In a shocking expose this week, the Los Angeles Times Travel section revealed that airlines discriminate against passengers who smell bad.

Most U.S. carriers have a little-known clause in their ticket rules (under safety and comfort) that says they can refuse to fly a malodorous passenger.

“If someone has an offensive odor that’s not caused by a disability or illness, American can remove them from the flight,” says airline spokesman Tim Wagner.

Domestic airlines actually have body-odor policies written into their conditions of carriage.

There is no mention of the ACLU’s reaction to this blatant odorism.

We hope that on a day when their protest calendars aren’t full, activists will call an urgent action to support those who choose to smell differently. “Smell,” after all, is a cultural construct created by the patriarchy and supported by middle class consumerism — the ideology of daily showers (consuming water) and deodorant use (consuming precious deodorant trees). The right to express oneself through hygiene choice should not be suppressed by the airlines, most of which are owned by Wal-Mart and are no doubt supported in this horror by the current administration.

(remove tongue from cheek now)

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GOPinion readers: perhaps the protesters can tap dance or expose their breasts — two protest techniques of questionable efficacy that we’ve written about recently.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 7th, 2005 at 12:03 pm by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under Funny ... to us. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.