Ivanka and the JetBlues
For Christmas, soon to be first daughter Ivanka Trump, her cousins, husband Jared, and the couple's three small children, Arabella, Joseph, and Theodore, booked a low-key commercial JetBlue flight to San Francisco.
Brooklyn Labor Relations and Employment lawyer Daniel Jennings Goldstein was also along for the ride. The problem is that Goldstein took umbrage at having to share in-flight cabin air with the Trump-Kushner entourage.
Legendary in his own right, Mr. Goldstein (below at left) is a fascinating guy. When not litigating sexual harassment lawsuits and marching against Donald Trump with the Hunter College professor he calls his husband, Matthew Lasner (below at right), Goldstein enjoys staying active in liberal causes and taking family vacations with son Amos.
Goldstein's most recent attention-getting episode unfolded when Harvard Ph.D. Lesner spotted Ivanka and Co. in an airport terminal and responded by burning up his Twitter feed, alerting Trump-haters and ISIS terrorists:
A short time later, while the aircraft was in the process of boarding, Dan ruined everybody's day when he couldn't control an emotional outburst that berated the #banalityofevil by telling Ivanka, "Your father is ruining the country."
Swinging his son around in his arms, Daniel's anger issues were further exposed when he attempted to get an answer from the entire flight crew: "Why is she on our flight? She should be flying private."
Clearly, based on their lifestyle, Matt and Dan are certainly not guilty of harassing hesitant women into having sex by crooning Christmas songs like "Baby, It's Cold Outside." However, based on Goldstein's erratic boarding-behavior, the dynamic duo does seem to have an inclination to harass wealthy women on airplanes.
Although Jared Kushner was standing in the aisle the entire time, Goldstein, whose legal know-how counsels him to do otherwise, directed all his vitriol toward the woman.
Class act that she is, a poised and polished Ivanka ignored the immature liberal lunatic, tried to divert her children's attention by occupying them with a box of crayons, and attempted to play down the whole incident.
Nonetheless, as the flight crew decided that Goldstein and Lasner needed to deplane, Dan defended his First Amendment rights by screaming, "You're kicking me off for expressing my opinion!"
At the ready, Matt quickly updated his Twitter feed with breakneck speed, pounding out with his muscular thumbs:
In response to the controversy, Daniel and Matt have since deleted their Twitter accounts and refused to speak to reporters. Yet the truth is that the two weren't exactly "kicked off" the plane. Instead, they and the well-dressed child were politely escorted off the airline and offered a seat on the next flight.
As a litigator, Daniel should have recognized the glaring inconsistency of balking at being kicked off the flight for "expressing his opinion" while simultaneously demanding that a woman be kicked off the flight because she didn't share his opinion.
Moreover, notwithstanding the hysterical histrionics at play and the presence of horrified children, the last person who should be telling any woman what to do with her body, let alone if she should "fly private" or not, is a gay liberal man.
After all, if Ivanka were at an abortion clinic, and not waiting to take off in an airplane, a liberal like Daniel Goldstein would be applauding her right to choose.
Therefore, based solely on a person's political inclination, Daniel Goldstein's bias toward Ivanka Trump proves, once again, that liberals see themselves as authorized to selectively discriminate.
Jeannie hosts a blog at www.jeannie-ology.com.
Destination of flight corrected