A screaming, hitting, disobedient three-year old girl was put off a Air Tran flight yesterday, along with her two parents.

The two adults–from Boston, naturally–said they simply needed more time to calm and cajole the three-year old into taking her seat and putting on her seat belt.

Read this little news item ^[1] and tell me that the real problem is the airline, as the press account suggests.

Right. The problem is the parents. Their inability to control their child is treated as natural (”oh, what can we do?”). This is not unlike President Carter’s policy toward the Iranian hostage-takers and about as effective.

Somewhere in Hell there is a 737 packed with these psuedo-parents listening to other people’s children cry for all eternity.

These Boston-based parents think they were humiliated for being politely deplaned. Wrong again. They humiliated themselves for failing to keep their kid in line.

As far as I know, no one has asked these careless parents what their opinion of spanking is. But surely we can guess.