Vulcan Death Grip
A little while back, perhaps only a week or two but the political scandals come so quickly any more that it seems like several election cycles, Mitt Romney got into an altercation on an airplane.
According to the statement Romney released, he politely asked the man in front of him to move his seat to the upright position and the man became violent. I was a bit suspicious of the story from the get go, but the airline did put the other passenger off the plane.
Then the man, rapper Red Foo from the group LMFAO, laid out his side of the story. He says Romney grabbed his shoulder in a “Vulcan Death Grip.”
Now, both parties have plenty of motivation to lie. They both even had good reason to manufacture the incident entirely.
Romney gained points with the public who sympathize with the upright citizen passenger confronted with wild haired hippie of dubious ethnicity, who dealt with the situation (if you’re a Romney believer, you’re a Romney believer) in a calm but masterful manner. More than that, though, he got it into the newspapers that he was flying in coach. Mitt Romney, worth somewhere between a quarter and a half a billion dollars, just being a regular guy. Probably even had a burger at McDonald’s in the terminal.
You would think posturing like that wouldn’t mean much, but when Scott Brown won the senate seat in Romney’s Massachusetts basically on the fact that he drives a truck, politicians took note.
LMFAO, on the other hand, wrote a song about the incident. After seeing a short preview, it’s clear they have a lot to gain. Two guys without a great deal of talent, trying hard to be just like every other rapper in the world. Any publicity they get out of this will be helpful to them. They could be the next Joe the Plumber, with a record album ready to go, hoping to ride their 15 minutes of fame into a permanent position among the famous and rich.
One thing I haven’t heard much of in this story is the eyewitness accounts from other passengers. Once upon a time, that would have been the media’s default angle. Find some people who were on the flight, ask them what they saw, and report it.
I don’t think it should be hard for a good reporter to find them. I’m sure that right now, as I write this, there are hundreds of people in Boston and Vancouver and several points in between, having conversations in bars, at their kitchen tables, in their office canteen that sound something like this: “A friend of a friend of my brother’s was sitting right across from them and he said….”
In fact, I’m guessing that major media outlets have had phone calls and e-mails from people who were there, just waiting to be interviewed.
Hasn’t happened. And I don’t know why.
(p.s. I do not live in North America. If the coverage was there and I missed it, then never mind)
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