Ahhh, “fear itself”. Who knew it had WMDs?
Maybe he said she had a scary notion, had a screw loose, and tried to open the hatches and the press just got overexcited? 
Obviously, they’re covering the whole thing up to avoid unecessarily frightening the public. Clearly she was going to use the screwdriver, lotion and matches to fling globs of burning Vaseline at other passengers. I know that would make me think twice about flying again. Well, that, and the crappy selection of movies they’re always showing.
Maybe she just had a Vodka and OJ? Maybe we will hear actual NEWS about this in the near future. Maybe I’ll have curry for lunch, mmmm.
The only reason this is a story at all is because of the initial false reports and hysterical bullshit rumors. Now it appears to be nothing but a woman having a panic attack on an airplane. It muts really suck to be a Muslim these days. Anything and everything you do is contantly being monitored by paranoid, stupid assholes who are just looking for an excuse to beat up an Arab.
This reminds of that stupid bitch who caused another plane to be landed because some Syrian musicians were eating from McDonald’s bags and [heavens] getting up to go to the restrooms.
I’d be willing to bet that the false reports in this case came from the fevered imaginations of of other passengers. “She had a screwdriver!” “She had notes in Arabic talking about al Qaeda!” That’s the shit you have to put up with if you even look Middle Eastern.
If this had been a white woman having a panic attack, no one would have looked twice.
Oh do, do have the curry, it’s yumptious. Y’know, speaking of beverages, I hear a good Gewurztraminer goes especially with curry, so I highly endorse that as well. Mmmm. Curry.
What were we talking about?
I’m just glad nobody shot her, as happened to Rigoberto Alpizar last year, even with his wife screaming that he was bipolar and did not have a bomb.
Actually, inital reports were that she was carrying a “purple monkey dishwasher”
Anyone else picturing the hysterical woman scene in Airplane!
Where they all line up to give her a wack? I hadn’t before…but probably won’t NOW be able to get the image out of my mind (especially when the nun steps up with a baseball bat… ).
-XT
(4) Phobias are, by their nature, irrational.
Somebody help me out with something?
Years ago I heard that a man suffering a panic attack on a plane was beaten to death by passengers. Then I heard it was just a plot on CSI, then I heard it was inspired by a true event. Anybody know about this? I’m curious as to whether it happened before 9/11.
Yeah, I’ve never heard of such a thing (sorry, it doesn’t give the race of the passengers charged, we must assume they were all Muslim or at the very least, non-white :rolleyes: ).
yes, a similar event happened when a 19 year old man was killed by passengers after he began acting erratically - story here. (Warning - it’s Maxim’s website, some of the pop-ups might be NSFW.)
The kid was White, btw. Just as I was rash in reporting this news, there are some rash assumptions being made about this woman’s ethnicity and religious background… I’m withholding judgment 'til I hear more, personally.
None of your links really have anything to do with my point. You linked to stories about people going beserk on airplanes. I was talking about the reaction of passengers and the media to something as unremarkable as a woman having a panic attack on an airplane. If she had been white, there would have been no “terrorist” insinuations, no fabricated screwdrivers or notes about al Qaeda and no national news story.
Right…I’m sure it has NOTHING to do with the recent scare coming out of England (where was this plane flying from again?) about a terrorist plot to fly a bunch of planes over the US and blow them up. Its all about racial prejudice I’m sure. Had she been a white woman I’m quite sure they would have gotten her a cocktail and maybe a few happy pills and then quietly tucked her back up in first class with the other white folks…
-XT
Sorry, the “no one would have looked twice” was what threw me. They do look twice, they do land, even with non-Muslims. You are right, there probably wouldn’t have been the “terrorist” connection if she was white (I haven’t read enough of the story to know that she was actually Muslim), but I bet they would have still subdued her and landed ASAP.
Thanks for that.
So it happened exactly 13 months before 9/11. I find that fascinating, though I can’t articulate why.
DtC, do you have a cite concerning the race/ethnicity of this woman? I haven’t seen anything identifying her other than the fact that she is 60.
The story I linked to above describes the death of a 19 year old White man on a plane who began to act erratically. (There’s a picture of him here. This was actually before 9/11 - in 2000. Restraining this woman may well have prevented this incident from escalating, but also may have saved her life.
It may not have been all that unremarkable. People in the throes of panic attacks sometimes do very weird things. Had she been white, she might not have been thought of as a terrorist, but it’s not impossible that she would have been thought of as a serious threat. And in those circumstances, it wouldn’t be hard for people to imagine a screwdriver and matches.
(Hey, maybe she was just looking for a hot guy to screw.)
And those of us who have them know that, and we’re mentally cursing ourselves while we’re freaking out over something we know is silly to freak out over.
IANAPsychiatrist, and I don’t have a cite for this, but I think phobias tend to travel in groups- if you’ve got one, others are likely to crop up at various points in your life.
Wikipedia says that people who are prone to panic attacks often develop claustrophobia. She could be someone who is susceptible to panic attacks and who is also claustrophobic. I know that all the hype about the current terror situation can trigger a panic attack- I was unfortunate enough to have one earlier this week (I’m flying overseas on vacation tomorrow). (Though, if I had had mine onboard the plane, it’s possible that no one would have noticed- I just sat very still and thought I was going to vomit because I was so terrified) You get very, very little warning of a panic attack- I’d never had one before, they usually last only a few minutes (and you don’t really have a warning ahead of time). Up to 10% of otherwise healthy people will experience an isolated panic attack in any given year. She could well have had absolutely no history of panic attacks before, but the claustrophobia and terrorist hype were enough to do it.
I’d also believe that very few people who are flying on planes right now are acting entirely rationally, again because of the hype over the terror situation. Don’t forget, either, that flying on a plane is just inherently scary to some people, much more so than being in a closed bathroom at home or in a car, for reasons mentioned by Giles as well as other reasons. Also, we’ve all seen pictures of plane crashes on TV or in other media, but there are a lot fewer images of someone being killed in their own bathroom. And the images we do see of people being killed in bathrooms are almost always fictional (people do die in bathrooms, but generally of heart attacks or slipping in the tub or drowning or something like that, not of something that’s going to make the front page or the 6-o’clock news).