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Dress codes in the air?

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Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Somebody call the Supreme Court. Media outlets across the land have discovered that Southwest Airlines recently almost infringed on the right of passengers to dress like TV weather girls.

In July, Kyla Ebbert, 23, bound from San Diego to Tucson, was asked to adjust her sweater and short skirt. In the other case early this month, the Associated Press reports that 21-year-old Setara Qassim, bound from Tucson to Burbank in a green halter top, was asked to wrap herself in a blanket. Then on Sept. 14, Southwest actually apologized to Ebbert. Naturally, for purposes of establishing veracity, coverage of these events was accompanied by photos and video.

First, we must ask ourselves: Wow, where’s the party in Tucson?

Next, we must realize that these incidents stand as firm and ample evidence that our Constitution is under assault. In fact, I’m here to spuriously assert that these cases are just part of a vast pattern of near-infringements on flier freedoms.

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Early this month, flying Southwest between Las Vegas and Manchester, N.H., I believe I was nearly put off the plane for wearing pants that revealed my ankles. (Instead, the fascists, they made me sit and wear a seat belt.) A few weeks before that, I feel sure, the flight attendants on US Airways between Charlotte, N.C., and Albany, N.Y., almost bumped me over my highly attractive haircut. (Instead, the ogres pumped dry air into the plane to make my hair go flat.)

So, fliers and civil libertarians, don’t be distracted by any flagrantly consumerist suggestions that we should instead be talking about how rising airline profits coincide with delays, cancellations and overbookings and general neglect of customer service. The real issue is near-inconvenience to us, the physically fetching.

We’re here, we’re smokin’, let no discouraging words be spoken.

And now that I’ve taken a stand alongside my sisters in near-repression, I’m sure the world’s media will join me -- at least, you know, until they see the 46-year-old man in the video.


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