No more embarrassing than the President crossing a picket line and flying on a struck carrier, or risking taking the profession two steps backward by mishandling the Captains Authority Issue by inclusion of a Jump Seat Matrix,...or making really naive and dangerous statements linking progress at the table with "the sky will go black with"....well, the list goes on, just depends on your perspective I suppose. All I meant to say was that obviously the gentlemen in question made an error, but he did so for a decent reason and despite the pressure, never turned on his team, despite the fact that they turned on him. He took his lumps publicly and did the right thing, which is more than either of us can say about the other players in this story. To prove the point, two of the Neg. team finally came out on their own and expressed their own concerns.

So you think if thing fails, that the President and the negotiating committee will step down in kind? I believe there has already been a bit of backpedaling on the "we don't have a plan B" scenario.

Besides, a labor leader who uses profanity......inconceivable! Yeah, it was the wrong time....but then again.......maybe not. Maybe that was the precise time to object, to raise the flag.........perhaps if some of the other players who came out later would have done so earlier, this whole thing might have played out differently.