Woman Can’t Wear Offensive Bush Bashing Shirt, Cries To ACLU

Posted on October 6, 2005

A woman was booted off a Southwest Airlines flight for wearing a T- shirt that bore an expletive and images of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Lorrie Heasley of Woodland, Wash., said she plans to press a civil- rights complaint against the airline over Tuesday’s action at Reno- Tahoe International Airport, halfway through Heasley’s scheduled trip from Los Angeles to Portland, Ore.

“I have cousins in Iraq and other relatives going to war,” Heasley told the Reno Gazette-Journal. “Here we are trying to free another country and I have to get off an airplane … over a T-shirt. That’s not freedom.”

Southwest Airlines spokeswoman Marilee McInnis said several passengers complained about the shirt.

Heasley, a 32-year-old lumber saleswoman, said passengers began complaining after she and her husband, Ron, moved to the front of the cabin in Reno.

She agreed to cover the words with a sweatshirt, but when the sweatshirt slipped while she was trying to sleep, she was ordered to wear her T-shirt inside-out or leave.

She and her husband left. They arrived home in a rental car Wednesday afternoon.

McInnis said Southwest rules allow the airline to deny boarding to any passenger whose clothing is “lewd, obscene or patently offensive.”

But Allen Lichtenstein, lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union in Las Vegas, said it “might be problematic” that the airline “changed rules in the middle of a flight.”

Heasley said she has been in touch with ACLU lawyers in Seattle, and wants Southwest to reimburse her for the last leg of the trip.

What a whiner! I’m telling the ACLU! Jeez woman, the shirt has the F word on it! The Airline is a private company who can make up their own rules on what they will allow or not. I know I wouldn’t want my kid learning that word by reading it off some stupid liberal woman’s shirt. Look, sometimes trash is just trash. I can’t smoke on the Airplane, I’m gonna tell the ACLU my freedom is being restricted. Damn woman, get a grip, there are other people in this world besides you. Have some respect.

Political Teen has the video of the raving lunatic.

» Filed Under ACLU

Trackback URL

Comments

6 Responses to “Woman Can’t Wear Offensive Bush Bashing Shirt, Cries To ACLU”

someone on October 7th, 2005 12:44 pm

Tsk tsk the facist right wing is at it agian allied with multinational corperations thiey are once agian tearing away at our constitution that they claim to love so much.
jimmyb on October 7th, 2005 1:04 pm

someone - you’re an asshat.

The constitution protects speech from being restricted by the government, not by any and all.
At least us right-wingers have read it.
loboinok on October 7th, 2005 4:28 pm

someone…
The Constitution does not give you unlimited rights to say and do whatever you please.
Our rights come with responsibility and are within the parameters that civil society have set.
If you have a problem with that…take it up with your representatives!
pantheria on October 7th, 2005 4:41 pm

Now I am pissed , I was reading this bull in my own hometown news paper and I even blogged about it , the paper never mentioned all of this …
pantheria on October 7th, 2005 4:43 pm

hey , mr someone , dont you have any comunistic duties to go and do .. Bye ..
someone on October 7th, 2005 4:54 pm

First of all youre website has is not equipt with spellcheck. And i am not prepared to invest the energy to edit myself.

Secondly, calling ‘asshat’is a falacy commonly, or maybe not, known as AD HOMINEM. (pardon my spelling that causes you so much distress)

Thirdly, everyone knows that the bill of rights does not protect all speech. The courts have ruled that speech that is a ‘clear and present danger’ (like shouting fire in a crowded room) is not protected. However, I hardly think that wearing a shirt that called president bush an ‘asswipe’ (or whatever it said) can be considered a clear and present danger.
You are correct that the constitution does not prevail over private enterprise. Which is just more evidence of how dangerouse these corperations are.
You republicans are so anxiuse to privatise everything. What will happen when the GOVERNMENT is pritatised? Overrunn and overpowered by hige muscled corperations.
I’ll tell you what will happen. Thier will be no freedom of speech. No freedom of religion aside from the religion of the dominating company. What then of your preciouse firearms? The crperations will take your guns away from you just as the owner of the airline ‘took away’ the protesting womans shirt.

You people are so blind.