The T -Shirt Test

A woman is booted from a Southwest Airlines flight for wearing a t-shirt depicting Bush and Cheny with the caption "Meet the Fuckers." You can purchase the t-shirt here.Southwest is justifying its actions via an established policy prohibiting "lewd, obscene or patently offensive" attire. And, in fact, if a Southwest employee had asked the woman to change or cover her shirt before boarding, I wouldn't be blogging about it. "Fuck" is still a swear word and people get antsy about it. Big deal. But the fact of the matter is, the woman made it through the gate and onto the plane past several Southwest employees and flight attendants while wearing the t-shirt. She was only asked to change her shirt or leave the plane when other passengers complained. Here's my question:Who complained?Whether motivated by politics or an aversion to curse words, what kind of person lodges an official complaint about a stranger's t-shirt? What kind of people feel they have a right to a visual space free of expression with which they disagree? Whatever happened to objecting to something privately?I am offended on a daily basis by things I see and hear. I do not attempt to get people removed from airplanes over it. I understand that we are an increasingly polarized nation. And I understand that the woman wearing the t-shirt should have expected people to object to it. But there must be a line between objecting and enforcing. And this is a line that is rapidly deteriorating . To an alarming degree we resort to coercive and prohibitive tactics to enforce values that are not universal and that should be outside the purview of the law. That's what objections to gay marriage are about. That's what objections to legal abortion are about. Now we are objecting to each other's clothing and using whatever authority is at hand to enforce our opinions. No one should have that kind of power.