"...pick a seat, we gotta go."

Two years ago, so said one 22 year old Southwest Airlines stewardess flight attendant, as the plane was about to depart, as she tried to chivvy the still unseated passengers into grabbing a seat.

So what, you ask?

Two of the unseated passengers were black females, and they are now suing Southwest for the stew's "racist" remark.

I shit you not.

Read the story here.

Perhaps an explanation is in order.

Back in the old, unenlightened days, there was a nursery rhyme that went like this:

"Eenie-Meenie-Minie-Mo, Catch a nigger by his toe, If he hollers make him pay, fifty dollars every day."

It was used like the old "hot potato, cold potato" counting out rhyme to attempt to randomly choose something as important as who got to bat first at the local sandlot ballgame.

Later, (about the time my fortysomething self started wearing long pants) the offending second line was changed to:

"Catch a tiger by his toe."

Most kids nowadays have never even heard the original version, which dates back to before the Civil War.

After I read about this, I asked a few of the black people I ran into today for their reaction. None of them had heard the story in the news. I repeated the "Eenie-meenie..." phrase to them, and asked if they found it offensive. To a (wo)man, they looked at me as if I was a brother from another planet.

After I explained why I had asked, they were, hmm, unsupportive, to say the least, of the lawsuit.

One woman, working the counter at a fast-food franchise, (and incidentally, about my age, and so, old enough to be cognizant of the original version of the rhyme) replied, "You are kiddin' me."

I opened the paper and showed her the article.

She shook her head and said:

"Some people will try any kind of way to get some money that don't belong to them."

Couldn't have said it better my own damn self.

UPDATE - 2004-01-23: In a burst of common sense I've come to think of as rare in our increasingly litiginous society, a jury found for the defendants, that is, the airline. The full story is here, but in case it falls off into the you-gotta-pay to read archives of what we residents of the Houston area call The Comical, here's a snippet or two...

...by the toe." They testified at the two-day trial that they were embarrassed, humiliated and frustrated. Fuller said she suffered a small seizure on the flight home, which said was triggered by the remark. Later at home, she said she had a grand mal seizure and was bedridden for three days."

Is that hilarous, or what? Who knew that a nursery rhyme had such deadly power? I cannot help but think of the old TV Show "Sanford & Son," when old Fred would fake heart attacks to try and get his way. Life imitates Art. I wonder if Fuller used to watch the show. "Scott A. Wissel, appointed to represent the women after they filed a handwritten complaint, declined comment about the verdict. In his closing argument he said Cundiff's use of the rhyme was tantamount to a racial slur."

Does this shyste..., err, ambulance chas, err, lawyer's name strike you as oddly fitting? If there is a god, please tell me Scott pronounces it to rhyme with "easel."

Finally, Fuller protests... "It's a shame that the jury pool we had to draw from did not have one black and not one minority," she said." Well, there were seven men on the jury, but wait, oh yes, even though that men are in fact a minority, they don't count as such in Bizarro PC world.

But if what you really meant, Ms. Fuller, was that you shoulda had some more (presumably more sympathetic to your whack-ass attempt to extort money from a big company) blacks on the jury, I have a few points.

First, your attorney had every chance to get some blacks on the jury during the voir dire phase of the trial. But I'm guessing that any lawyer capital S Stoopid enough to take this case on a contingency basis is maybe not the star of the local bar, so to speak.

Second, who the fuck is the racist here? The jury would have had to be composed of morons for you to wins this case. Seems you don't have a very high opinion of your ethnic group.

Finally, the poor, put upon, downtrodden, held down by the White Man, Ms. Fuller, who was, by the way, going to Las Vegas on vacation, (Ain't it great that we live in a country when even the oppressed can afford such a lifestyle?), laments... "Something has to be done to make sure there is justice in America for blacks." Hon, you just got a heapin' helpin' :-).

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