Is JetBlue a Red-State Airline?

Nick Gillespie | September 2, 2006

At the always-entertainin' Extreme Mortman, we learn of the Daily Kos' latest outrage: That upstart (read: perpetually on the verge of shutting down) airline JetBlue carries Fox News but not CNN.

Quoth the Mortman:

Check out what's bugging [the Kossacks] now:

JetBlue doesn't carry CNN. ..JetBlue has a complaints form on their website. ... Suggest that by carrying FoxNews and not CNN, you feel that by supporting JetBlue, you are supporting the republican party, and this will affect your airline choices in the future, and adversely affect your desire to fly on JetBlue again. ... Lets see people powered politics in action.

And while we're flying Air Kossack, can they also get the pillows and blankets put back on the flights? And whatever happened to those stupid little bags of peanuts? I mean, are stupid little bags of pretzels any more fuel efficient? Can you tell the pilot to stop waking me because the Grand Canyon is on the left -- when I'm sitting on the right? And please, please, please, for the love of God, I want an an in-flight magazine whose crossword puzzle isn't already filled out! And can someone please remove all those motherf--ing snakes from the plane?

More here.

Comments

|9.2.06 @ 1:31PM|#

Yeah, I noticed this on my last JetBlue flight a month ago or so. I'm pretty sure this is part of an overall package deal with NewsCorp more than anything else, though; all three in-flight movie channels are Fox-branded, and they carry allied cable channels like FX, too.

|9.2.06 @ 1:36PM|#

Nick, you can go head and say "motherfucking". It's alright, baby, let it just roll off ya tung.

|9.2.06 @ 2:01PM|#

In other news, pope catholic, Kos upset.

|9.2.06 @ 2:13PM|#

The dumb thing is that CNN isn't particularly better than Fox, politically speaking. And they go for the tabloid and entertainment news crap. (Their web news site is pathetic. 'Father runs baby over with lawnmower. WATCH NOW')

I'd rather have the BBC.

|9.2.06 @ 2:24PM|#

Wow, I knew Kossacks were a bit eccentric in the things they obsess over, but this is a bit extreme.

|9.2.06 @ 3:19PM|#

A stale joke from back in the Cold War had it that whenever anything bad happened, be it bad weather or getting caught in traffic, it was all part of a communist plot. I remember back in the nineties when people were late for meetings, for instance, they'd blame it on El Nino--also as stale as the bread it was served on.

...but jokes about the conspiracy theories of politicos never go stale. Maybe it's that partisans are all convinced that if we were all honest we'd all come to the same conclusions--I don't know. ...but something about partisanship makes people look and sound hilariously stupid.

P.S. Who is this Kos fellow and why should I care about what he thinks?

b-psycho|9.2.06 @ 3:51PM|#

If the pretzels were the big, soft, butter-slathered kind I'd love 'em. But fuck the little crispy ones, 'tis like chewing wood...

|9.2.06 @ 4:17PM|#

The neocon dominated Fox and the liberal dominated CNN are both often obnoxious-Fox on foreign policy issues,-CNN on domestic policy matters.

Fox often seems to be a propaganda organ for the Israeli government. Just last night I caught a guy making arguments that the US needs to push for regime change in Syria. For the neocons at Fox and else ware, the overriding issue is that the US be actively interventionist in the Mid-East.

And check this out; Rupert Murdoch, who owns the Fox News and Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard magazine, has held two fund raisers for Hillary Clinton. Note that Hillary of late has advocated a war-hawk interventionist position vis a vis Iraq and the Mid-East in general.

I have caught some actual limited government conservatism on Fox, but not much and never on international issues. And how about their Soviet style rah rah coverage of the Iraq war?

On CNN, government programs are often called "investments". The answer to high energy prices? Why, it's higher energy taxes of course. And then give some of the purloined bucks to the development of bio/solar/renewable/whatever... The idea of a freer market as the solution and government restrictions and taxes as the problem is usually a neglected concept at CNN.

|9.2.06 @ 5:27PM|#

I really like the little plane flying across the map - it's less biased than Fox and less insipid than CNN.

|9.2.06 @ 6:30PM|#

WTF? I get all my news from YouTube, their editorial stance is decidedly more nuanced than CNN or Fox.

|9.2.06 @ 7:54PM|#

I think the head of JetBlue is a MoMo anyway and who cares they have hotter flight attendents then the other carriers anyway. That new young workforce.

|9.3.06 @ 2:49AM|#

I'd rather they serve food instead of serving either Fox or CNN. For a $400 RT ticket from LA to NYC, they should serve something more substantial than those blue potato chips.

|9.3.06 @ 3:23AM|#

a SoaP reference? beautiful.

Mike Laursen|9.3.06 @ 10:21AM|#

What's a "MoMo"? Are you saying he's a "a dish popular in Sikkim and Tibet" or "a type of peach tree"? Those are the only definitions I could find.

|9.3.06 @ 4:28PM|#

In-flight Fox? So what? It's still less annoyong than that "Night At The Improv" shit you get with Southwest...

|9.3.06 @ 6:42PM|#

MoMo = Mormon

|9.3.06 @ 11:08PM|#

And whatever happened to those stupid little bags of peanuts? I mean, are stupid little bags of pretzels any more fuel efficient?

Actually the removal of peanuts has nothing to do with fuel efficiency. Due to the fact that air is constantly recirculated on a plane, the threat of peanut dust from dozens of packets being opened is magnified for people allergic to them. Hence their replacement with safer pretzels.

<aside>
Did anyone else find Snakes on a Plane a little underwhelming? I mean, when a movie is marketed as a potential cult hit, I expect to see excesses-but aside from a few initial gross out scenes, it was a lot tamer than I expected. Maybe I'm just jaded from all the stuff I've seen on the Internet. Also, besides the muthafucking snakes line, the movie completely ignored its blaxploitation heritage.
</aside>