I often find myself on flights where I am one of the only people in “Western garb.” I am on flights where the television screens flash arrows pointing east toward Mecca for prayer time. On one occasion, I was on a flight a few rows behind Chris Matthews, who was having an insane hair day. I will admit to a small degree of worry at that time. I worried about my fellow passengers breaking into uncontrollable laughter if he got up to use the restroom and they all saw his combover sticking up like a shark’s dorsal fin. Personally, I dug his nutty-professor-caught-in-a-windstorm look, but I was nervous that such an experience might leave him with some hardball feelings.

Perhaps I project too much, but I find it hard to believe that any rational adult would feel nervous being on an airplane with someone who “looks Muslim.” I am not saying some don’t truly feel this way, I am just saying that they definitely need to get out of the house more often.