#abcde redford

[awfulbabynames]

Southwest gate agent mocks 5-year-old girl's name

A Southwest Airlines gate agent at John Wayne Airport is accused of being awful to a five-year old girl because of her unique name - Abcde - even posting a photo of her boarding pass on social media.

ABCDE

I hope that little girl stays healthy and on her 18th birthday can march right down to the court house and change that GOD AWFUL FUCKSHIT NAME that her COTTAGE CHEESE FOR BRAINS MOTHER gave her. 

[sumukhcomedy]

Abcde: The Consent of the Punchline

Over the past couple years, “consent” has come up regularly in comedy, entertainment, and our society. Of course, “consent” is usually referring to sex and the revelations of the magnitude of harassment and assault within industries and our society. But “consent” also goes into realms of our everyday lives unrelated to sex. “Consent” happens in how we navigate into what is acceptable and comfortable in our behavior and speech with others. It’s about having some understanding towards others and to treat others in a manner in which you would want to be treated which would ideally be with dignity and respect.

The recent news controversy generated from social media involving a mother, Traci Redford, complaining to Southwest Airlines about a gate attendant making fun of her 5-year-old daughter’s name opens the door for this kind of a discussion. On paper, the situation seems dumb. The mother is dumb to have named her daughter Abcde. She seems dumb to be complaining about it to a major company and not dealing with the consequences of her own actions. That’s the simple evaluation based off a one-sentence title on the story. But, uncovering at least some aspects of the full story that have come out, the whole situation has an impact on business and comedy and is a reflection on our own behavior in society and our speech in making people laugh.

Based on the story as we understand it, a Southwest gate attendant laughed when noticing that the child’s name was Abcde. The laughter and the chatting with other attendants about it was enough that apparently the child questioned to her mother why she was being made fun of. The mother expressed her disapproval to the gate attendant. Whether the gate attendant provided an apology or not or how the situation actually ended in person is unclear. At some point, the Southwest gate attendant in question posted a photo of the boarding pass on social media to further express how funny/amazed she was by the name, Abcde. After finding out about that, Redford made her claims to Southwest Airlines. This was picked up by media outlets and Southwest Airlines apologized publicly.

Let me first start out with the comedy involved in the matter. There are many jokes to be made about the name of Abcde, of a mother who names their child this, and on and on. I don’t need you to tell the jokes as plenty now exist out on Twitter in response to this story and maybe were even the kind of jokes or reactions expressed by the gate attendant. But, at the end of the day, even if the gate attendant and everyone on the Internet is making fun of the mother, this is the name and the identity of a 5-year-old child who has epilepsy that is the brunt of the joke and the cause of the laughter. It seems only human to react with perhaps shock or laughter to something unusual or even absurd and we can acknowledge that the name “Abcde” is that in our culture. But it’s another step to laugh and not acknowledge what is wrong in laughing enough to then post the ordeal on social media in order to gain more laughter and acknowledgment. That further behavior is inappropriate as an employee of Southwest and simply as a responsible adult in society. Traci Redford has a point to being unhappy with her private information and her daughter’s private information being shared publicly without her consent and with the sole purpose of mocking her.

I brought up “consent” at the beginning of this essay because a 5-year-old going to an airport is not consenting to be made fun of or to be looked at in an odd way or laughed at. It certainly shouldn’t happen from an adult in a position of responsibility. The Southwest gate attendant went too far. If the mother voiced her issue with the situation, then why post the photo on social media? What is the goal in doing that other than the kind of self-indulgence we see from many social media posts and the need for laughter or approval as a result? Should the gate attendant be fired? If she has been a good employee other than this situation, then no. Should she be reprimanded in some way? Definitely. It’s a fine example of how we continue to navigate unclear social media policies with appropriate behavior and humor. I would expect Southwest Airlines would have a social media policy for its employees and I can’t imagine posting any passenger’s information on social media is within the grounds of appropriate behavior.

From a comedy standpoint, though, this continues a trend that I simply loathe in which we see grade school behavior out of adults. There are plenty of people who take photos of others in public without their consent and post the photo to make fun of them. This is done by everyone from well-known comedians to someone like the gate attendant at Southwest. There is a major difference between a person showing up to a comedy show and being made fun of and a person out in public just trying to lead their life. A person who shows up to a comedy show has the awareness that they are here for comedy and to be entertained. They consent to the possibility that they will be made fun of and some clearly even want that or expect that from comedy. A person who is just out in public is not at a comedy show. Our entire society is not a comedy show. They should be allowed to be who they are without potentially being made fun of for the Internet’s consumption. We’ve seen this before on social media and seen others embrace what’s wrong with it. And yet, people are still doing it. There seems to be no line or rules to that, either, even though there is a simple rule in my mind to it all: you don’t roast someone who didn’t know they were going to be roasted.

Traci Redford is still at fault here as well to some extent and she, of course, will get the brunt of the criticism. This could have been addressed simply with Southwest customer service (and, as someone who flies frequently with Southwest, I know personally they have great customer service) and I’m not sure how this became a more public story than it should have been. Is it the gate attendant’s fault? Is it Redford’s fault? I have no clue but somehow the media got brought into the matter which only adds to how much exposure an otherwise unimportant situation gets magnified and misconstrued. It does not help that Redford is a white woman who named her child Abcde and gets such exposure and an apology while a generation of people of color like myself with “weird names” in this society have gone pretty much unacknowledged and, in some cases, discriminated for decades because of our name. Our names and our identities have led to our own difficulty in America dealing with ourselves and our culture and it’s a difficulty that Abcde Redford will experience as well for no particular reason other than her mother’s desire to always name her child Abcde. And, so be it. She should be proud to be Abcde no matter what we may think of such a name.

The average person encountering this story is also just at fault here. Once the media grabs a hold of a story and once it is distributed via social media, it’s easy for us to just read a title rather than grasp a whole story. This is why it’s easy for us to immediately demonize Redford for picking such a name for her daughter and then complaining that such a name would be mocked. When, if we read the story, it’s understandable why a mother would be frustrated that her 5-year-old daughter would be made fun of and have her information shared publicly without her consent.

This is a mostly mindless story that did not need to escalate to the level that it did. But, that’s our society and social media and what is considered news today. And as someone who named a comedy album after the butchering of his name and who has found the comedy and absurdity to situations like this one, it seemed worthwhile to explain the ways we can make such situations actually better which is the whole point of why I create comedy. This story still has an impact. It forces us to look at how we interact with each other, how we behave towards each other, and what actions we take on social media.

At the end of the day, if you want to be funny, you have to understand the target of who you are being funny at. Is something like People of Walmart really worth the laughs when you have no concept of the lives these people have endured? (And, yes, they can ask to be removed from the site but they never consented to be up there publicly to begin with). Is mocking an overweight man dancing worth it? Is mocking a disabled reporter worth it? Is mocking a 5-year-old girl’s name worth it? We haven’t decided that within our society and within comedy.

If the Abcde Redford situation brings to light anything, it’s this: we aren’t doing consent properly in comedy and society with our punchlines either.