But since Southwest Airlines has now busted a second woman for FWSD (Flying While Sluttily Dressed), it must be considered now official policy of harrassing women for showing too much cleavage and leg.

First, the story on the second woman to get busted, so to speak….from the NBC affiliate in Miami:

Second Flier’s Sexy Outfit Comes Under Fire

Flight Attendant Makes Woman Wear Blanket

POSTED: 11:04 am EDT September 11, 2007

UPDATED: 11:12 am EDT September 11, 2007

ENCINO, Calif. — A second woman is complaining after an airline took issue with her sexy attire.

 

Related Content: Video | Images | Survey

Setara Qassim said she was flying home to Burbank, Calif., from Las Vegas in June when a Southwest Airlines flight attendant gave her a blanket and told her to cover up.”The flight attendant came up to me and asked me if I had a sweater, and I said, ‘No, because why would I pack a sweater in the heat?’” Qassim said. “So I asked her why, and she said I needed to cover up.”

 For those of you interested, here is a thumb of the outfit that Ms. Qassim was wearing when she got harrassed (click on thumbnail for a larger view):

The same article also includes an update on the original incident involving Ms. Ebbert, including a just released press statement by Southwest Airlines attempting to defend their actions against her:

Just last Friday, a woman from San Diego told a similar story to the “Today” show. She said a Southwest Airlines flight attendant had also taken issue with the propriety of her attire.

Kyla Ebbert, 23, wore the exact same outfit on “Today” Friday morning. Ebbert said she was allowed to stay on the flight after she agreed to pull up her tank top and pull down her skirt.

NBC News was not able to reach Southwest Airlines in connection with Qassim’s claims, but the airline did release a statement last week in response to the incident involving Ebbert.

“Southwest Airlines was responding to a concern about Ms. Ebbert’s revealing attire on the flight that day,” the statement said. “As a compromise, we asked her to adjust her clothing to be less revealing. She complied and she traveled as scheduled. When a concern is brought to our employees’ attention, we address that situation directly with the customer(s) involved in a discreet and professional matter. Fortunately, as an airline that carries approximately 96 million customers a year, those situations are extremely rare.” 

So, apparantly, if we are to believe Southwest Airlines, they were responding to complaints from other passengers about Ms. Ebbert (and presumably, Ms. Qassim) were dressed.  (In the latter’s case, her Arabic surname might have a bit something to do with her as well…you know how we are about potential “Islamofascist” terrorists, you know.)

That brings up a series of questions for me:

1) Does that mean that a guy wearing a T-shirt revealing his belly gut and a butt hugging jeans that show off his package will get the same treatment as these ladies??

2) Is there some private “slut squad” out there who frequents Southwest passengers looking for attractive women dressed accordingly in weather-appropriate clothing to target for harrassment?? Or is this merely a Southwest Airlines policy of “slut-hunting”?? 

3) Shouldn’t Southwest Airlines be more concerned with more pressing issues than preening at women’s cleavages and thighs??  You know….like, real terrorists who could blow their planes out of the sky???

Or…maybe, Southwest should use some preventative action and have their airport counters staffed with people whose only job is to inspect women’s clothing for the proper coverage (so to speak) before they pay for their tickets and embark on their planes???

Incredible.  Just. Simply. Freakin’. Incredible.

From Jessica Valenti’s boobs (you still suck, Ann Althouse!!) to Kyla Ebbert’s legs to Britney Spears’ navel…..will our obsession with “slut-shaming” never stop???

[For the background on the Kyla Ebbert incident; see the original Feministing article, or this post at the old SmackChron blog.]

First off, you have General Petraus, going to Capitol Hill to testify about the “success” of the “surge” in Iraq (a “surge” so successful that US troops are now dying at a slightly less steep rate this month than before) and to persuade the supposed Dimocratic “majority” to give even more blank checks to his commander-in-chief to further “liberate” their country.

But rather than attack the actual outcome of “the surge” or even organize real opposition from the public, here comes MoveOn.org with a nice gift to the war boosters….in the form of an ad in the Washington Post all but calling out the chief military commander as “Be-tray-us” and all but calling him a traitor…for prosecuting a war endorsed by his President.  Nice going, Mensas…..way to give your enemies the tools to whack you as “extremists” and loony lefties, and with no benefits whatsoever.

And then, here is the usual clown street media from the likes of Medea Benjamin and Code Pink (you remember them, they were the ones that got the bright idea of baring their breasts to protest Hillary Clinton’s support of the war) making various scenes at the hearing before getting booted out by the room.  Yeah, the C-SPAN and CNN and FOX audience really dug that.

We all know where this is going, now do we?? Another six months of wait-and-see, followed by another cave-in by the Dims, more blank checks given to Dubya to bomb to his heart’s content (perhaps even expanding the war into Iran and/or Syria; and more puffing and huffing from the usual suspects in the liberal blogosphere about how those damn “Bush Dog Democrats” are ruining a good antiwar party. 

But never fear, liberal sheeple hearty progressives…if only we would persuade the public that we have a plan for Iraq once “our troops” leave, and once Hillary takes over as President in around 18 months, all will be much better. 

Except that, it pretty much won’t be, since Hillary would more than likely continue the same damn policies that Dubya is practicing right now…with perhaps a bit less glowing rhetoric, perhaps.

Meanwhile, back in Congress, some of the progressive Dims who are now realizing how much power they really have over Iraqi policy (that is, no damn power whatsoever, since the Bush Dogs can bolt and cross the aisle as they please and the leadership could care less) are getting a bit frustrated with it all….especially from hearing from the usual suspects in the liberal “netroots”.  Of course, if they hadn’t been so kind to giving up the fight against funding the war last summer, they would probably fare a bit better…..but you know, “we really don’t have the votes”.  (Which is plain BS, of course, since the Dims could easily, if they really, really wanted to, simply not vote to fund the wars through the appropriation process…but the fear of Karl Rove ads in their districts morphing them with Osama and Saddam remains so strong…and besides, they just want to get the credit for “winning” — or at least, not be tagged for “losing” — the war.  Well, that..and the fact that deep down inside, most of these Dims really do support the war anyway…they just don’t want to embarrass “their base” by saying so openly.)

And you wonder how Dubya was still able to pull ‘04 out of his ass??  It wasn’t just Ken Blackwell’s mojo in Ohio, after all.

Just to show you how pathetic and hollow liberal “opposition” has become, just take a gander of this article from the center-right online journal Politico.com, where a certain centrist (”religious progressive” is the new political center, I guess) antiwar activist lectures the Dimocratic “base” on why they have been striking out:

Ah, yes, “orderly redeployment”….that is, just move the troops away from some hot areas in Iraq and keep them snug in those permanent bases in Iraq and Iran that we will be building after we bomb the shit out of Tehran and oust that anti-Semitic firebrand Ahmadinejad (whom we owe big time anyway for holding America hostage during 1980). Of course, that will raise the threat of more isolated suicide bome attacks like the one that hit the Marines in Beirut in 1982…but hey, someone’s gotta protect our oil.

[Lerner’s side of the story can be found here, where he posts the entire transcript of the conversation.

As usual, it is the “far Left” that has a somewhat more grounded sense of the truth.  Old school Marxist Louis Proyect uses his regular blog to dissect Lerner’s nonsense and the Dimocrats’ fallacy:

This paints a dreary picture, doesn’t it? The blame keeps getting shifted in American bourgeois politics. It is a just like a 3-card Monty game. You can never turn up the right card. The leftwing of the Democratic Party says that the party’s moderates are the problem. And then the Democratic Party as a whole says that it can’t do anything to stop the war because it can’t override Bush’s veto. This, of course, is a lie. All the Democrats need to do is not pass a funding bill of any kind. That will bring the war to an end immediately, just as it did in Vietnam. When they continue to fund the war–crocodile tears and all–they are as complicit as the Republicans.

[…]

Leslie Cagan, the most left-leaning conferee, throws up her hands and says, “We don’t know how this war’s going to end. This has been a nightmare for five years—almost five years now, before the war began.” But there’s hope. She says that “September is a critical time, in terms of what Congress can do, what they might do, what they probably won’t do.” And if Congress doesn’t get it done next year, there’s always next year:

Beyond that, we’re beginning to look at 2008, as the country has already been forced to, in the election cycle. Both the Congressional and the Presidential races—not that we will support a particular candidate or political party, we certainly will not do that—but again, how do we begin injecting not only ending this war and occupation, but also preventing a war in Iran, preventing any other military operations like this, and beginning to put forward a much more thorough peace and justice agenda, and how to use the election process to work through that agenda.

In other words, mass demonstrations are just an adjunct to the real game, which is the “election cycle.” For those of you living outside the US, this is a buzzword that is used on Sunday morning talk shows. There are “news cycles” and there are “election cycles”. Within each cycle, you get issues and personalities that rise to the top like scum on a stagnant pond. When the cycle is over, things return to normal. Of course, for people living outside the US, like the beleaguered citizens of Baghdad, the “election cycle” might not mean a whole lot when you have to worry about being victimized by a car bomb, thrown out of your house by ethnic cleansing or picked up by a death squad.

Oh…and what’s to say that “next year” won’t turn out like this year….or last year…or 2003…or any other period when Dimocrats were in power and actually did more to oppose than support progressive policy???

And it’s not so easy for a few folks here in this country, either….ask any Black refugee of Katrina or any Black resident of Jena, Louisiana about the impact of “the election cycle”.  Or the children of an undocument immigrant who has been thrown out of the country thanks to the ICE raids on their jobs.

Still want to believe that the Dimocrats will save you if you are to the left of Dick Morris??  Be my guest. Based on what I’ve seen of them and the usual suspects, I’d put my trust in David Duke before I ever do in them.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t transfer any of the posts or links from the WordPress.com SmackChron blog here because the file was too big for WP’s servers to handle…..so, I will just keep that blog open as an archive for those interested in seeing my old posts.  But, all new posts will come here.

I’m still working on remodeling this blog to make it a bit less spartan….so excuse the mess.