It seems like more often now than ever, our civil rights seem to be disregarded. I hear about Howard Stern being taken off the air because of what he says on his show and a monument of the Ten Commandments being removed from a public building somewhere in South Carolina. Both of those are good examples of violations of two of our civil liberties. However, in an editorial printed in "The New York Times" called "This is your Proselytizer Speaking," it seems like the right to say anything you want had gone too far. The First Amendment provides for the right to free speech, but it also protects us from being subjected to speech that might be dangerous or offensive when we cannot avoid hearing it, which I think is what is going on in this particular "New York Times" article.
In this particular case, the American Airlines pilot, Roger Findiesen, was clearly wrong in doing what he did. Mr. Findiesen clearly knew the setting in which he was in because he was in control of it. Not everyone has the same beliefs and it was wrong that Mr. Findiesen took advantage of his position and used it to "share his emotions." Unlike the Howard Stern case in which he airs on a radio show that transmits on a certain frequency and listeners are able to change the station or turn off the radio at anytime they please, these listeners on that American Airlines flight didn't have that sort of luxury. These poor passengers were tightly strapped to their seats by their seatbelts and didn't have a choice of leaving the plane or muting the pilot's voice if they didn't want to listen to him rant about his faith.
When the writer Tom Wolfe described "pilotspeak" as a soothing and generic tone, he meant it to be reassuring to the passengers onboard. According to the editorial, "pilotspeak" was mastered by a low-key test pilot, Chuck Yeager, who had a "poker-hollow West Virginia drawl" and was successfully imitated by a successive generations of pilots.
