Romney’s airplane window remark: gaffe vs. joke
The viral Internet sensation that was Mitt Romney’s reported quote on why airplane windows don’t open continues.
The presidential candidate was at a fund-raiser in Los Angeles and was talking to reporters, including the New York Times’s Ashley Parker about his wife Ann’s emergency landing on Friday due to an electrical malfunction on a private jet.
Romney was quoted by the press as saying:
"I appreciate the fact that she is on the ground, safe and sound. And I don’t think she knows just how worried some of us were," Romney said. "When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no — and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous. And she was choking and rubbing her eyes. Fortunately, there was enough oxygen for the pilot and copilot to make a safe landing in Denver. But she’s safe and sound."
After which an astounded media receiving the report virally, pounced on Romney like a honeybadger on a snake.
Now, Parker and others in attendance are saying the "windows" section of the quote was clearly a joke, even though the comment is followed by a rather serious description of his wife "choking and rubbing her eyes."
False alarm or media backdown?
What do you think?
Is the pressure of the campaign getting so bad that Romney forgot about air pressure or is the media so eager to pounce on him that they couldn’t take a joke?
Gretchen Kelly
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