We were all horrified as news came in about the air collision between a Blackhawk helicopter and a passenger plane at Washington DC Airport, which took the lives of all involved. Perhaps more surprisingly (or not, dependent on your perspective of Donald Trump) was Trump’s pronouncement shortly after that crash, and well before any formal investigation had started, that the cause was due to the FAA’s policy of “recruiting people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities”. We know where he stands on DEI because since taking office he has has issued a series of executive orders aimed at dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the federal government and the private sector.
OK so far? Well, I don’t want to make too light of this topic, but I was drawn to a snippet on Rod Liddle’s regular column in the UK edition of the Sunday Times (2nd October) which I’ve borrowed as the title for blog (hope he doesn’t mind). I quote from the article:
“I notice that the US Federal Aviation Administration has been pursuing a laudable diversity, equity and inclusion recruitment policy. According to its website, it had a specific number of something called targeted disabilities. “Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring, they include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism. That’s quite an ask, isn’t it? How much simpler it would be if they could find one candidate who embodied all of those qualities. A paralysed blind psychotic dwarf with no legs and the IQ of a packet of prawn cocktail Skips. And at the interview? “Why do you want to work as an air traffic controller?”
“Pardon?”
“Yay! He’s deaf as well! One hundred and eighty!”
For any readers who don’t understand the ‘One hundred and eighty’ bit, that is the maximum score in a game of darts, achieved with just three darts.
I’ll be honest, this made me laugh, probably because I’m a fan of Rod Liddle, and share the same humour (wit, sarcasm and irony). But I thought to myself ‘has he made this up for a laugh?’, so I did a bit of fact checking. It didn’t take me long to find his source, the US Office of Personnel Management – OPM. I took this clip just in case they take it down in the light of all of this controversy:

So, I’m left with the question, did the FAA follow this policy for Air Traffic Controllers, and is Donald Trump right after all? You decide!