Somebody please shut Chuck Yeager up.

[Inverted]

I have kept quiet about him for a while now, but I have to rant. For the overly obvious reasons, we all look, or have looked up to him at some point in our lives. As we get to know the real Chuck, we find out he is nothing more than a racist, angry old man who could care less about aviation, and more about the mighty dollar. I was friends with him on Facebook, and sat through countless ridiculous rants about how mad he was that people wanted an autograph for free. He couldn't believe the nerve of some people, asking for an autograph that was personalized. Most of his posts had something along the lines of "we will delete you if you don't agree" "or if you don't do this, we will delete you" and it started driving me nuts. Now he is mad about his name being used in books and not giving him a cut. He is a has-been, slimy yahoo, who shouldn't be given the time of day. Here is One such post, and the link in the post is to raise money to go to the supreme court to fight for his name rights:

This is from Mrs. Yeager: General Yeager has asked for your help and sign up on www.veteransamicus.com by midnight. Less than 100 of you have done so. There are those waiting to be fb friends who have signed up. We will soon be editing his fb friends list accordingly. If you feel you cannot, send a private message as to why. What is a friend if not someone who supports you when you are trying to ask the US Supreme Court to uphold your and every citizen's Constitutional rights?

 

[Jim Logajan]

Whoa - whoa - whoa. Just a minute here. Yeager, and a few thousand other old guys fought in combat, and stayed in the military to defend our sorry asses so that we could sit on the internet and bash them for getting a pension? You can back that truck up. I have no problem paying for his pension.

And didn't he put his life on the line as a test pilot, too? Last I checked, a fair number of his test pilot contemporaries bought the farm.

As to autographs, why is everyone else but the author allowed to profit from their John Hancock? What's up with that?

Mr. Yeager was never a hero to me, nor a villain. Just a figure of historical note. I haven't paid any attention to his public statements, so if he has made racist remarks then that should be sufficient for people like the OP to sever their ties, physical, emotional, or whatever, to him. The autograph issue seems to this disinterested observer to be tacked on cruft.