Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Tedium in the skies. Part One: Annie Jacobsen is on an aircraft flight with a group of men of Middle Eastern appearence. They have to use the toilet. She gets scared. The flightcrew, as reported by her, try to reassure her by saying "Yeah, we're alarmed too, don't worry, you're surrounded by air marshalls but don't tell anyone else because you're not supposed to know that."
Part Two: Having made it to LA without getting blown up Jacobsen files that report and then follows it up with letters of support from other people in her fine country. She doesn't seem to be going as far as an outright call for segregation on aircraft. She's not a rascist because, as the original Sept. 11th hijackings were committed by gangs of Saudi men then naturally it's quite valid to assume that all groups of Saudi men must be hijackers. It's not like she was allowing paranoia to get a grip of her or anything.
Part Three: Her scaremongering is rebutted in Salon by one Patrick Smith, who is a pilot halfway through a series of articles for the site. He scorns her tone of breathless terror from her first article and questions both her motives and facts, before spinning it out into a depressing tale of American anti-Middle-Easternism today.
Part Four: The story is picked up by Snopes who report that the only person who was in any way concerned was Jacobsen herself, that the flight-crew weren't worried that they were about to get plastic forks held against their necks, and that the stewardess was asked to tell Jacobsen about the marshalls in an attempt to get her to calm down and shut up, as there was more of a danger from something starting from her hysteria than the actions of a few Saudi musicians.
Part Two: Having made it to LA without getting blown up Jacobsen files that report and then follows it up with letters of support from other people in her fine country. She doesn't seem to be going as far as an outright call for segregation on aircraft. She's not a rascist because, as the original Sept. 11th hijackings were committed by gangs of Saudi men then naturally it's quite valid to assume that all groups of Saudi men must be hijackers. It's not like she was allowing paranoia to get a grip of her or anything.
Part Three: Her scaremongering is rebutted in Salon by one Patrick Smith, who is a pilot halfway through a series of articles for the site. He scorns her tone of breathless terror from her first article and questions both her motives and facts, before spinning it out into a depressing tale of American anti-Middle-Easternism today.
Part Four: The story is picked up by Snopes who report that the only person who was in any way concerned was Jacobsen herself, that the flight-crew weren't worried that they were about to get plastic forks held against their necks, and that the stewardess was asked to tell Jacobsen about the marshalls in an attempt to get her to calm down and shut up, as there was more of a danger from something starting from her hysteria than the actions of a few Saudi musicians.
