The establishment Left is in an uproar (well, yeah, I know, that’s true on every day that ends with a Y), this time because a Southwest Airlines pilot allegedly signed off his in-flight announcements with “Let’s Go Brandon.” As it happened, Associated Press reporter Colleen Long was on the flight, and was even working on a story about the phrase, which arose from an NBC reporter’s possibly intentional mishearing of chants of “F*** Joe Biden.”
Long immediately stormed down the aisle and demanded to be let into the locked cockpit, which led, she claims, to her “almost get[ting] removed from plane.” But the pilot may be in even more trouble, as Southwest has (predictably) bowed to the outrage mob and launched an internal investigation into his wrongthink. One minor detail, however, could derail the whole high-tech lynching before it gets much farther: The pilot may not even have said “Let’s go, Brandon” at all.
Southwest, facing the potential ire of the authoritarian and intolerant Leftist media machine, on Sunday issued the usual protestations of ideological purity:
Southwest does not condone Employees sharing their personal political opinions while on the job serving our Customers, and one Employee’s individual perspective should not be interpreted as the viewpoint of Southwest and its collective 54,000 Employees. Southwest is conducting an internal investigation into the recently reported event and will address the situation directly with any Employee involved while continuing to remind all Employees that public expression of personal opinions while on duty is unacceptable. Southwest does not tolerate any behavior that encourages divisiveness, as it does not reflect the Southwest Hospitality and inclusiveness for which we are known and strive to provide each day on every flight.
Well, that’s just fantastic, but it’s hard to imagine that Southwest would have issued the same statement, much less initiated an investigation, if a pilot had concluded his greeting to the passengers with “Black Lives Matter.” In fact, in May 2020, a Southwest flight attendant got into a long conversation with a passenger over a book he was reading, Robin DiAngelo’s racist white-guilt propaganda tome White Fragility. The passenger turned out to be Doug Parker, the CEO of American Airlines (who was apparently flying Southwest because he couldn’t get a seat on a plane flown by his own airline). This allegedly heartwarming incident got a glowing write-up in Insider, and there wasn’t a whisper from Southwest about how “public expression of personal opinions while on duty is unacceptable.”
What’s more, this Southwest pilot, who is now facing getting suspended or fired, or worse, subjected to the treatment that the Left reserves for dissenters, may not even have said “Let’s Go Brandon” at all. Audio of his in-flight announcement was posted on TikTok as a video with subtitles.
@thatpatriotmom 💀💀💀
While the subtitles say “Let’s Go Brandon,” the audio only has the pilot saying “Let’s go Bra—” before it cuts off. Could the pilot have been an Atlanta Braves fan and was saying “Let’s go, Braves”? The TikTok video was posted on October 11, while the Braves were in the National League Division Series against the Milwaukee Brewers. Maybe the entire pandemonium over this pilot is based on a mishearing. Or something worse: Colleen Long says she heard the pilot say this on October 29, 18 days after the audio was posted. The plot thickens.
Related: The Name of the Rose Is Laughter, or Let’s Go, Brandon
Even if the pilot were just a Braves fan declaring support for his team, it might not even matter at this point. The authoritarians are out for his head and may get it, no matter what he actually said.
CNN’s Joe Lockhart complained about how slow Southwest has been to act: “The fact that @SouthwestAir has not moved faster with their Brandon pilot indicates a much broader problem. My guess is many if not most of their pilots are totally ok with it and the airline is afraid the pilots will walk. Let that sink in.”
One response to Southwest’s statement on Twitter shows yet again how unhinged the Left has become today: “I’m troubled by this. There’s already tension on every flight with masks, vax vs antivax, delays and schedule changes. This pilot made the flight crews [sic] job harder on that flight and every flight since. Free speech happens in our free time. Not at work. Let’s go fly elsewhere.”
Many Americans will be surprised to discover that the First Amendment doesn’t actually apply to the workplace; meanwhile, another commenter was even worse, dragging out the increasingly common Leftist claim that conservative speech equals violence: “This pilot is encouraging violence against flight attendants with this statement.”
The fact that Southwest is investigating this pilot as if he had done some egregious harm after we had four years of the establishment Left fantasizing about murdering Donald Trump makes the whole thing even more ridiculous. Kathy Griffin paraded around with an effigy of Trump’s bloody severed head; Madonna threatened to blow up the White House; Robert De Niro said “F*** Donald Trump” to cheers at the Tony Awards, and we’re supposed to be upset because a pilot may have repeated a conservative catchphrase. The double standard is yawning and enormous already, and growing by the minute.
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