Arabic and Indian aren't the same thing

The following is a column by Bill McClellan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, copied completely without permission, etc.:

On the evening of June 26, as Southwest Flight 1226 neared the end of its 31/2 hour journey from St. Louis to Las Vegas, Dr. Sivaprasad Madduri, a 64-year-old urologist from Poplar Bluff, Mo., left his seat in the sixth row and began heading toward the front lavatory.

The captain was using the lavatory at the time, and a flight attendant told Madduri to return to his seat. When Madduri saw the captain leave the lavatory, he got up again. It is against FAA regulations to approach the cockpit when the cockpit is not secure. Madduri claims he did not know this. A spokeswoman for Southwest Airlines claims that two flight attendants explained the regulation to the doctor. At any rate, some pushing ensued. "She pushed me back into my seat," said Madduri. Yes, but that was only after he tried to force his way past her, the spokeswoman for Southwest said.

When the plane landed, two police officers came on board and escorted Madduri off the plane. He was turned over to the FBI. He was taken out of the airport in handcuffs, then taken to a detention center.

"The officers took mugshots and fingerprints, and I was ushered into a large jail cell," the slight physician later wrote in a letter he sent this newspaper and Southwest Airlines. "I looked around and there were already 43 inmates. All of them were young, abusive and using language I never heard of. There were small fold-down benches along the wall. Having no place even to sit, I spent half of my night standing."

In the morning, he was taken to federal court. He said a court-appointed attorney told him he could plead guilty to misdemeanor assault and pay a fine of $2,500. Or else he could plead not guilty and expect a protracted and costly legal fight that would almost certainly require multiple trips to Las Vegas. He pleaded guilty and eventually made his way to the meeting that had brought him to Las Vegas in the first place — the annual convention of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin.

Was he a victim of racial profiling? Or over-zealous flight attendants? Or post-911 paranoia? Or were the problems mostly of his own doing? Or could it be a little bit of all of the above?

"I can tell you this, these types of cases are taken very seriously by the U.S. Attorney's office, particularly when you have somebody who is trying to force his way to the front of the airplane when the pilot is out of the cockpit and the cockpit door might have been open," said Ray Gattinella, the assistant U.S. Attorney who handled the case.

Well, yes, but if you believe the Southwest version of events, this is a 64-year-old guy who was unable to overpower a flight attendant. Should this really have been a federal case? Then again, rules are rules, and this particular regulation was put in for a reason.

"I didn't know about this law," Madduri told me.

Brandy King, the spokeswoman for Southwest Airlines, said flight attendants were required to explain the cockpit-door and front-galley regulations as part of the preflight announcements.

Yes, but many of us zone out during those announcements.

King said the flight attendant tried to explain the regulation to Madduri during the incident. The criminal complaint, filed by the FBI, makes mention of a second flight attendant who allegedly tried to explain the regulation to Madduri after he returned to his seat after his first effort to get to the lavatory. The complaint says the first flight attendant again tried to explain the regulation to Madduri when he made his second attempt. The complaint states that Madduri said, "I'm not listening to you."

Did the FBI talk to any of the other passengers? That would settle the argument. Sadly, the FBI office in Las Vegas did not return repeated phone calls.

"When they were leaving the plane, several passengers thanked the crew for the professional way they handled the situation," King said.

In a strange footnote, Madduri received a letter from Southwest Airlines several days after he returned to Poplar Bluff.

"Dear Sivaprasad Madduri: Sometimes an explanation for the reason why things happen isn't always possible, and the bizarre behavior of the individual during your June 26 flight to Las Vegas supports this point. While I'm unable to explain the circumstances surrounding the disruption, I think it's important to offer my heartfelt apologies for any concerns you may have had as a result of this event. Naturally, we don't want this experience to affect your feelings about flying with us in the future, or for it to be your last recollection of traveling with our Company.

"In fact, we would consider it a privilege if you gave us another opportunity to provide you with better memories. I am confident your next trips with Southwest Airlines will be more pleasant and to prove just that, I sent a LUV Voucher to every person (except, of course, the lady who caused the disruption) who was onboard your flight."

The letter was signed by Fred Taylor, a senior manager in Proactive Customer Service Communications. The LUV Voucher was a $100 certificate to be used against the costs of another flight.

Madduri said he thought the "lady who caused the disruption" was the flight attendant, and so the letter backed up his story. King said the person who wrote the letter simply got the gender wrong.

"We did not intend to send this letter to Mr. Madduri," she said.

Madduri said he wasn't sure he would use the certificate, anyway.


Alright, if you waded through all of that, good for you. I don't really know Dr. Madduri personally, but I know him by reputation, and he's generally pretty docile, almost meek.

As my mother said when she heard about this story, isn't this America? When did we start doing things like this to other Americans? The whole incident is nothing short of bizarre.

More to the point, though, the incident ought to make you concerned about the state of the country. Had Dr. Madduri been a 64-year-old white man, would things have gotten so far out of hand? Would he have spent a night in prison? Would he have been hauled into court and threatened with lengthy and costly legal proceedings if he didn't just bite the bullet and plead guilty?

I doubt it.

Furthermore, it seems that Madduri has not only a right but almost a moral obligation to sue Southwest. Situations like this are why lawsuits exits to begin with. Madduri would likely receive minimal redress, since what is done is done, but the amount of bad publicity for Southwest a lawsuit would cause would almost certainly prevent anything similar from happening in the future.

Harry Potter and the ACLU

This story ran in Cape Girardeau's Southeast Missourian on May 28:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri announced Tuesday via news release that it has filed a suit on behalf of a part-time librarian in Poplar Bluff, Mo., who was disciplined after she objected to participating in the promotion of a "Harry Potter" book.

The employee, Deborah Smith, had religious objections to the promotion, "which she believed encouraged children to worship the occult," according to the news release.

Library employees were expected to dress as witches and wizards at a July 21 Potter book release party at the library, an after-hours event, the release said. Smith asked to be excused from working that night due to her religious beliefs and was suspended for 10 days without pay and "suffered retaliation upon her return to work," the ACLU release said, going on to say the retaliation was so severe it forced Smith to quit.

The lawsuit was filed in district court in Cape Girardeau.

There are only two people in the world who know about this blog, and knowing both of you as I do, I bet this catches your eye.

I've known Debbie Smith since I was a kid, and most people in town think she's kind of a fruitcake. Her daughter is my sister's age, and they were good friends in elementary school. I was in high school choir with the daughter, and Mrs. Smith was around quite a bit, so I've had some contact with her.

So when this story broke and I only heard about half of it, I was the first to write it off as Debbie Smith being crazy. But it looks like it's more than that.

Debbie is a Southern Baptist at the moment. She's kind of made the rounds of the Evangelical (Baptist, Pentecostal, Church of Christ) churches in town, and always finds something to be dissatisfied with. She generally ends up leaving after a couple of years.

Now, I think it's a little bit strange to be that hardcore against something like Harry Potter. I'm not a fan myself, but I certainly don't think it promotes the occult or Satanism or anything like that. But Debbie does, and she's within her rights to think that.

The fact that Debbie experienced ridicule at work doesn't bother me too much. If you're around people, you're going to experience ridicule at some point in your life. It's just part of life, and part of being an adult is dealing with it.

The fact that she was disciplined for refusing to participate in this event, on the other hand, is a bigger deal. Much as I hate to say it, I think Debbie might be in the right, and the ACLU most likely has a case. We'll see what comes of it.

The flood may be over, but we've still got trouble

Since there are something like two people in the entire world who know this blog exists, and since you both know about last week's flooding in southern Missouri, I won't recap the details.

Well, the news crews are gone. So is the National Guard. The rivers are all back in their banks, and the levees are being repaired.

By the time I got home, the flooding was over, but the problems weren't. East Side and South Poplar Bluff are in shambles. These are the two lowest-lying areas of town. East Side is almost completely African-American, and both are predominantly poor. These two parts of town are physically separate from the rest of Poplar Bluff: East Side by the river and South Poplar Bluff by railroad tracks. None of these people could afford flood insurance anywhere, let alone in a flood plain, so now all they can do is wait. They've been told not to even begin cleaning up until FEMA shows up to assess the damage, which, in many cases, is almost 100%. In most places, if you drove through today, you wouldn't think there had been a flood. The two neighborhoods look more like the residents just decided one day that it would be easier to throw their trash in the yard rather than carry it to the curb once a week.

No one in Poplar Bluff was killed or seriously injured. You can credit that to the National Guard, the Butler County Sheriff's Office, and the State Water Patrol, who evacuated the neighborhoods before much of the flooding began. But, now that the water is gone, there isn't much any of them can do, either.

The Red Cross is operating out of the convention center for the rest of the week. The Salvation Army is operating out of a Baptist church north of town, and nearly every church is running a drive of some kind. My church is collecting cleaning supplies. A Pentecostal church in South Poplar Bluff is asking people to bring in old clothes. The local Rescue Mission is serving meals to flood victims across the street from the convention center, which, up to a few days ago, was housing evacuees. My brother and I were there today moving crates of water and cleaning kits for the Red Cross, and we didn't see any signs of anybody living there. I don't know where they've gone, but they haven't gone home. At least not all of them. Many of them don't have homes to go to.

My mother is an elementary principal. Her school district covers all of East Side. One of her students came to school one day wearing the same clothes he had been wearing the day before. He knocked on her door and poked his head into her office on the second day the Poplar Bluff school district came back after the flooding. He came in and sat down in front of her desk, and looked down at his feet. "My mom asked if you had any extra clothes and maybe a pair of shoes somewhere here," he said. The boy's family had lost everything but the clothes they were wearing, and had been living at the convention center. She said she didn't, but that she would find him some. She called one of the churches and they found some clothes in his size. I heard my dad tell her that he would go buy him some shoes after school the next day.

I've never been prouder of my town than I am when I look at the way every public entity, every church, every charitable organization and every free hand has come together to make sure these people's needs are met. But the only factor that seems to be missing is FEMA. I've heard they're here, but I haven't seen any sign of them. And, at the moment, nothing can really happen until they show up.

Now that CNN and everybody else is gone, there is kind of a feeling that the world has forgotten about all of this. So please keep praying. We're still here.

Letter from a New Jersey Housewife

The following letter was written by a housewife from New Jersey, and has made its way around the Internet. It is currently playing in an inbox near you:

"Are we fighting a war on terror or aren't we? Was it or was it not
started by Islamic people who brought it to our shores on September
11, 2001?

Were people from all over the world, mostly Americans, not brutally
murdered that day, in downtown Manhattan, across the Potomac from our
nation's capitol and in a field in Pennsylvania ?

Did nearly three thousand men, women and children die a horrible,
burning or crushing death that day, or didn't they?

And I'm supposed to care that a copy of the Koran was "desecrated"
when an overworked American soldier kicked it or got it wet? Well, I
don't. I don't care at all.

I'll start caring when Osama bin Laden turns himself in and repents
for incinerating all those innocent people on 9/11.

I'll care about the Koran when the fanatics in the Middle East start
caring about the Holy Bible, the mere possession of which is a crime
in Saudi Arabia ...

I'll care when these thugs tell the world they are sorry for hacking
off Nick Berg's head while Berg screamed through his gurgling slashed
throat.

I'll care when the cowardly so-called "insurgents" in Iraq come out
and fight like men instead of disrespecting their own religion by
hiding in mosques.

I'll care when the mindless zealots who blow themselves up in search
of nirvana care about the innocent children within range of their
suicide bombs.

I'll care when the American media stops pretending that their First
Amendment liberties are somehow derived from international law instead
of the United States Constitution's Bill of Rights.

In the meantime, when I hear a story about a brave marine roughing up
an Iraqi terrorist to obtain information, know this: I don't care.

When I see a fuzzy photo of a pile of naked Iraqi prisoners who have
been humiliated in what amounts to a college-hazing incident, rest
assured: I don't care.

When I see a wounded terrorist get shot in the head when he is told
not to move because he might be booby-trapped, you can take it to the
bank: I don't care.

When I hear that a prisoner, who was issued a Koran and a prayer mat,
and fed "special" food that is paid for by my tax dollars, is
complaining that his holy book is being "mishandled," you can
absolutely believe in your heart of hearts: I don't care.

And oh, by the way, I've noticed that sometimes it's spelled "Koran"
and other times "Quran." Well, Jimmy Crack Corn and-you guessed it - I
don't care !!

If you agree with this viewpoint, pass this on to all your E-mail
friends. Sooner or later, it'll get to the people responsible for this
ridiculous behavior!

If you don't agree, then by all means hit the delete button. Should
you choose the latter, then please don't complain when more atrocities
committed by radical Muslims happen here in our great Country! And may
I add:

"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a
difference in the world. But, the Marines don't have that problem" --
Ronald Reagan

I have another quote that I would like to add AND......I hope you
forward all this.

"If we ever for get that we're One Nation Under God, then we will be
a nation gone under." Also by.. Ronald Reagan

One last thought for the day:

In case we find ourselves starting to believe all the Anti-American
sentiment and negativity, we should remember England 's Prime Minister
Tony Blair's words during a recent interview. When asked by one of his
Parliament members why he believes so much in America , he said: "A
simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want
in. And how many want out."

Only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you:



1. Jesus Christ
2. The American G. I.

One died for your soul, the other for your freedom.

YOU MIGHT WANT TO PASS THIS ON, AS MANY SEEM TO FORGET BOTH OF THEM. AMEN!"


This letter displays an almost embarrassing lack of knowledge about Islam, war and the way America works. It is little more than an ill-informed rant. This woman has a right to say as she pleases. However, we as Americans have a responsibility to inform ourselves as much as possible before we begin expressing opinions. An opinion formed in ignorance is invalid.

At the beginning, this woman seems to put forth the notion that Islam is an inherently violent, destructive religion. Using the same logic, one should come to the conclusion that Christianity is an inherently violent religion because of events like the Spanish Inquisition and "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland. An article on Islamic website Submission.org reads:

"Some of the terrorist groups which massacre innocent people consider
themselves martyrs. Those who kill the innocent people in the name of their
religion or the name of God, who think of themselves as martyrs should think
twice. Their act is actually strongly condemned by God in the the verses of the Quran."

The woman then states that she will begin to respect the Quran when "the fanatics in the Middle East start caring about the Holy Bible." The problem with this is that she clearly doesn't hold the Quran in high regard. Expecting non-Christians to respect the Bible is unreasonable if Christians continue to hold this position. As a Christian, I am ashamed to be associated with this line of thinking. I hold no doubt that this woman would be angered if she saw a copy of the Bible treated in such a way.

Later, she takes issue with the news industry. News outlets make easy targets, so this tends to happen quite a bit. To begin with, she, like many others, speaks of "the media" in the singular, as if it were a single entity rather than a collection of competing organizations. Furthermore, what she says doesn't make a lot of sense. Must journalists chronicle every single opinion held by an American on every single issue? She seems to feel that because she hasn't seen her particular opinion reflected in a media outlet, the news industry must have its hands tied by some overseas power. This is not what journalism is for. Journalism is meant to report facts, not to pander the cockamamie opinions of housewives from New Jersey.

She speaks of the brutal beheading of American businessman Nick Berg by Abu Musab al-Zarquawi. This is clearly inexcusable. No rational person would claim that there is any legitimate reason for Berg's treatment. I certainly will not attempt to. But we must not allow ourselves to believe that the United States is spotless. To my knowledge, no American has committed an act as atrocious as Berg's beheading. But U.S. Marines have also deliberately gunned down civilians in Iraq, and, as yet, none have been charged with murder.

She also complains of the treatment of prisoners, including the fact that they are issued prayer mats and copies of the Quran and fed food that meets Islamic requirements. She says she is especially upset that her tax dollars are going to support these practices. However, the upkeep of prisoners of war is part of the cost of war. If she doesn't like it, maybe she shouldn't have voted for George Bush.

One of the more distressing things about this line of thinking is those who hold these opinions tend to shout down those who disagree as anti-American and treasonous. This is not only ludicrous but also dangerous. Our nation's greatness lies in its willingness to accept more than one idea. Diverse perspectives form the basis of self-government; without them, America would limp along and never make any kind of progress at all. This woman's line of thinking is not patriotism. It is bigotry in the guise of patriotism. We must take care never to confuse the two.