ST. LOUIS, MO. (KTVI) – A New York college student found himself stranded in St. Louis, Monday after being kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight that wasn’t even supposed to land here.  The conflict raises a classic first amendment debate of free speech, versus vulgar language. Update:  Man kicked off St. Louis flight for shirt now selling offensive shirts Daniel Podolsky was on a flight from Dallas to Chicago, and  only set foot in Lambert Airport because of bad weather in the Windy City.   But the college kid apparently forgot a couple of lessons from kindergarten about bad words, and playing well with others. At issue:  his t-shirt.  The garment, promoting the Comedy Central show “Broad City,” says in bold letters, “Broad F------ City,” but the “F-word” is fully spelled out.  It was one of hundreds handed out by the comedy channel at the South By Southwest festival Podolsky had just left.  He says his jacket was hiding the shirt when he walked around for all to see, but when he got on the plane, it was tight quarters and he took the jacket off.

His flight made the unscheduled stop in St. Louis and he got off to use the restroom.  That, he says, is when a Southwest gate agent noticed the shirt and said he would need to remove it. “It’s only when I got back on the plane when it was gonna take off, ya know, you have this much space, you’re gonna take your jacket off because it’s hot,” he explained.  “I took my jacket off, so he sent someone to remove me from the flight.” We asked him if he was given an opportunity to remedy the situation. “Did they give you any opportunity to put your jacket back on, to change the shirt, to put it inside out?” we asked.  Podolsky’s response:  “It just happened so fast. Within thirty seconds the flight was gone.  I mean I would have gladly done so.” But the video of the confrontation on the plane that Podolsky provided FOX 2 tells a slightly different tale.  Saying he “would have gladly done so,” is clearly not the case. “They talked to you about your shirt?” the airline employee is seen asking him at the door of the aircraft. 

Podolsky responds, “They did.” Then the employee proceeds to provide him with several chances to keep his seat on the flight.”Can you change the shirt?”“Can you put the jacket on and leave it on through the flight?”“Can you put the shirt on inside out?”“Is there anything you can do not to display the shirt because at this point we can’t allow you to go.”“I have freedom of speech.”“I know you do…”“Really it’s not bothering anyone.”“I can show you in our contract of carriage that you can’t wear any shirts that says offensive…”“Can we take a poll?” There would be no poll and he would be asked to leave the plane.  He confronted the original gate agent as he left, and he says airport police escorted him from the terminal.  He then contacted FOX 2. We asked him why he wore the shirt to begin with, considering the likelihood it would offend someone he encountered along his journey. “Well, is it really in the airline’s position to make that call?” he asked, “especially when the only time you can see the shirt I’m in my little box of space.

“There are more than a hundred people on the plane trying to get to Chicago and the most important thing is my shirt?  How does that work?  Where’s the sense of priority?” Southwest Airlines backed the actions of their crew in a statement sent to us late Monday. “We rely on our Employees and Customers to use common sense and good judgment,” spokesman Dan Landson said. As for Podolsky, he was eventually allowed to board a 7:15pm Southwest flight to his final destination of New York.  Nationwide Cost Of Moving CalculatorThe agreement was reached after he changed his shirt.Weight Loss After Gum SurgeryGOODYEAR, Ariz. (AP) _ Authorities say a Goodyear man is facing charges after killing the family dog in a barbecue smoker because he was upset with his teenage daughter’s T-shirt.Wood Flooring Madison Nj

Goodyear police say 42-year-old Patrick Zane Thompson is jailed on suspicion of animal cruelty, assault, threats against his family and tampering with evidence. Thompson didn’t have a lawyer at his initial court appearance Monday. His bond was set at $20,000. Officers were called to Thompson’s family home on Saturday. Detectives say Thompson became upset with a shirt that his 17-year-old daughter had because he believed it had to do with the devil. Thompson reportedly burned the shirt in a barbecue smoker parked in a side yard and then did the same to the family’s poodle. Police say Thompson told officers that he had smoked marijuana earlier in the day.International CES, the massive consumer electronics trade show that takes over Las Vegas convention halls every January, offers a plethora of opportunities to young tech companies looking to expand their business ventures. CES 2015’s offerings included a Google keynote on branding, an Indiegogo panel on crowdfunding, and multiple venues in which to pitch products—including an open casting call for ABC’s Shark Tank, the American iteration of the international Dragon’s Den franchise, which places aspiring entrepreneurs of all stripes in front of a panel of prospective angel investors.

Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that shortly before its open call at the world’s largest consumer technology show, ABC aired an episode of Shark Tank (Season 6, “Week 4”) that devolved into a debate over what a technology is. The company that prompted the debate, called Reviver, makes a fabric wipe that masks odors when rubbed on clothing. Company founders, brothers Ben and Eric Kusin, of Dallas, Texas, pitched the show dressed in the Silicon Valley uniform of jeans and candy colored company t-shirts: in their case, light blue tees with their company name screen-printed across the front in lower case, white, sans serif letters. “I think you’ve got a good product,” entertainment mogul and Shark Tank judge Mark Cuban tells the brothers midway through the segment, “but first, you’re not a technology.” The soundtrack’s stock music swells, then turns ominous. The brothers counter that they’ve spent $150,000 on custom machinery; Cuban insists that machinery does not a technology make.

“It’s not a technology!” he repeats as the shot closes in on Ben Kusin’s stunned expression. Dramatic twist achieved, ABC cuts to commercial. Shark Tank plays by the reality TV rulebook: editors cut hour-long sessions into scenes lasting minutes, splice in reaction shots out of sequence, and post-zoom wide shots into close-up for dramatic effect. Ben Kusin’s slack-jawed stare, broadcast as his response to Cuban’s pronouncement, may well have come from a different moment in the shoot. Yet the tension cultivated by the TV show comes as much from the producers’ editing suite as from the judges’ ability to fast-track products and fund fledgling companies. In tech industry parlance, Shark Tank’s objective is monetization, not innovation; the argument between Cuban and the Kusins stems less from disagreement over the nature of a technology than over its association with market value. After the commercial break, Eric Kusin defends Reviver’s technological status based on its multiple applications.

“We just started thinking of ourselves as a technology because the manufacturers are telling us what this can do,” he explains, and begins ticking potential features off on his fingers—but Cuban cuts him off immediately, at “mosquito repellent,” noting that talcum powder also has a lot of uses. To Cuban, it seems, technology means digital, or at least electronic, whereas to the Kusins, technology means machinic and scalable. Despite their quarrel over the ontological status of odor masking wipes, however, Cuban and the Kusins alike define technology as a means of accruing venture capital. For the Kusins, both the uniqueness of their formula and its potential for further applications, which they see as technological properties, indicate the desirability of their product to prospective investors. Although Cuban rejects the Kusins’ assertion that the wipes are technological, he perceives the brothers’ insistence on calling themselves a tech company as a reuse for acquiring funding—from their father, founder of the video game corporation GameStop, from whom they received a two million dollar investment to start their venture.

(“You only call it a technology because that allows you to go to dad and say, dear dad, we have a technology!”) Cuban may or may not be correct that the elder Mr. Kusin restricts his interest in his children to their interest in the tech sector, but entrepreneurial calculation undoubtedly led the brothers to adopt the language and aesthetics of Silicon Valley. Describing their “freshness revolution” while dressed in t-shirts that Reviver (which, like Twitter, Tumblr, and Uber follows a tech industry naming trend), the brothers emulate celebrated CEOs of the digital economy: usually, like the Kusins, young white men in jeans and t-shirts (Mark Zuckerberg and Travis Kalanick are exemplars), whose products promise to revolutionize something. Contra Cuban, it seems to me that the Kusins frame their product as a technology in the hopes that doing so will attract investors other than their father; they look like hundreds of aspiring tech entrepreneurs roaming the exhibition halls at CES.

Self-presentation is always part of pitching prospective funders. When the pitch is broadcast on national TV, performance plays an even larger role. Shark Tank contestants frequently dress according to a theme, and it’s easy to imagine introducing a similar product with entirely different stylistics. Another set of contestants, pitching a product that freshens clothing, might put on, say, aprons or athletic wear—especially if those contestants are women. Interestingly, the Kusin brothers avoid feminine associations with cleaning or clothing, distance bolstered by coding their product as a tool of technology rather than domesticity. Partnership offers the Kusins receive from Shark Tank judges at the end of the segment underscore the domestic and technological duality of their product: one from Robert Herjavec, who made his fortune in the IT industry, and another from Lori Greiner, of the QVC home shopping network. That the brothers opt to partner with QVC, drawn in part to the exposure afforded by the TV network, suggests how the entrepreneurial aesthetics of digital technology transcend industrial sectors.