Flying While Arabic
From the San Diego Metro News:
An American Airlines flight from Lindbergh Field to Chicago was delayed overnight Tuesday because of a passenger's fright over some Arabic-speaking men on board.
The story itself is fairly surreal -- a bunch of men were talking in a language that sounded like (and apparently was) Arabic, some other passengers got hysteric about terrorism for no good reason, and the plane returned to the gate.
Some of the comments make for even more ghastly reading, and justify racist hysteria with the "better safe than sorry", "think of the children", "we're at war" school of argument.
One thing is for sure: I wouldn't want to sit in the same plane as these commenters.
Later: Yesterday's BoingBoing piece on how people react to fear of death -- in particular as their political views are concerned -- relates to this story in an interesting way. Go read it.
