This Week in Barrel Scraping: Chaya Raichik Accuses United CEO of Wearing Drag
Scott Kirby, the CEO of United Airlines, stands accused by Libs of Tik Tok of the crime of doing drag at Pride.
by Alyssa Steinsiek
stock photo of a drag queen looking askance
Slay, queen, slay.
Hey, look at that, Chaya Raichik, owner and operator of evil social nightmare hate machine Libs of TikTok, has once again painted a target on somebody’s back for completely innocuous behavior. Believe it or not, this time Chaya has stepped it up from instigating bomb threats against schools and children's hospitals to pointing the metaphorical barrel of her metaphorical gun at the CEO of United Airlines, Scott Kirby, in response to a diversity hiring initiative by United.
Sharing an unverified clip of somebody doing a goofy drag performance to a Lady Gaga song to five MILLION people and baselessly claiming it’s the CEO of a major corporation? That’s what we in the biz call serious journalism.
I’m starting to think Chaya might just be going places.
The reason Chaya is so laser focused on Scott Kirby is because she and her buddies have rediscovered a nearly three year old interview that Kirby gave to news outlet Axios in which he discussed that only 19% of United’s pilots are women or people of color. Kirby committed United to raise that number.
Now, some people with underdeveloped active listening skills have taken Kirby’s 2021 remarks to mean that United intends to ensure that half of their pilots are women of color, skills and training be damned! You heard the man: If you’re a woman of color, head to your nearest airport and demand to be given the keys to a United Airlines flight, because you’ve got the job, baby!
Do you need keys to start an airplane?
What Kirby was actually committing to was ensuring that at least 50% of their incoming students at the United Aviate Academy would be women or people of color as part of their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion program. So obviously, no, United isn’t entrusting hundreds of lives per flight to any untrained person who walks in off the street, as long as they happen to be black and/or a woman. Like most airlines, they actually train their pilots! How fun!
Reviled internet chud and owner of Twitter, formerly X, Elon Musk has even weighed in on the discussion. After suggesting that diversity initiatives made planes less safe, he was promptly obliterated by multiple people who know way more about most things than he does.
Perhaps to nobody’s surprise, Scott Kirby’s love of Bad Romance—a love that we all share, surely—isn’t the only reason she’s been tweeting about him.
Scratch a transphobe and you’ll find a racist, sorry an ableist, sorry a suburbanite housewife, sorry a conspiracy theorist! Big surprise, Chaya Raichik hates vaccine mandates. I guess you have to fundamentally deny basic health science if you want to tell every major medical organization in America they’re wrong about trans people.
Let me be unequivocally clear about this: If Scott Kirby purged religious orthodoxy from United Airlines, mocked and shamed people who didn’t want to get vaccinated, and expressed animosity towards those with religious exemptions in addition to being a drag queen… well, I hate to say it, but he may be the only bitchin’ CEO on the whole planet.
Regrettably, Scott, I will still consume you whole when the revolution comes.
But that’s the thing, right? Is there even any proof that Scott Kirby is a drag queen? I certainly haven’t seen a single shred of real evidence in this whole reactionary blow up. I’ve seen some grainy footage of a drag performance, some pictures of queens who could maybe possibly potentially be Kirby, and a picture of United in Denver celebrating “pride weekend.”
Queer people? Celebrating pride? In Denver?
Shock, surprise, fear, etc.
Oh, I also saw Chaya highlighting a United pilot who happens to be trans, Maya Tallman, which is extremely cool. Sorry babe, I actually LOVE seeing other trans people kick ass and do neat stuff like flying planes! I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be mad about. The fact that she’s trans and is doing anything at all?
Actually, yeah, that’s exactly it. In typical fash-ion, Chaya is spotlighting normal people doing good things and hoping she can work her entire audience up into a violent frothy mess because, like her best friends, she would rather anything different be scrubbed from the face of the earth by any means necessary.
Sorry, Chaya! We’re actually going to stick around and keep being fucking awesome.
Hope it isn’t too much of an inconvenience!
Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer and video games nerd who hails from Appalachia but lives, laughs, loves in Rapid City.