Editorial: Call for common courtesy

Sunday, Oct. 9, 2005 | 10:44 a.m.

A word good enough for Vice President Dick Cheney won't fly on Southwest Airlines -- not even by suggestion.

A 32-year-old Washington state woman was asked to disembark a flight in Reno last week when other passengers complained that the slogan imprinted on her T-shirt was offensive. The shirt featured black-and-white images of President Bush, Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice alongside the title of the movie "Meet the Fockers" -- strategically minus one vowel.

The woman, en route home from a trip to Disneyland, first was asked to cover the slogan, which she did by curling up to sleep with a sweatshirt, the Reno Gazette-Journal reports. When the sweatshirt slipped, however, flight attendants asked her to wear the T-shirt inside-out or get off the plane in Reno. The woman and her husband chose to leave.

Southwest employees were merely responding to passengers' complaints and abiding by the carrier's code that allows refusal to transport passengers wearing "lewd, obscene or patently offensive" clothing.

Sadly, there is nothing new about public utterances of the F-bomb, which Cheney himself dropped last year when speaking in the U.S. Senate to Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy. Cheney later apologized. But the mother of all swear words can be seen in graffiti and heard in pop music, movies and even on prime-time TV.

So what's the big deal? Perhaps the fact we even have to ask that question is our answer. Take a look at the slogans and slams that pass for acceptable on everything from bumper stickers to T-shirts. Our sense of public decency is flagging, and common courtesy is becoming less common.

The woman bumped from Southwest has every right to publicly express her political opinion. But at 32, she should know the difference between wit and profanity.