A Guy Walks On To A Plane...

Deshon Marman was not having a good day.  A rising young college football star, he’d just been present at the funeral of his good friend who’d been shot and killed, and had just watched his friend be laid in the ground, never to run on a football field again.  He’d stood to give eulogy on his friend’s behalf – surely weighing the matters of a very violent world in his mind as he did so. 

Then his day got worse.

Standing in line at San Francisco Int’l Airport, waiting to board his flight on US Airways and return to school in New Mexico, a flight attendant noted that Marman was sporting the fashion of many young men in this country; “saggy pants,” thereby exposing not skin, but the upper part of his boxers.  A call was placed to SFPD that Deshon was “exposing himself.”  Despite that he wasn’t exposing himself at all.  He was asked by the attendant to pull up his pants for the flight, and he refused then as well as after having taken his seat. 

The entire plane was then evacuated.  There have been no reports that Marman was violent, causing a ruckus, or doing anything other than verbally refusing to comply with the request.  But hundreds of people had to be evacuated?  Really?  There was nothing to indicate that he was going to try to take the plane down once it was in the air.  Saggy pants do not qualify as an act of terrorism.

Once the boy would have been seated, nobody was going to see those boxer shorts anyway.  Come on, people, we have to be realistic here. 

The result was that after refusing to exit the plane and being removed with all of the other passengers, Deshon then became belligerent and scuffled with the officers, one of whom twisted their knee, which tacked on an assault-to-a-police-officer charge being slapped on top of the others. 

His mother is right to worry how this incident will affect his scholarship. 

I guarantee that had a woman walked onto that plane in a bikini and wearing a Miss America sash, she would not have been asked to cover up.  Why aren’t girls asked to cover up the unsightly muffin tops hanging uncovered over their pants?  I promise, my cleavage on any given day exposes more skin than Deshon’s saggy-pants-look-at-my-boxers ever did.  How about the girl I stood behind in line last year at the Walmart whose backless, ripped t-shirt showed off her worn, saggy, too-small bra that was held together in the back with dozens of rubber bands?  Where were the fashion police then?!  And don't even get me started with the ten-year old girls prancing around with their thongs peeking out over the top of their butt-cleavage-baring low rise jeans.

 

Bad clothing choices may offend us, we may look at people on the street and wonder “wtf are they thinking?”  I love Whoopi Goldberg with all my heart, but I often wonder who dresses her before sending her out onstage every morning on The View. 

Mouthing off to police officers is a bad thing.  I don’t care how angry you are, and I have been angry at police officers a time or two, they have the power to mess us up and get away with it, so I highly recommend slapping virtual duct-tape on our mouths at every encounter. 

But the question remains, was the initial call to the police that Deshon was “exposing himself” correct?  US Airways spokeswoman Valerie Wunder said the airline’s dress code forbids “indecent exposure or inappropriate” attire.  There is no doubt that more skin was being shown on that plane than was on Marman’s self.  He wasn’t trying to pull a Weinergate, he was simply exhibiting the fashion of his generation – much as we old folks may not like it.

The irony here is that once upon a time the flight attendants themselves couldn’t bend over without giving the passengers a peek at their goods – Deshon Marman was simply a day late to the fashion show, and now $11,000 dollars short. 

UPDATE:  6/17

Raw video footage as seen on KRON-News, San Francisco.  Frankly, I'm amazed Marman remained as calm as he did.  This undoubtedly shows that he isn't the 'thug' or 'ill-mannered jerk' that I've seen him labeled as all over social media.

Update 6/22

More follow-up here.  If only he'd shed the pants and gone with the boxers, Marman would have been just fine.

Update 6/24 Deshon Marman's mom, Donna Doyle, speaks to the media:

© Kymberlie Ingalls, June 16, 2011