Crazy Or...?

...brilliant? It all depends upon how you look at it.

You may have heard of this JetBlue flight attendant. He went total Peter Finch. He was mad as hell and he couldn't take it anymore. After one final skirmish with a passenger as a plane was taxiing to a gate, Steven Slater grabbed a beer, popped the emergency chute open, and went home.

Oh, he's in a cargoload of trouble now. Reckless endangerment, criminal trespass, criminal mischief, swigging a beer without a glass. Probably even a lifetime profiling from the good folks at Homeland Security. And, from my vantage point, some of it is warranted. As much as we all might like to, you don't just walk away from your job.

But....

There's a big purple Kate Smith in the coach section of our flight today. A fact nobody wants to acknowledge or talk about. That certain something that potentially turns Steven Slater from a "gone postal" flight attendant to a fully absolved hero. How does this happen?

He's somebody who has had to deal with the dreaded public.

They're all around us. We walk among them. Like it or not, we are part of the general populus.

We are the world. We are the assholes. Oh, you and I aren't. But a lot of them are.

I see it myself all the time on my own flights. That moronic passenger who refuses to sit down despite repeated warnings to do so. That's just what Slater ran into. Some jerk who absolutely needed to get something out of his luggage in the overhead bin, despite the fact that the seatbelt light was on and he should have been buckled into 21J. Sir, you can't do that. Oh, yes, I can.

One more example that the word "no" has disappeared from our vocabulary.

As a society, it has become ingrained in each of us that we can do what we want whenever and however we want because, at the end of the day, there is some attorney someplace who will defend our right to do so.

I watch flight attendants put up with the worst of the worst, many of them even validated with business class tickets.

"Sir, you'll have to turn off your laptop now."

"But I'm not finished."

Okay, we'll circle the airport for about an hour so you can wrap up the edits to your Powerpoint presentation.

I hear the same exchanges over and over and over. And then pick up the newspaper every morning and see the same thing going on with our law enforcement.

"Sir, can I see your driver's license please?"

"But I wasn't doing anything."

Uh huh. I don't know about you, but I was raised to be afraid of the police. Whether you agreed or not, you did exactly what they asked you to do. Today? Look at YouTube for the grim update on our lives.

Where did it all start? More importantly, when does it all end? One after another, dumbbells around us line up to make the world all about them.

Talk to people who work in retail. They have stories that would curl your hair. From the famous such as Rosie O'Donnell who, along with her neanderthal children, storms through a Barnes and Noble bookstore every week to yell at the poor college student behind the counter. I've seen this with my own eyes in the Palisades Mall in New York. Or what about this one?

A wild-eyed lunatic bangs on the door of a department store as it is being locked at the end of the day.

"You can't close! I have to buy something!"

Okay, Miss, where the hell were you for the other twelve hours of the day when we were open?

"I was busy! You have to stay open now. I have rights!"

And there it is. Our rights. We all have them.

Well, so did Steven Slater. You may not agree with the execution, but you want to applaud the concept. I am clapping right along with you.

To all those who have to deal with the general public, I salute you!

Dinner last night: The salad bar at Gelson's.