Plane Rude: Teabaggers Vs. Frank

Two women complaining about health care reform harassed Rep. Barney Frank while on transcontinental plane ride yesterday. Frank's partner Jim Ready got in the women's faces.

Flying back to Boston from LA yesterday, the congressman was assailed by a pair of ophthalmologists upset about the health care reform bill. An argument ensued that prompted some passengers to wonder if the plane might be forced to land. "No one was calming things down and people were standing up shouting," said Brooke Sexton, who was seated seven rows behind Barney. Accustomed as he is to being conservatives's favorite bad guy, Frank mostly ignored the doctors' taunts, Sexton said, but the congressman's partner, Jim Ready, did not. The problem started soon after the ophthalmologists - two sisters on their way to a conference in Boston - boarded the Virgin flight. When they discovered that Frank was sitting nearby, the women loudly dissed the landmark health care bill as an "Obamanation." (Frank was returning from LA, where he'd received an award from the Greenlining Institute, an economic development group for minorities, and appeared on Jay Leno's show.) "They wanted to talk to me, but I apologized and said I like to read and watch on planes," Frank told us today. "They began to talk louder and that's when Jimmy (Ready) said, 'If you're trying to be bitchy, you're doing a good job." Needless to say, the women didn't appreciate the remark, and things got heated.

Frank described the situation with his usual biting humor: "It reminds me of the joke about the woman who's in a restaurant and Clark Gable's there. She complains to the waiter, 'Clark Gable is annoying me.' The waiter says, 'He's not even talking to you,' and she says, 'Yes, and I find that very annoying.'"