Southwest Trial Begins

By the way, I actually found this via a referrer! A forum for police officers picked up on the story. I'm not linking it here because, well, it's full of fat hate. Lots of fat hate. (Yep, some cops hate us, too - go figure.)

It was on our local news page as well. Go, Nadine! The sad part, though, is that the local news posted a poll about whether SW's policy was good or bad: 66% say good; 25% say bad, and the rest are undecided. Sigh.

Interesting how her lawyers are spinning this into a racial bias case. That Southwest deliberately "misapplied the [ant-fat] policy" (presumably because she was black). Not that there's anything wrong with an anti-fat policy to begin with. This happened with the Walmart anti-fat discrimination too. People weren't too concerned that Wal-Mart wanted to discriminate against fat people in hiring until it occurred to people that this would disproportionately affect minorities. On one level it annoys me to so strongly hear the message "it's ok to discriminate against fat people (as long as you're not racist or sexist about it)" in these cases. On the other hand I think some anti-fat bias probably comes right out of racisim and classism to begin with, so it does become hard to separate them out, and fat can be easily used as a proxy for race/class if a corporation so desired.

I find it un*&%^#$ing believable that they could throw out the emotional distress part of this case. "Emotional distress" gets tacked onto the most inane, frivolous lawsuits imaginable, but they think there's nothing emotionally distressing about being proclaimed "too fat for one seat" and hauled off a plane by police in full view of the other passengers? I'm just stunned. Perhaps I shouldn't be, but I am. I really am.

Hi, I am new here but I wanted to delurk to see if I can make you feel a little better, Feisty. What you are talking about with "emotional distress" being tacked onto everything is when they calculate damages, after they find for someone in the case. What the judge threw out of court was different- she was charging a tort called "intentional infliction of emotional distress", which is notoriously almost impossible to get through. I'm not going to argue whether or not it was warranted here, but really- it almost never actually works. However, if any of the charges do stick, and she is awarded damages, she could still be awarded (quite rightly) for emotional distress.

i found this gem today and thought it would be pretty fitting (no pun intended) here. i have craig's list for this reason. there are way too many anonymous posts left daily that bash and tear apart overweight people, especially women. it has gotten so bad that i can't even sign on to that site anymore. the thing? we all KNOW that the poster would NEVER demand reembursement to the "fat girl on the plane to charlotte" to her face. isn't that how it always works, though? argh!

i mean i *hate* craig's list. and i hate that this post made the "best of" section.

he probably couldn't have demanded money from another passenger without getting into trouble himself, as touchy as airline and airport employees are now.and of course, doing something that would have let the airline know he considered something a problem , like complaining to someone at the front desk, wouldn't have been as fun as internet bashing, even tho it might actually have gotten results.i've found that most people prefer to do something emotionally satisfying rather than doing anything that will get results.