A Southwest Airlines flight from Houston to Albuquerque this past Friday morning drew attention when the Pilot addressed passengers over the plane’s intercom with “Lets Go, Brandon!” as his sign off.
Per sources at the AP Sunday night, Southwest Airlines is now conducting an “internal investigation” into the incident:
Southwest Airlines said Sunday it is conducting an internal investigation after one of its pilots used a phrase that’s become a stand-in for insulting President Joe Biden during the pilot’s greeting to passengers over the plane’s public address system last week.
The airline announced its investigation after The Associated Press reported the incident in a story about the growing use of the phrase “Let’s go, Brandon,” an aphorism in conservative circles for a vulgarity targeting Biden.
The pilot’s use of the phrase drew audible gasps from some passengers on the flight from Houston to Albuquerque on Friday. An AP reporter was on the flight.
The airline said in a statement it would “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.”
Although hilarious and inspirational, this Pilot and very stable genius did make one miscalculation in that a member of the Fake News Media outlet, Associated Press, was one of the lucky passengers on board.
Colleen Long got a front row seat to this historic event:
Also in defense of airline I was asking them to open locked cock pit and probably sounded insane!
— Colleen Long (@ctlong1) October 30, 2021
Long, dedicated and determined to the pursue this once in a lifetime story, tried GAINING ENTRY INTO THE COCKPIT in order to get the first scoop. I admire the relentless pursuit of the truth.
I’d be willing to try and open a locked cockpit in order to shake this Pilot’s hand as well. But in a post-9/11 world I’d probably wait until the plane lands.
Her article with the AP goes into a bit of detail about the incident as well as some helpful backstory to the priceless origin of the “Let’s Go, Brandon” saga:
NASCAR and NBC have since taken steps to limit “ambient crowd noise” during interviews, but it was too late — the phrase already had taken off.
When the president visited a construction site in suburban Chicago a few weeks ago to promote his vaccinate-or-test mandate, protesters deployed both three-word phrases. This past week, Biden’s motorcade was driving past a “Let’s Go Brandon” banner as the president passed through Plainfield, New Jersey.
And a group chanted “Let’s go, Brandon” outside a Virginia park on Monday when Biden made an appearance on behalf of the Democratic candidate for governor, Terry McAuliffe. Two protesters dropped the euphemism entirely, holding up hand-drawn signs with the profanity.
On Friday morning on a Southwest flight from Houston to Albuquerque, the pilot signed off his greeting over the public address system with the phrase, to audible gasps from some passengers. Southwest said in a statement that the airline “takes pride in providing a welcoming, comfortable, and respectful environment” and that “behavior from any individual that is divisive or offensive is not condoned.”
Veteran GOP ad maker Jim Innocenzi had no qualms about the coded crudity, calling it “hilarious.”
“Unless you are living in a cave, you know what it means,” he said. “But it’s done with a little bit of a class. And if you object and are taking it too seriously, go away.”
After eight years of Barack Hussein Obama drumming up hostility against Conservatives and the past six years of the never-ending, rage fueled, corporate “Hate Trump” machine, I don’t care about anything anyone in the Fake News Media ever has to say. Not in this lifetime. Not in the next lifetime. Not in any lifetime.
I won’t be valuing anyone’s opinion who believed the information in the Steele dossier was accurate and reliable or that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation anytime soon:
The AP article continues:
America’s presidents have endured meanness for centuries; Grover Cleveland faced chants of “Ma, Ma Where’s my Pa?” in the 1880s over rumors he’d fathered an illegitimate child. Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson were the subject of poems that leaned into racist tropes and allegations of bigamy.
“We have a sense of the dignity of the office of president that has consistently been violated to our horror over the course of American history,” said Cal Jillson, a politics expert and professor in the political science department at Southern Methodist University. “We never fail to be horrified by some new outrage.”
There were plenty of old outrages.
“F—- Trump” graffiti still marks many an overpass in Washington, D.C. George W. Bush had a shoe thrown in his face. Bill Clinton was criticized with such fervor that his most vocal critics were labeled the “Clinton crazies.”
The biggest difference, though, between the sentiments hurled at the Grover Clevelands of yore and modern politicians is the amplification they get on social media.
Never gets old:
The article goes on to explain how social media has influenced the way that information gets out and spreads. Particularly negative emotions and anger. I love how they just HAD to get in their little line about the 2020 Election.
Read on for yourself:
“Before the expansion of social media a few years ago, there wasn’t an easily accessible public forum to shout your nastiest and darkest public opinions,” said Matthew Delmont, a history professor at Dartmouth College.
Even the racism and vitriol to which former President Barack Obama was subjected was tempered in part because Twitter was relatively new. There was no TikTok. As for Facebook, leaked company documents have recently revealed how the platform increasingly ignored hate speech and misinformation and allowed it to proliferate.
A portion of the U.S. was already angry well before the Brandon moment, believing the 2020 presidential election was rigged despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, which has stood the test of recounts and court cases.
But anger has now moved beyond die-hard Trump supporters, said Stanley Renshon, a political scientist and psychoanalyst at the City University of New York.
He cited the Afghanistan withdrawal, the southern border situation and rancorous school board debates as situations in which increasing numbers who were not vocally anti-Biden now feel that “how American institutions are telling the American public what they clearly see and understand to be true, is in fact not true.”
Trump hasn’t missed the moment. His Save America PAC now sells a $45 T-shirt featuring “Let’s go Brandon” above an American flag. One message to supporters reads, “#FJB or LET’S GO BRANDON? Either way, President Trump wants YOU to have our ICONIC new shirt.”
Separately, T-shirts are popping up in storefronts with the slogan and the NASCAR logo.
And as for the real Brandon, things haven’t been so great. He drives for a short-staffed, underfunded team owned by his father. And while that win — his first career victory — was huge for him, the team has long struggled for sponsorship and existing partners have not been marketing the driver since the slogan.
You want to know why people in this country have grown frustrated?
Because things cost more. Freedoms are gone. Our children are at risk.
The man immediately responsible is Joe Biden. If that’s even who is really in control. I personally think it’s the guy who used to be named Barry Soetoro.
I’ll tell you one thing. Joe Biden isn’t thinking through any complex policy decisions anytime soon. He’s only thinking about chocolate chip ice cream and determining what kind of shampoo you use.
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