carrying an oxygen bottle.
Surely you can find a few inches of spare space in the luggage bay to accomodate the oppressed Haredi men for their journey.
Easy. Keep Greta on the shore for a fascinating conversation and set the boat adrift with the two men. Lighting the the boat on fire is entirely optional.
If the Haredi do not want to sit next to women and no other places are available, we can find a place for them on the seat *underneath* other male passengers. As a gregarious 260-pound flying enthusiast I would be happy to oblige.
When I first read it I thought the headline was: I am like Salmon. And I was like: “that’s a weird headline.”
@Moggie #11: Is the solution to get Harris and the Haredi man arguing about exactly how much sexism is too much (and perhaps also whether “Jewish” is a religious or ethnic identity category) and then cross the river with Greta while they’re not paying attention, leaving both men stranded on the other side where no one has to deal with them?
drst # 26: We other travelers often have to pay extra for overweight luggage, so we are discriminated against. The fat slobs should pay for a second seat because they are nothing more than overweight luggage. Next time I will demand reimbursement when I see one of these dead-weight fatsos on the plane.
@Sili #28: Heh, setting the men adrift was going to be my suggestion, but then I thought there might be a pressing reason Greta or oneself needed to cross the river. :-P
I like the way you think, Sili. Now, find the exact height of this skyscraper using just this handsome barometer…
Wouldn’t work. The boat would immediately sink from the weight of the stupid.
The story indicates that the plane taxi’ed and took off while a bunch of lawbreakers were standing up in the aisles. FAA needs to crack down on El Al hard for that. It’s the airline’s and pilots’ responsibility to enforce safety regulations or return to the gate and they failed to do so, deliberately taking off in a grossly unsafe status.
The solution I suggested at Ed’s blog:
kevinalexander: This is also acceptable, I think.
How long do menstruation cooties last? Anyone sufficiently familiar with the Talmud to give us an authoritative figure, or better still, 16 different authoritative figures?
randay @ 32
Yep. You choosing to overpack for a trip is true discrimination! The voluntary choice you make to bring too much shit with you on a plane is way more discriminatory than an airline charging me for another seat because I’m fat. You totally proved me wrong there with your superior logic, Skippy.
I’m curious, what exactly are you going to demand reimbursement for? “There’s a fat person on this plane, I want my money back” is probably not going to get you far. “Fat person exists in public, I am being discriminated against by them being able to GO ON AN AIRPLANE!”?
richardelguru @ 20
A bit final solution-wise, perhaps, maybe, mmmm ?
Too soon ?
Why was it the women who had to move rather than the men?
There is usually no problem at all swapping seats since there is a pretty well established order of preference. In this case it appears that the religious bigot wanted the woman to go to the back of the plane so he could keep his more desirable seat.
Another piece of utterly bizarre religious idiocy is the idea that certain people can’t go into a cemetery and therefore if they fly they have to do so in a plastic bag in case they fly over a cemetery. Now don’t ask me why the metal skin of the aircraft doesn’t count even though it is a Faraday cage. It doesn’t.
Randay@32: Go fuck yourself.
Why do I get the feeling you’re the kind of asshole who sits with his legs splayed apart and/or reclines your seat all the way?
I have a suggestion: get a respectable-looking Neo-Nazi who wants to do something for the cause. Book him on an El Al flight. Wait under an Haredi objects to sitting next to a woman, then let the Neo-Nazi object to sitting next to a Jew.
Then line up the lawyers.
Seriously, both exactly the same and equally offensive.
So what happens to one of these men if a woman waves her arms at him while approaching, saying “I’m menstruating! Boog boog booga!”?
Monitor note
randay,
By using slurs in your comment you are breking commenting rules. Dehumanizing people is also out of fucking question.
Randay @ 32:
You’re not only out of line, you’re breaking comment rules. Personally, I’d think you be ashamed of yourself for being such a flaming, bigoted, nasty asshole. Also, you doucheweasel, whether or not someone is a slob has nothing to do with weight. I’m all of 116 pounds, and I’m a slob – I absolutely loathe housework. Right now, I’m loathing you, too.
drst@26 regarding ‘fat people’ flying and safety.
There is a bit of an issue with this actually, and it’s one the FAA is really dragging it’s feet on in terms of updating the regulations to match reality.
The standard used for a person is 170 lbs. That means that the row of seats is tested for all of the required loading conditions with the assumption that a 170 lb person is in that seat. For every person over 170 lbs, the margin of safety is reduced, often to well below what would be considered reasonable, yet this standard is still in use.
And the cargo bays are both pressurized and temperature controlled. Note that the sensors for the temperature controls are in the main cabin though, and the main cabin is better insulated, but even then, the differences aren’t huge.
And paying more for luggage is a gimmick, regardless of what the airlines say. They claim that a single 70 lb bag is somehow worse than 2 – 35 lb bags in terms of the flying, when it’s not at all. If they want to claim that they don’t want their handlers having to lift that much weight, at least they might have a leg to stand on.
The airlines would actually have a financial reason to have some kind of flat fee + a cost/lb total for you and your luggage, since there is a cost/lb to operate an aircraft, but the whining would never end, I’m sure….
I’m pretty sure that the time delays of weighing every single patient, the complexity of people’s weight changing over time, and what the hell do you have to do to a website to charge people correctly (what, do you have to leave a credit card # just in case you weigh more than what you claimed when booking?) probably means this will never happen for a large commercial flight.
El Al could organize one or more airplanes just for the Haredi. Or an enterprising travel agent could charter flights just for Haredi.
drst @26
I arrived on a transatlantic flight to find the passenger next to me already in his seat. The arm rest was up and his body took up 1/3 of my seat. I spoke to the crew and was told every last seat on the plane was taken.
I have no truck with fat shaming or hating but I spent 7 hours on 2/3rds of a seat in coach and I can tell you I hated that particular individual with the incandescence of a thousand suns.
Please provide a solution.
# 40 drst: The overweight/encumbering baggage I was charged for was a bicycle even though it was properly packed in a box I got from a bike shop which it uses to ship bikes, and it was the only baggage I checked. I tried to negotiate, but to no avail. You may think you have the right to at least one piece, but that depends on the airline so you have to read their policy closely. I certainly won’t fly United again.
# 46 Monitor: I apologize if I contravened a rule in section 1. That however seems to contradict a rule in section V: This is a rude blog. Expect rough handling. Also I did not insult anyone commenting here, though others have done that to me. For example # 47 Iyeska and # 43 frog, to whom I can say that I don’t know why he has that feeling since I do neither of the things he mentions.
randay, you appear not to have heard of splashback or slurs. In other words, you can (and very probably will) be insulted here for behaving like an utter arse and choosing to be a total douche. You will notice, however, that you will not be insulted for any innate qualities you may have.
There is a significant difference between the two; feel free to read up on splashback, punching up/down, slurs and such useful terms as these.
# 46 Monitor: I forgot to add something. How is my comment worse that those of PZ in the opening article? ” extraordinarily dogmatic Jewish men” and “demented Orthodox assholes”. I agree with him, but would I have been called to order if I had used them? Still, please accept my excuses.
You (and lots of other people, who thus get the splashback from the slur) are black/short/thin/het/non-neurotypical/old/asexual/white/fat/blind/trans/tall/disabled/asian/sighted/young/gay/cis …
You choose to believe certain things and behave in certain ways (such as evangelical/orthodox jewish/homophobic/bigoted/dishonest/fundamentalist/catholic/misogynist/libertarian/racist …)
Feel free to do the maths.
Q.E.D @ 51 – Next time buy two seats. That’s exactly what PZ suggested in the post. If you’re so worried about being uncomfortable, it’s on you to secure your comfortable space. Though I can tell you from experience of flying while fat, trying to purchase two seats online is nearly impossible – the airline won’t sell two seats to a single person because they require two names for two seats. And for the record, my sympathies are with the passenger who you were hating so much, who I’m certain was well aware of the situation and far more miserable than you.
randay @ 52 I don’t give a shit about your luggage problems. You equated baggage fees with discriminating against people, which is bullshit and demonstrated what a waste of space you are in the world. Fuck off.
What? So many contradictions, so little time. I can’t make heads or tails of what your actual position is.
Please answer these simple questions. Consider what if someone is so physically large that they cannot fit in one seat, and any attempts to do so will cause you to spill over to 1/3 of the nearby seat. If you ruled the world, how would you handle this? Would you require the person who physically requires 2 seats to purchase two seats? Or would you allow an IMHO innocent person to suffer unjustly by not getting the whole seat which they paid for? I don’t see a plausible third option. Is there a plausible third option?
QED@51: The solution is for airlines to stop pretending that the average human adult (or average American, at least) is small enough to comfortably fit into a seat 17″ wide.
74% of American men are overweight or obese. (source: http://win.niddk.nih.gov/statistics/ )
Given that men are on average larger than women, it’s safe to say the average man is larger than the average human adult to begin with, on top of most being at least somewhat fat. They make up roughly 50% of passengers.
I long for the day some airline decides to cater to folks who are willing to pay a little bit more for a bit more space. If a row has 6 seats and the airline is charging an average of $600 per seat, that’s $3600. Suppose they advertise as “we only put 5 seats across where other airlines put 6!” and charge $720 per seat? No other changes–I’m not asking for Business Class at Coach rates–just slightly wider seats.
I suspect a lot of people would go for that. Jet Blue kind of has that (they advertise leg room), and I know plenty of people who are happy to pay an extra $100 to fly with them rather than a more cattle-car oriented airline.
@randay, #54:
Re: PZ’s language in the original post:
It’s possible since everyone makes mistakes, but not likely. I don’t believe you would.
Think about what’s in those phrases? Insults? Sure. I’ll give you at least “assholes” as an insulting word. “Demented” may also be more than merely descriptive.
But are “Jewish” and “Orthodox” used as insults?
Or is there a pattern of PZ identifying bad actors as Jews when they happen to be Jews, but never identifying bad actors as atheists, Christians, or Muslims when they happen to be one (or more) of those?
In the first case, the behavior would be bang out of order per the rule on splash damage. The second would require compelling some evidence about the trend, but with that in hand, there would also be a good case for determinedly associating a formerly neutral, descriptive word with purely negative qualities so that, on this blog at least, that usage would also run afoul of the rule on splash damage.
But no. These people are Jewish. These people are Orthodox. These words are not used in a time, place, or manner that PZ wouldn’t use “atheist” or “Republican” or “Llamaist”*.
Moreover, in this particular instance of bad behavior, their Orthodox Judaism is directly relevant to their bad behavior. Bringing it up certainly isn’t gratuitous – so this isn’t even a matter of it being gratuitous, but PZ treats all religious communities and atheist/agnostic/humanist communities likewise gratuitously.
As an atheist Jew, I would find it horrible if Jew was returned to non-neutral status. A friend of mine once told me about a coworker who told my friend, “I would never call you a Jew!” My friend only wished that the requirements of human respect …and working in the same damn office… required her to refrain from saying, “And fuck you, too.”
If you think about it, I think you’ll agree that treating Orthodox or Jewish as if they were slurs rather than descriptors is a bad, bad idea.
*Yes, yes, I believe that Andean camelids are the most spiritually advanced beings on the planet, and that they are reborn time and again, with fellow camelids identifying the reincarnations by hauling around multiple decaying dewlaps and seeing which decaying dewlap newborn llamas seem most interested in mouthing.
#56 drst: Weight is weight. My weight of 180 lbs combined with the weight of my bicycle is probably less than that of the of heavily overweight passengers complaining here and many others I have seen on planes. Yet I am penalized for having an overweight parcel. The aforementioned passengers cost the airline more in fuel prices than me and my modest baggage.
Places like amusement parks have restrictions on size–too small or too large. When I buy a plane ticket, I am renting a specific sized seat. The airline must respect their part of the contract. If people are too large, they have to buy two seats or drive their car.
This happened to me once. I was in an aisle seat at the back of the plane in a row of four. An orthodox Jew was one of the last to board and had the seat next to me. The only problem was that there was a woman sitting on the other side of it. He complained to the flight attendant that he’d expressly asked not to be seated next to a woman, and they tried to find him another seat, but the flight was full.
I wasn’t about to give up my aisle seat (it was the best seat in coach not on an exit row), but the woman on the other side of his seat asked me what was going on and when I explained the situation, she volunteered to switch seats with her son and the matter was resolved.
Curiously, he didn’t seem to mind being served by female flight attendants during the flight, and the two bare shouldered young women sitting in front of him didn’t phase in either. His terrible halitosis, however, was a problem for me. Not a good flight, that one.
Randay:
You appear to not know the difference between insults and slurs.
Insults are all purpose invectives that can be applied to anyone without causing splash damage.
Slurs are insults that work by drawing a connection between a person (or their actions) and a specific group of people (almost always a group of marginalized, oppressed people). When you (general ‘you’) call someone a f*a*g*g*o*t* for instance, there is splash damage, because you’re demeaning someone by linking them to homosexuality. The slur “works” because the person using it has opinions or beliefs (sometimes not even conscious ones) about the nature of homosexuals. There are a great deal of slurs that target people for their ethnicity, gender, race, sexuality, gender orientation and more. There are also slurs related to mental illness and mental disability. The use of these slurs is a violation of the commenting rules here. You can call someone a fuckwit, douchebag, arsehole, pissant, douchemonger, shitstain, assmaggott, fuckwad, or any number of other insults that do not target oppressed groups. If you can’t find a way to insult people without resorting to slurs, I hope you’ll just stop commenting here, because that shit is NOT ok.
Testing…
Little too late, but just gotta say: go fuck yourself, randay.
OH HEY LOOK I CAN COMMENT AGAIN! I couldn’t comment anywhere here yesterday for some reason…
Anyways…
If I were the pilot of the plane, I would have made sure there was video footage of the incident (for legal defense later, because Haredi Jews are notoriously litigious and have a bad habit of screaming “ANTI-SEMITISM” at literally everything that doesn’t go there way), and then they would have been off the plane, with a hearty “fuck you” and a one-fingered salute for good measure.
Or, I would have given them the choice: “sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up, or we’ll land right now and you can walk to your destinations”. And if they continued to complain, I would have taken that as them choosing choice #2, at which point, I would have landed the plane and kicked them off.
I would not have done what El Al did. I understand they’re afraid of lawsuits and being called “anti-semitic”, but they need to realize that this is bullshit. Those Haredi endangered the flight. I don’t give a fuck about their “deeply held religious beliefs”. If those “deeply held religious beliefs” are inherently misogynistic, they can take those beliefs and shove ’em up their ass.
randay – do you also support charging tall people more to ride on a place, since they often recline the seat back and take up the space of the person behind them?
Do you also support charging people with wide shoulders more, even if they fit well in the seat portion, since they’re taking up shoulder space from the person next to them?
Do you also support charging men who sit with their legs spread wide, or with their newspaper wide open, more because they’re taking up more space?
Using randay’s logic, I should be able to bill the person in front of me if they recline their seat.
No, randay, safety limits on amusement park rides does not justify charging people for having a larger than average ass size. No, randay, people using religious ideology as an excuse to be ridiculous misogynists is not in any way, shape, or form similar to charging people for an extra seat for being overweight. No, randay, we are not indiscriminate in our insults around here and that isn’t a contradiction of the “rude blog”: it is that our rudeness is very specifically about not feigning civility, not using kid-glove argumentation, and not being afraid to swear. No, randay, that does not mean that we are suddenly okay with you dropping the N-word or threatening to eviscerate someone with your teeth. No, randay, that’s not a contradiction. No, randay, there was no point in you bringing up fat people and then slinging all shorts of nonsensical and hateful shit about them.
Yes, randay, you are a fucking horrible human being.
There’s also the other way of looking at transportation – you aren’t “renting” a specific amount of space, you’re just paying to be moved from point A to point B. Minivan sized taxis don’t charge more than sedan taxis even though you get more room, because the contract is moving from point A to point B. Flying first class isn’t just about getting more space, it’s about getting more service.
If we’re going to be charged based on the absolute volume of space we take up, I’m going to have to insist that everyone above 5 feet tall get charged more by the inch, because that’s a lot more height space than I occupy.
carlie
HERESY!!!
This isn’t transportation, it is a hotel in the sky that charges by the square inch!
Don’t forget that El Al is an airline with its own religious biases. The advice from every commentator to tell the Haredi man to sit in the seat he bought or leave the plane is of course correct — but El Al has a well-known bias. There’s a bit of a problem with having an airline *run by a theocracy* which *caters to the Haredi*.
I think everyone but Randy is being rather ridiculous.
Buying a ticket is forming a contract. Legal contract theory is complex for a reason. There are many aspects to it. I can simply part of it to be the expectations of a reasonable person. It is reasonable to expect that when you buy a ticket, the person in front of you might recline their seat a little. It is reasonable to expect that you will not be shipped by bus when you buy a plane ticket. It is reasonable to expect that you will not be flown around the world to many different destinations contrary to your itinerary. It is reasonable to expect that you will not be required to have a stranger sit in your lap for the duration of the flight; the expectation and contract is for a seat, and that you do not have to share it.
Do not mistake me. I would not have a problem with a hypothetical very overweight person next to me. My problem would be with the airline who decided to not fulfill their part of the contract to supply me a whole seat. The situation would be entirely equivalent to the airline seating me, and then saying that I must have a stranger sit in my lap for the duration of the flight. I did not pay for that. The contract did not include a stranger sitting on my lap. Neither did the contract include me sharing my seat with the person next to me.
How the airline fixes this is up to them. They can require the very overweight person to buy two seats. Or they can have bigger seats. Or they can start charging by some obscure metric like total person volume – there’s no law against that. The airline is free to offer whatever services by whatever metric they want (subject to usual contract law limitations, etc.). However, as long as the contract is a guarantee of a seat, I expect my own seat, and I will be outraged at the airline if I don’t get that seat. Again, the overweight person has no blame in this.
Enlightenment Liberal:
First, it’s Randay. More than one “a”. Also, you are siding with the person who went out of their way to mock fat people? Even doing so when fat people weren’t even the fucking topic? Just gonna wank over the vague concept of “contracts” then?
Go get a fucking clue, asshat.
@anteprepro
Disagreeing with you on topic X does not mean I agree with some other person on topic Y. For example, even Hitler was right some of the time. If I defend Hitler when he (hypothetically) wrote that the Earth is round, it does not automatically follow that I am also defending Hitler’s views of Jews.
Also, so when you talk about a topic, it’s ok, but when I write a rebuttal, it’s off topic? Convenient.
Nope, everything you write is open to comment by any- and every-body, and if you can’t stand the heat, shut the fuck up before you post….
@Nerd of Redhead
Are you sure you took a moment to read the posts? I don’t see how what you wrote relates to anything I said at all.
For all that I don’t really want to agree with EL, in this case, I will. PZ did bring up overweight passengers in the OP. So it’s not that off-topic. That’s where my “support” for him ends.
And what did you say that didn’t shame folks like myself who aren’t at the recommended weight? Saying we should do anything because the airlines use unrealistic weights for the “average” passenger? Sorry, you are over the line. And I only take one seat, and don’t spread out upon my neighbors. Fat shaming is fat shaming, no matter how you do it, either you or PZ.
Tony, good point.
Enlightenment Liberal, you are the one who introduced yourself with the statement “I think everyone but Randy is being rather ridiculous.” You did a really very poor job of presenting yourself if you meant that you only agreed with them in very narrow and specific fashion. It isn’t that you are simply disagreeing with us: you were presenting yourself as fully agreeing with Randay. And now suddenly it isn’t fair game to note, you know, the things that Randay has said?
@anteprepro
Ok. Fair.
@Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
I apologize for any fat shaming that I did. Excepting “I think everyone but Randy is being rather ridiculous.”, I also do not see where I might have done any fat shaming. Could you be more specific please where I fat-shamed? I think it is eminently reasonable to be upset at the airline when I purchased a seat to myself, but the contract was not honored. It is the airline’s problem that they made contracts for which they lacked the facilities to deliver, and they should be held accountable for that.
I thought I was finished with this topic after being surprised by the ampler it has taken. However a couple new elements have appeared making me change my mind.
# 74 anteprepro; there is nothing vague about the contract which #73 EnlightenmentLiberal and others have shown. Suppose you rented a hotel room and then the hotel said you had to share it? # 70 carlie; In the street you can see the size of the taxi and decide if you want to take it or not, and from home or hotel you can order one from a company that you know uses large ones or specify what you want.
As to airlines, suppose that two corporally-challenged people are put in the same three seat row and each takes up an extra third of the remaining seat rendering it unusable. What will the airline do? Debark the third person who thought he/she had a seat?
Or suppose three of those above are put in the same row, which one will be debarked?
Do Haredi only fly El Al? If not, what do other airlines do, say if a Haredi man has a seat between two women.?