Editor’s Note: Our readers responded strongly to this story when it originally ran; we’re reposting it here in case you missed it.
Actor Forrie J. Smith jumped on social media last month and said he’d been kicked off a flight for refusing to sit next to a passenger who was wearing a mask.
Smith, who played Lloyd Pierce on “Yellowstone,” posted a video explaining the situation to Instagram.
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“You need to hear this story,” he wrote.
“You know, my social media people tell me you like me face-to-face,” Smith said as the video started. “But you know what? I can’t say face-to-face when I want.”
“Like, I just got kicked off a plane in — where the h*** am I at?” he said, looking around.
At that point, a woman’s voice from off-camera told him, “You’re in Houston.”
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“In Houston, Texas,” Smith continued, now that he knew where he was. “Because I asked — told them that I didn’t feel comfortable sitting next to somebody with a mask on.”
Smith admitted that he’d been drinking — his voice certainly sounded as if he had — during his three-hour wait in the airport.
Have you watched “Yellowstone"?
Yes: 65% (356 Votes)
No: 35% (195 Votes)
“But they throwed [sic] me off the plane because I’m drunk, because you people won’t stand up and tell everybody what bulls*** this is,” he said.
Smith didn’t provide more detail and didn’t appear to know why the passenger was wearing a mask, which was perhaps due to pre-existing conditions and not simply, as he appears to have assumed, some level of paranoia regarding the coronavirus.
“I just told them I didn’t feel comfortable about sitting next to somebody that had to wear a mask,” he said. “And I’m off the plane.”
The responses to Smith’s post were in general not supportive.
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“Being an American means you get to make your own choices. Grow … up bud. If I ever see you I’m going to wear a mask and I haven’t in years,” one Instagram user wrote.
“You’re such a crybaby,” said another. “You’re threatened by a mask? Get a life.”
A Note from Our Deputy Managing Editor:
I heard a chilling comment the other day: “We don’t even know if an election will be held in 2024.”
That wasn’t said by a conspiracy theorist or a doomsday prophet. No, former U.S. national security advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn said that to the founder of The Western Journal, Floyd Brown.
Gen. Flynn’s warning means that the 2024 election is the most important election for every single living American. If we lose this one to the wealthy elites who hate us, hate God, and hate what America stands for, we can only assume that 248 years of American history and the values we hold dear to our hearts may soon vanish.
The end game is here, and as Benjamin Franklin said, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
All of this means that without you, it’s over. We have the platform, the journalists, and the experience to fight back hard, but Big Tech is strangling us through advertising blacklists, shadow bans, and algorithms. Did you know that we’ve been blacklisted by 90% of advertisers? Without direct support from you, our readers, we can’t continue the fight.
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George Upper is the former Editor-in-Chief of The Western Journal and was a weekly co-host of "WJ Live," powered by The Western Journal. He is currently a contributing editor in the areas of faith, politics and culture. A former U.S. Army special operator, teacher and consultant, he is a lifetime member of the NRA and an active volunteer leader in his church. Born in Foxborough, Massachusetts, he has lived most of his life in central North Carolina.
George Upper, is the former editor-in-chief of The Western Journal and is now a contributing editor in the areas of faith, politics and culture. He currently serves as the connections pastor at Awestruck Church in Greensboro, North Carolina. He is a former U.S. Army special operator, teacher, manager and consultant. Born in Massachusetts, he graduated from Foxborough High School before joining the Army and spending most of the next three years at Fort Bragg. He holds bachelor's and master's degrees in English as well as a Master's in Business Administration, all from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He and his wife life only a short drive from his three children, their spouses and his grandchildren. He is a lifetime member of the NRA and in his spare time he shoots, reads a lot of Lawrence Block and John D. MacDonald, and watches Bruce Campbell movies. He is a fan of individual freedom, Tommy Bahama, fine-point G-2 pens and the Oxford comma.
