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The Week’s Most Flying, Crying, and Friendly-Skying Headlines

JUST PLANE CRAZY
2023’s least pleasant travel trend was airplane defecation. A dozen stories involving passengers “letting loose” in the seats and aisles.

Well, welcome to 2024, the year that will make you nostalgic for the days of passenger poop.

With attention focused on the Boeing 737 Max, a plane that can’t seem to stop falling apart midair, investigators have learned that one of the reasons for the reintroduction of “flying is a likely cause of death” after decades of “flying is the safest form of transportation” is that Boeing’s been outsourcing its safety testing to $9-an-hour Indians.

Yes, by all means, entrust the safety of airplanes to people who’ve yet to figure out the toilet.

That’s not a joke; for years the Indian government has run PSAs explaining to its citizens what a toilet is and how to use it. And Boeing was like, “These are the people to stress-test our safety software!”

Worse still, the Punjabi safety-checkers spent all their time on the test flights using the radio comms to call elderly people to tell them that their Microsoft Windows has a virus.

“Please give me your credit card number, ma’am, before the plane I’m on explodes midair over Burbank.”

Long delays, lost luggage, canceled flights, nationwide computer outages, passenger defecation, and onboard bathrooms occupied for the duration because Pete Buttigieg saw an attractive blond guy. Hard to believe that airlines could find a way to make flying worse.

But they did. Kudos.

And it doesn’t stop there…

THE WILLIE ODOMETER
On Sept. 22, 1993, an illiterate black Affirmative Action hire with the on-the-nose name of Willie Odom was piloting a barge near Mobile, Alabama. Odom had no experience using radar, and he couldn’t read a map, which was irrelevant as he’d left his maps at home anyway (“Why I gotsta bring somethin’ I kin’t read nohow?).

Odom plowed his barge into a railway trestle, dislodging the tracks, and the Amtrak Sunset Limited derailed and plunged into the water, killing 47 innocent people.

Odom’s legal defense was “Feets, don’t fail me now!” It worked; he never faced any penalties.

In a sane nation, the Odom disaster would’ve put the brakes on Affirmative Action hires for positions that might involve mass death if performed poorly. Indeed, in 1999 SCOTUS ruled that United Airlines could refuse to hire pilots with bad eyesight (Sutton v. United), because even George Bush Sr.’s gift to dystopia, the ADA, allows for discrimination if a person’s disability poses a “direct threat” to public safety.

That was then. Welcome to The Age of Odom! Today, United Airlines CEO and drag queen (yes, drag queen) Scott Kirby has committed to ensuring that 50 percent of his pilot hires are Affirmative Action cases, regardless of the safety cost (the UA office pool for the death toll of the first Kirby-created crash is open; the smart bet is between 150 and 200). And (in Peter Griffin voice) you think that’s bad, last week the FAA committed to hiring air traffic controllers with “hearing & vision problems, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.”

That’s an actual quote. You know it’s an effed-up list when the friggin’ DWARF is the least objectionable inclusion.

So, while United has a new generation of Willie Odoms in the air flying blind because dey doesn’t know da charts, on the ground, the controllers will be a bunch of blind deaf amputee paralyzed schizophrenic retards having seizures and psychotic episodes.

Pilot: “Oh lawdy, where I be? I jes’ be seein’ sky n’ sheeeet!”

Controller: “Stop soul-stealing my banana-boat you goat-headed concrete caterpillar demon-dog.”

Pilot: “Roger that.”

Yes, you will long for the days of passengers pooping in the seat next to you. You’ll long for any flight that brought you home sullied but alive.

SISTERS ARE SCREWIN’ IT FOR THEMSELVES
Continuing the theme, a humble suggestion: Anyone involved in matters of life or death should not do dance videos.

Please.

As if the “dancing nurses” of Covid weren’t bad enough…

Bereaved relative: “May I hold my father’s hand as he passes?”

Nurse: “Shabba-doo shabba-doo 2-3-4 Billy Bounce moonwalk! Lookit me, I’m a superstar!”

Now the people in charge of keeping planes in the air are following suit.

Spirit Aerosystems, the company responsible for turning the Boeing 737 Max into a high-stakes game of Don’t Break the Ice (“how many parts can fall off before the entire craft disintegrates?”) had, in the months leading up to the current “quality crisis” (that’s Bloomberg’s adorable way of saying “airplanes falling apart crisis”), been posting “dance videos” of its diverse “dream team” of women and women-of-color engineers.

You know what these DEI darlings should’ve been doing instead of dancing? Maybe screwing the doors in so they don’t fall off mid-flight.

Mind you, to these enginHERS, the very word “screw” denotes sexual violence. And “right-hand thread” is misogynistic, suggesting “rightism,” “hand job,” and “threat.”

Surely you can’t expect an Oberlin grad with a degree in Mayan Menstruation Poetry to work under such oppressive circumstances.

That said, Netflix is looking to turn the Boeing crisis into a movie. Last week, authorities in London busted a Dubai gang that was transporting hundreds of millions of laundered pounds via executive-class carry-on baggage. In the Netflix retelling, the 737 door blows open, sucking out the laundering ringleader’s bags, exposing the scheme as the money rains down on a black neighborhood, enabling the locals to buy bread for their family (and crack). Initially accused of negligence, Spirit Aerosystems engineer LaWandella DeGroovius, who’d attached the door using Gorilla Glue (“after I dun put it in mah hair, I figured it could hold a door too”), is lauded for busting the crime ring.

Final scene: LaWandella dances as she’s promoted to Spirit CEO.

Fade out…on the film, and U.S. engineering competence.

TRUMP CLAPS BACK
What does it say about the current state of the GOP that in a presidential primary with two Indians, it’s the white guy who has the communicable disease?

Hell, even Vivek’s middle name—Ganapathy—sounds like a disease.

Ganapathy: noun—a mental disorder in which the patient thinks he’s a four-armed elephant. Side effects: transparent toadying to large white men who feed him peanuts and make him do tricks.

But in fact it’s not Vivek or Nikki “Israel’s never needed America but don’t cut off foreign aid because even though they don’t need it they humor us ’cuz they know it makes us happy” Haley who’s the active-sore loser. It’s Trump.

According to James Carville, aka “the dancing Six Flags guy if he were a Bond villain,” Trump has the clap. Carville bases this claim on the runny red marks on Trump’s hand, prominently displayed as he waved to fans during a recent court appearance.

Carville has no medical training. But as Bill Clinton’s friend and top adviser, he’s probably seen more VD than a red-light-district free clinician.

To quote Business Insider, Trump’s red marks might be something called “hand herpes,” a condition often seen in Muppet puppeteers who don’t wear protection when sticking their hand up Miss Piggy (that tramp gets around).

Should Trump have a venereal disease, it’s unlikely his supporters will mind. Indeed, Evangelicals are already citing iconic conservative Syphilis Schlafly as an example of the right’s tolerance of the venereally affected.

Former Trump adviser George Papillomadopoulos could not be reached for comment.

JULIO IGLESI-ASS
Whether or not Trump’s hands have been in places no hand should be, there’s another prominent GOP who has his finger not on the pulse of his party, but up its rear end.

Matt Gaetz, Republican proctologist.

Reacting to Trump’s strong showing in Iowa, Gaetz triumphantly told Newsmax that the victory proves that Trump’s path back to the White House will be dependent on black and Latino voters. Somehow, Gaetz arrived at this conclusion after Trump won an almost entirely white contest.

“This is the blue collar realignment of the Republican Party and what I can tell you is for every Karen we lose, there’s a Julio and a Jamal ready to sign up for the MAGA movement, and that bodes well for our ability to be more diverse and to be more durable as we head into not only the rest of the primary contest, but also the general election.”

Inside word has it that Gaetz was dared to follow up a victory that showed Trump’s popularity among working-class whites by uttering the single most idiotic and least relevant thing imaginable. According to sources, it was between “we need the votes of Julio and Jamal” and “we need sentient buttermilk flapjacks hanging from drones to protect election integrity.”

In the end, Gaetz rejected the latter, as it’s already RFK Jr.’s slogan.

Also, leave it to Gaetz to round out what was the worst week for “diversity” in ages (the Boeing 737 crisis, the FAA and United announcements, the FBI and Johns Hopkins DEI scandals) by championing “diversity.”

There’s also a theory going around that Gaetz’s comments were a calculated attempt by Florida GOPs to drive Ann Coulter insane before she can write an anti-Trump bestseller.

If the GOP’s gonna base 2024 on attracting Julios and Jamals, party leaders should buy a Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka, because that’s what kamikazes used (and no dancing LaQuedas were involved in the plane’s construction).

Trump’s new platform: the Rhodium Plan! Leaf-blowers for every bean, hot fries for every black.

And no, the plan isn’t named for the precious metal, but Rhodium DeJackshun, a black guy who murdered five people over cold fries. Trump’s promised to pardon him, day one.