Nathan Fielder Escalates Beef With U.S. Congressman
The daring 737 pilot behind the “Miracle Over the Mojave,” Nathan Fielder, recently popped by CNN’s The Situation Room to discuss his theories concerning airline safety, as seen in the most recent season of The Rehearsal.
He was ed by the HBO show’s resident expert, former National Transportation Safety Board member, and recent John Goglia — because roping senior citizens into ing him in his wacky causes is Fielder’s M.O.
For more than 15 minutes, Fielder chatted with hosts Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown, noting that his concerns about problematic power dynamics in cockpits could also be applied to cable news anchors. “Pamela, I’m sure you don’t say some things to Wolf,” Fielder suggested, reasoning that the famous anchor might be somewhat intimidating because he’s “in movies. He’s in Mission: Impossible.”
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Fielder, sporting a cap reading “737,” also addressed the FAA’s newly-released statement about The Rehearsal, in which the government organization stressed that it isn’t “seeing the data that s the show’s central claim that pilot communications is to blame for airline disasters.”
“That’s dumb. They’re dumb,” Fielder responded.
Fielder was also given the opportunity to comment on another semi-tense situation involving himself and government officials: Tennessee Congressman Steve Cohen’s claim that The Rehearsal misrepresented his meeting with Fielder. “I devoted considerable time to preparing for what I expected to be a serious policy discussion,” Cohen said in a statement to CNN. “We were told that Nathan wanted to talk about autism, and we figured that was why he was also interested in the EVAC (Emergency Vacating of Aircraft Cabin) Act because people with autism could have difficulties in a crash situation. None of this was mentioned or part of the discussion. Most of the substantive parts of a 45-minute interview never made it to air.”
Of course, the congressman’s statement didn’t explain why he believed that Fielder, who his staffers were already familiar with (some of them had even seen Season One of The Rehearsal) would be up for a “serious policy discussion” about the concerns of neurodiverse travelers with zero ulterior motives.
“It’s disappointing that he’s sort of saying this now, because he still has an opportunity to tackle this issue, he’s the ranking member on the aviation subcommittee,” Fielder deadpanned. “To be honest, he didn’t seem to know a lot about (the issue). When I brought up CRM (crew resource management), which is this issue, he didn’t seem to be really aware of it and the specifics.”
Blitzer then brought up the fact that Cohen wouldn’t have been able to call Fielder as a witness, as the comedian had hoped, since that task falls to the chairman. “But he can talk to the guy,” Fielder countered. “He knows the chairman. He could be like, ‘Look, this guy who’s a pilot, a 737 pilot, came to me with this very important issue, maybe we should look at this a little more.”
“Now that the show is out, he could show it to the (chairman),” the Nathan For You star added. “I would say it’s disappointing that he didn’t want to take this more seriously.”
Hopefully this drama won’t affect Congress’ interest in waiving tariffs for musical smoke detectors and exploring the potential health benefits of “The Movement.”
