Many of you probably saw the network news reports about the United Airlines flight yesterday that returned to Dulles International airport when a crazed passenger yelling something about Jihad was restrained by other passengers. What you might have seen only on local but not on national broadcasts was a crazed Pennsylvania State University professor who began ranting loony left slogans on a flight from Nicaragua to Miami last weekend.
The Washington Post published a story about professor Karen Halnon whose rantings sounded too embarrassingly close to an MSNBC host for NBC Nightly News or the other national broadcasts to cover. Even the Washington Post described her leftwing rants as a "loud foreign policy lecture" rather than get any more specific in its characterization:
A college professor was arrested at Miami International Airport over the weekend after launching into a loud foreign policy lecture during a flight from Nicaragua. Her rant was captured on video and later posted online.
“The United States has declared war on Venezuela!” a woman aboard a plane says repeatedly in the video.
The Miami New Times identified the woman as 52-year-old Karen Halnon, an associate professor of sociology at Pennsylvania State University-Abington.
“Venezuela has been declared a national security threat,” Halnon continues.
“You’re a national security threat,” a passenger responds.
Halnon was charged with disorderly conduct, according to an arrest affidavit.
To get an idea of just how Moonbat crazy Halnon acted aboard the flight, one has to look at her frothings on a video recorded by a passenger:
To make matters worse, crazy Karen broke out a cigarette and lit up. Notice where she ends up stuffing it after a few puffs.
Her enormous sense of chip-on-the-shoulder entitlement is revealed in this interview with her in Philadelphia Magazine which includes her bizarre reason for smoking on the flight:
But what of the cigarette? One reporter who covered your actions said that lighting a cigarette on a plane is just a little better than yelling "BOMB!"
...Listen, the point is, I am a sociologist, and I live in an intellectual world. A sociologist always thinks in terms of symbols. And every revolutionary I know smokes. It was identifying with the revolutionary cause. And then, beyond that, it is a symbol that the United States is a smoking gun. The action was necessary. They are going to kill many more people.
So lighting up on an airplane is some sort of revolutionary act? Does this professor also have a revolutionary home kit consisting of a Che Guevara T-shirt and a Mao Secret Decoder Ring? The rest of the interview also contains these nuggets from the self-styled Penn State La Pasionaria:
I'm very knowledgable about that part of the world. I teach about U.S. imperialism in Latin America. And the U.S. has declared war against Venezuela. That means military aggression. They tried to take out Hugo with a coup, and then they took him out with cancer.
...The problem is U.S. military global domination. And they want the oil. And they want the water. And so I found that this act was a necessary Thoreau-like act of civil disobedience. I had to speak out now. The situation is dire and urgent, and any sacrifice I make for my own self, if it saves lives — there have been far too many lives lost due to U.S. global military domination.
The FBI and TSA tortured me. My voice generally doesn't sound like this. I was put in a room with two fans in the ceiling, it was freezing cold for hours and hours and hours. I asked repeatedly to go to the bathroom. They made me wet my pants. They humiliated me. And then to make matters worse, I have a stomach condition. Everything that comes in goes out. I've been like that for months since I left Cuba. I've lost over 30 pounds. And I was yelling that I had to go to the bathroom. But they ignored me, and I defecated on the floor. And they made me pick it up and laughed at me.
So after causing so much trouble on the flight for the other passengers, Miss Revolutionary had the gall to try to hit them up for bail money which resulted in a humorous response as recalled by Kelly Martin who filmed the loon:
Martin said that as police were taking the professor off the plane, she shouted at passengers about how they could help post her bail.
“You realize that all of us just missed our connecting flights because of you,” Martin said. “None of us are going to bail you out of jail.”
This airborne disturbance seemed to be at least as newsworthy as the incident out of Dulles yesterday. Could it be that the leftwing rantings failed to make it on the national networks because it would make liberals too uncomfortable?
