"Anti-Bush T-shirt hits no-fly zone"

Friday, October 7, 2005

Anti-Bush T-shirt hits no-fly zone
To some, it's a free-speech case; to others, it's just bad taste
By TODD MILBOURN AND LISA HEYAMOTO
The Sacramento (CA) Bee


Save the vulgarity for the floor of the U.S. Senate; The F-bomb doesn't fly
when it comes to the friendly skies. 

In a case that has grabbed headlines and hit the blogosphere, Southwest
Airlines this week booted a Washington woman off a flight in Reno after she
refused to cover up a T-shirt some considered to be in poor taste. 

The cotton T in question played off the comedy film "Meet the Fockers," and
featured black-and-white pictures of President Bush, Vice President Dick
Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice alongside the movie's title
-- with a strategically misplaced vowel. 

Partisans quickly painted the incident as a) an example of knee-jerk
Bush-bashing or b) symptomatic of right-wing intolerance of free speech. 

But others wondered if the incident wasn't just a case of society becoming
more willing to push the envelope when it comes to in-your-face political
invective. Not to mention, to embrace crassness. 

After all, instances of four-letter words uttered in public aren't so rare
these days. An authority figure no lower than Cheney used the F-word last
year while speaking to Patrick Leahy, a Democrat who represents Vermont in
the U.S. Senate, a body renowned for its collegiality. 

"We need to be honest with ourselves," said Peter Scheer, executive director
of the California First Amendment Coalition. "That word is on the graffiti
you saw driving to the airport and the cable TV you watched before you left
for the airport. 

"Sure, they bleep it out. But kids know exactly what that word is." 

And not all are offended by it. 

That could be because "the rules are not clear enough that we all know
them," said Barbara O'Connor, director of the Institute for the Study of
Politics and Media at California State University, Sacramento. 

"Society sends mixed messages about what's tolerable and what's not." 

But some in society are pushing back. 

The increasingly casual use of explicit terms on television has sparked
crackdowns by the Federal Communications Commission. 

And in the Southwest case, it was fellow passengers who objected to the
T-shirt. 

Beth Harbin, a spokeswoman for the airline, said it was not a case of
stifling criticism of the president. 

"It could've been a (T-shirt) of Michael Jackson _ it doesn't matter," she
said. It simply was, she said, that the language is not "appropriate for
Southwest Airlines." 

Lorrie Heasley, a 32-year-old lumber saleswoman from Woodland, Wash.,
boarded the plane Tuesday at Los Angeles International Airport to return
home from Disneyland. She said she bought the shirt in Venice Beach and wore
it for her Democratic parents, who were scheduled to pick her up at the
Portland airport. 

Heasley said flight attendants asked her to cover up the shirt after several
women in the back of the plane objected. 

"They were crowing about how I was disrespecting the president," Heasley
said in an interview with The Bee. "I said they didn't have to read it." 

When the plane made a stop in Reno, Southwest officials asked Heasley to
turn the shirt inside out or leave. Heasley, saying she has the right to
dress as she pleases, left. 

Now she's mulling her options and has said that she would consider filing a
lawsuit. 

It's unclear what recourse she might have. While an airline can prohibit
passengers from wearing certain types of clothing, only government
incursions on free expression are considered a violation of the First
Amendment, said Scheer, of the First Amendment coalition. 

Southwest calls it a "contract of carriage," and Page 10 of the document
reads: "Carrier may refuse to transport" passengers whose "clothing is lewd,
obscene or patently offensive." 

Still, forcing a woman from a plane over a novelty T-shirt doesn't bode well
for the free flow of ideas, Scheer said. 

"We live in a society where we have to tolerate a fair amount of
eccentricity, and this may be an example of not enough tolerance," Scheer
said.


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