Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong kicked off airplane for rejecting The Man's rules about saggy pants

By Sean O'Neal | September 6, 2011 | 5:33pm

Aux Features Music

The establishment often waxes nostalgic about the days when the gentry dressed up for air travel, but that era is long gone, squares. We didn’t have the punk rock revolution so that Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong couldn’t wear saggy trousers on an airplane, after all, but apparently Southwest Airlines clings to a more outmoded, authoritarian viewpoint, recently kicking Armstrong off their plane for refusing to kowtow to their fascist pants rules. According to an ABC producer who shared a flight with Armstrong from Oakland to Burbank, Armstrong was confronted by a flight attendant who expressed concern that the level of his waistband was promoting dangerous ideas about nonconformity, and asked him to hike it up. Armstrong, ever mindful of all the bigger problems in the world that just continue to be ignored, responded by asking her “if there weren't 'better things to do than worry about that?'”

But the attendant refused to relent in her pursuit of a sanitized society of “sheeple” who are shackled by belts that may as well be nooses, really, forcing Armstrong to shoot back with a defiant, “I’m just trying to get to my fucking seat,” which culminated in his swift removal. Much like Kevin Smith’s run-in with Southwest Airlines—oddly enough, on the exact same Oakland to Burbank route—Armstrong immediately tweeted about the incident, and just as quickly received an apology from the airline and a booking on the next flight out. But while the battle may have ended, punk rock’s war with The Man and his oppressive pants moralizing rages on.