Okay, one more #bump-a-lago post today. I know this issue has already been done to death by everyone from points and miles bloggers to CNN to people in my Facebook feed who want Oscar Munoz’s head on a stick. I did want to say a little about the round of victim-blaming that came out today, though.
Yesterday already started to get a little victim-blamey, with some people yelling that any idiot knows you have to obey the crew no matter what, and this guy deserved what he got for being so stupid. That went into overdrive today, though, when it came out that the victim in this situation has a checkered past that includes illegal procurement of drugs and gay extramarital affairs… so pretty much as salacious as the tabloid media could ever ask for. The media reported this like it was relevant – because apparently being non-biased includes airing the “Well, he was a piece of shit who deserved it” viewpoint.
To humanity’s defense, most of the responses to these stories were critical of the media’s airing of Dr. Dao’s past. However, there was a definite undercurrent of “he got what he deserved” in the news coverage, even as the pressure on United and Munoz ramped up. What’s interesting is how the victim’s identity played a part in both the inflation of the scandal and then the pushback against it (in defense of United). All day yesterday, it was made clear that he was a DOCTOR. United beat the shit out of a DOCTOR who just wanted to see his patients. A DOCTOR was dragged off the flight. It’s an honorable profession, which makes what United did that much more egregious – if he had been a garbage man, people may not have cared so much.
Switching gears, today he went from being a DOCTOR to just being a guy, because the details of his past canceled out the honorability of his profession. Of course, it shouldn’t matter if he was a doctor who had just saved an entire orphanage or a lowlife criminal, or anything else. But we can’t ignore how the identity of the victim shapes the narrative, either as a way to further demonize United, or to discount his value as a human as a way of excusing what United did.
Looking deeper into it, however, it’s pretty clear that there’s a false equivalence between propping him up as a doctor and tearing him down as a deviant. You can see that in how gleeful and malicious the coverage “breaking” news of his past was. The fact that he had been held up as a virtuous doctor the day before only intensified this. And here’s why: deep down, it’s terrifying that an upstanding member of the community could be randomly targeted, brutalized, and left literally begging for death by a faceless security apparatus. If we can trick ourselves into believing he deserved it, then the security state isn’t as terrifying, because it is calibrated according to our normal notions of justice, good, and evil.
I’m going to get personal for a second: I have first-hand experience with this. Around fifteen years ago, I almost died in a tragic accident that changed the course of my life. Thirteen people died and forty-seven were injured when a 3-story balcony in Chicago collapsed without warning. I was buried in debris and was being crushed under all the weight, and I heard people suffocating to death beneath me. I was finally pulled out and only had a couple broken ribs and a bunch of abrasions and cuts – many others were hurt much worse. The PTSD from it still affects me from time to time, and it’s also why I have issues with a fear of flying. In the immediate aftermath, I was trying to process what happened, and all the news coverage included interviews with average joes in Chicago whose basic sentiment was, “yeah it sucks, but what did they expect?” Facts became twisted to fit a narrative that the victims got what they deserved – people started talking about the party-goers jumping up and down, or overloading the balcony with kegs (neither of which were true). The sentiment on the internet turned decidedly against the people who were injured and/or dead – if you’re that stupid that you’d go onto a crowded porch, you deserve to die. Period.
Never mind the fact that the porch was built with substandard materials and construction techniques, or that the city of Chicago tried to cover up the fact that it had never been properly inspected. People in Chicago (many of whom lived in apartments with similar porches) didn’t want to believe that they could suddenly die one night for no reason, so they decided that the victims died because they were stupid, not because they were just very unlucky. Of course, I took the opposite lesson from it, which is that everyone is fucked all of the time, and it’s just a question of how and when you find that out for sure.
People’s anxiety about flying is manifested through our collective interest in plane horror stories. I don’t mean people with a traditional fear of flying – this is a more generalized anxiety about powerlessness. There’s a reason people love to hate on airlines so much, and why stories about airlines’ bad behavior get more traction than similar stories in other industries. There’s a reason everyone has a horror story about the TSA, or a turbulent flight, or a power-tripping flight attendant. Dislike of flying occupies an exalted space in our collective consciousness, which is how it has become the conventional wisdom seats have gotten narrower and leg room has decreased every year steadily since 1985. But flying isn’t just bad because it’s cramped, or because people are mean. No one talks about riding Greyhound buses like they talk about flying. And people love to talk about subway horror stories, but it’s not in the same tone as those about planes – there’s an affection for it that doesn’t extend to planes. My theory is that the powerlessness that starts at the TSA checkpoint and continues through to baggage claim eats away at people, and that feeling is worse than any of the more rote indignities of flying, like cramped seats and bad food.
As I mentioned yesterday, the #bump-a-lago incident illustrates in very real terms what happens when a person simply refuses to obey the crew, and that such a thing could happen to a person picked at random by a computer is simply intolerable for many people. If there’s an anxiety around powerlessness, it’s an anxiety of this exact scenario coming to pass. Short of a plane crashing mid-flight, this is literally what people fear most about flying, even if that fear stays at a low-level hum most of the time. Ergo the desire to cut the victim down, starting with “what did he expect” and picking up speed with “well he was a deviant anyway.” Anything to avoid feeling sympathy for him and coming to terms with the fact that we’re a computer glitch away from an armrest to the face any time we set foot on a plane.
So what’s the takeaway here? Hopefully some positive change can come from it. It would be great if United got rid of the caps on the compensation amounts for bumping passengers; it would be better if United issued new corporate guidelines about when it is and isn’t appropriate to engage airport security. And finally, it would be fantastic if airport security forces engaged in a top-down reform effort designed to make violence a last resort rather than a knee-jerk reaction. That last one is probably a bridge too far, but at least the staying power of this incident might make things even marginally better. Tabloid journalists are still going to feed on the more salacious/outrageous aspects of this story, but as bloggers, twitterers, facebookers, and passengers, it’s up to us to keep the story centered on the basic facts rather than letting it get filed away as the just desserts of a known criminal.
Windbag Miles 
Well put all around.
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[…] “HE’S NO ANGEL” – How victim blaming saves us from our terrifying reality by Windbag Miles. Really good read, even if you’re sick of the whole united scandal. […]
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First off, I’m sorry for what you went through and that people are assholes. Next, thank you for this sane, thoughtful post. I haven’t seen the ideas of helplessness articulated elsewhere, and it makes so much sense. (And even explains some of the anxiety I feel when traveling.) Finally, it’s not so surprising to me that the people who are blaming the victim are generally not kind or people I want to be around. My bubble grows.
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First-rate work here, and not just because I happen to agree with you.
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Sorry but he CHOSE to be the victim. If he would have simply gotten off the flight then there wouldn’t have to be an incident. The other 3 people got off the flight, this guy chose to act like a child instead.
I’m not saying United was right, but if this guy would have simply stood up on his own legs and walked out without aggressively trying to pull away from the people trying to remove him.. then he would not have been bloodied.
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Since when does “act[ing] like a child” justify a beating? We can all agree or disagree on what is appropriate behavior under the circumstance (being asked/told to leave the plane). I don’t like thinking that we are all supposed to agree that behavior that does not suit us warrants a beating. It’s not a slippery rhetorical slope. It’s a chasm. Let’s be careful.
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What do u suggest security do when they warned him they were gonna drag him out if he didn’t comply. If this guy gets away with this behavior then what’s to stop the next asshole from saying he won’t get off the plain say if the plane is over weight regulations. Should the plain sit there and miss it’s take off window there by dealing this and other flights because of a temper tantrum. What should have been done differently then? I’ve still not heard a rational reply as to what u should do with a passenger who refuses to get off the plain? Should we call a negotiator or his mom? Ehat shpuld have been done then?
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Excellent Write Up. My favorite line “everyone is fucked all of the time, and it’s just a question of how and when you find that out for sure.”
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Oh please I’m tired of people blaming others for their actions. The guy was asked multiple times to get off plane and refused he was told he would spend a night in jail and be forcibly removed from the plane if be didn’t listen. Imagine the police pull u over for a dui checkpoint and ask u to roll down ur window and don’t comply what do u think will happen? They will just ur window and drag u out then slam u to the ground. U don’t listen to the guy given authority and wearing a badge u will get slammed every time. The disrespect this guy showed was amazing. Talk about throwing a tantrum. I could care less that he has some past, in fact this is the first I heard of it. Could care less he is a doctor. Security and police don’t care what u do for a living. They are there because someone was not obeying the rules. There are consequences to not following the rules. Did it suck that the guy had to give up his seat sure, and the airline should have been on top of it and have let all the passengers get seated but when someone given authority tells u to follow their directions then u follow directions it’s what keeps us civilized other wise y should anyone listen to any rule or law? Y should I not get up when the seatbelt signer is on. Y shouldn’t I walk around while landing. Why shouldn’t I smoke in the bathroom. Why, because it’s a rule put in place to keep order without someone to enforce rules u have assholes doing whatever they want
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Clearly there’s an impasse here, and on every other blog comments section, regarding whether it was okay or not that this happened. The point I was trying to drive home was more about how people try to justify arguing that someone deserved something. If you straight-up think he deserved it, then you do you, man. However, I would point out that the issue I keep coming back to is incongruity. I’m not arguing that there shouldn’t have been *any* consequences for his refusal to get off the plane. I am saying that there’s an extreme incongruity between the response that he received versus what he did to provoke it. And yes, I’ll concede he should have known better, but that doesn’t make the response okay. I mean, if you’re going to take my argument to its logical extension (anyone can do anything anytime bc there are no consequences to following rules), then I’ll push yours down the opposite hill, where we live in a police state in which any minor violations of the law lead to people being shot on sight. Is that okay, since people who break the rules know that they’ll get shot? There are too many shades of gray to count in this incident, although all along my attention has been more directed at the airport police and the kneejerk reaction to violence than either United or Dr. Dao. Anyway, at some point this will become like arguing about religion, since I’m pretty steadfast in my views and you are too – and both of us have valid points.
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I’ll say this: your last ¶ offers some reasonable solutions/options (which was my beef w/ your previous post). The bumping system is clearly flawed, United’s tone deaf response (both in the moment and the aftermath) was clearly flawed, and security’s willingness to get physical also warrants questioning. Bottom line: there had to be another way here.
That said, is it always necessary to mix reasonable points with windbaggery? I mean, I get it’s part of the shtick, but honestly… “Anything to avoid feeling sympathy for him and coming to terms with the fact that we’re a computer glitch away from an armrest to the face any time we set foot on a plane.” That’s weak/cheap/fundamentally misleading, and I think you know it, and I think you’re better than that (or at least I hope you are).
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Oh come on, I thought that was a good line! Still, I’d welcome you as a subscriber if you want to hold my feet to the fire from time to time. I do realize it wasn’t a computer glitch that caused this, and he did have a lot of agency in the situation in that he could have avoided the whole thing by just getting out of his seat. However, is it really that implausible, given how often the airline’s computer system is the last and final word on things while simultaneously being susceptible to crippling outages?
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Oh, it was a good line for sure. I just know that, from personal experience;), I have a tendency to sacrifice veracity for a good one-liner. Which is fun, no doubt. But it’s probably not 100% honest, which, loath though I am to admit it, is more important than one liners. At any rate, I haven’t solved the conundrum of my best lines sometimes being cheap shots, so I can’t be too hard on you.
And I’d be happy to drop in a bit more often. I’ve been reading for a while, but I’m not deep enough in the miles game to often have much to contribute. Anyway, again, appreciate the reply.
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