Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Not Gonna Take it Any More

By John Ballard



Steven Slater is my current favorite person in the news. He's the flight attendant who finally had enough of passengers.who have no business flying.



Joe Paduda, whose blog I have linked a few times, gives this first-person account.



Just a few minutes ago, a flight attendant, fed up with a &^@&*(?! of a passenger, ran to the exit door, pulled the emergency escape hatch, inflated the slide, and jumped out of the plane.


Yes, the plane was on time, and no, it hadn't been sitting on the tarmac broiling in the sun with backed up potties.


Fortunately, JetBlue 1052 was on the ground in New York... when Steven Slater, the flight attendant in question, pulled the cord.


Wait, this gets better...


Turns out Mr Slater was reacting to a passenger who had jumped up just after the plane had landed, started to get his bag out (you've undoubtedly been on a plane with one of these jerks), refused to stop when Slater asked him to. In fact, the passenger's bag fell out of the overhead and smacked Slater on his head.


Slater didn't go nuts then - he actually asked the passenger for an apology. Instead of doing the right thing, the guy (ok, it might have been a woman, but we all know it wasn't) cussed Slater out. Whereupon Slater got on the PA, screamed a few choice words (reportedly "To the passenger who called me a m---f--er, f--- you!...I've been in the business 28 years. I've had it. That's it") over the squawk box, and exited the craft.


I kid you not.

One of the rewards of working in retirement is the smug knowledge that if you get fed up with a job you can tell 'em to take the job and shove it. Paradoxically, that somehow helps me tolerate otherwise intolerable people who need caregiving. 

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