Jet Blue policy: No T-shirts in Arabic on its planes

Published 8/28/06

It doesn’t matter what the shirts say. JetBlue’s policy apparently prohibits any passenger from wearing a shirt with Arabic on it, even if it includes an English translation — in this case, “We will not be silent.”

I said “but the message on my t-shirt is not offensive, it just says “we will not be silent”. I got this t-shirt from Washington DC. There are more than a 1000 t-shirts printed with the same slogan, you can google them or email them at wewillnotbesilent@gmail.com . It is printed in many other languages: Arabic, Farsi, Spanish, English, etc.”

Inspector Harris said: “We cant make sure that your t-shirt means we will not be silent, we don’t have a translator. Maybe it means something else”.

I said: “But as you can see, the statement is in both Arabic and English”.

He said “maybe it is not the same message”. So based on the fact that Jet Blue doesn’t have a translator, anything in Arabic is suspicious because maybe it’ll mean something bad!

Read all about it.

PS: Oh, and the guy was then forced to sit in the back of the plane instead of in the seat he had chosen a month before. Way to go, JetBlue!

The Fray

4 responses (add yours)

Dorene says:

They ~made~ him sit in the back of the plane? Wow… what a throwback to the 50s. Crazy.

August 28th, 2006 at 12:52 PM

Andrew says:

And you just KNOW that if he was wearing a shirt that said, “I want to rape your sister and tear out your mother’s heart with my teeth” in French, no one would say a word.

August 29th, 2006 at 8:53 PM

gnomic says:

I’m a bit unclear as to the security threat of a T-shirt slogan.

WOW - My CEO holds Jet Blue out as a beacon for customer service.

Its shocking how scared Americans are (and yep, I’m an American) in thier own country. We want to kick 20 million immigrents out - even they do much of the hard work. We want the government to read our mail so we can be safe - even through we are more likely to be hit my lightening.

A few years ago I’d write something like “I’m waiting for the plan to ship people off to camps for our protection.” as hyperbole at this point. Now I’m serious.

America, the foolish.

August 29th, 2006 at 10:12 PM

Michael Carroll says:

Is it my imagination or is the United States becoming a very scary place? I look forward to the day when America once again stands for something positive, human rights and support for dometic and international laws. At least Raed was’t deported to Syria for torure like Mahar Arar was in 2002. Maybe U.S. Authorities are slipping a little bit.

September 1st, 2006 at 12:46 PM