Commentator Nation

One of the least significant, but most widely read news stories of last week was the family that got thrown off an airplane because their three year old daughter threw a temper tantrum. See, for example, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16780734/.

I thought it was interesting surfing the web to read people’s reactions. Google tantrum +airplane, or tantrum+airline+brat for slanted results. The responses were overwhelmingly (and often vehemently) supportive of the airline. And maybe they’re right, and the airline acted appropriately – could well be – but , um, . . . is there really enough detail in the story to know how it really went down? To all the people who patted the airline on the back for not taking guff from the lousy parents who couldn’t control their obviously spoiled brat – any chance you might be jumping to conclusions here?

Actually, my favorite commenters are the ones who realize that the facts themselves don’t offer much to get indignant about, so they try to deconstruct clues in the narrative to build their case. Um … why? It’s that important to you to build a case on sketchy evidence that some strangers are bad parents? Why?

Look – I’ve had plenty of bad airplane experiences with other peoples’ kids. Kids crying, screaming, kids behind me kicking the seat for the whole flight, kids throwing food. Makes you want to slap the parents and ask what the heck their problem is. And maybe the parents in this case are completely to blame. Good chance they are. But how can anyone be sure given the meager facts?

What’s even funnier is that from what we can read, it’s the parents’ word versus the airline’s, and most people are blindly taking the airline’s side. Umm, how many among us have been screwed by an airline? Who hasn’t been lied to, or treated discourteously by an airline employee? But never mind, we’ll take their word for it since it touches one of our hot buttons.