Before I’m accused of size discrimination, a little source material:
If you’ve spent even five second on the internets in the last two days,
you’re aware of the escalating
hostilities between movie director/”person of size” Kevin Smith and
Southwest Airlines.
Smith, 39, originally purchased two tickets “as he’s been
known to do when traveling Southwest,” the airline noted, but when he
decided to fly standby on an earlier flight, only one seat remained.
Although he had been seated, he was asked to leave.
The “purchased two tickets” thing is because, according to Smith, he likes
an empty seat next to him on the flight. I was hoping he’s make a
Fletch joke (“That doesn’t mean I want her sitting next to me”) in
one of his tweets, but admittedly, most of them have been pretty
hilarious anyway:
You fucked with the wrong sedentary processed-foods eater!
Don’t worry: wall of the plane was opened & I was airlifted out while
Richard Simmons supervised.
Anybody who’s familiar with Smith’s online presence shouldn’t be surprised
by the amount of spewing on Twitter and his
blog (and his podcast — or Smodcast,
as it’s called). The man is legendary for his devotion in responding to his
fans and almost pathological need to describe every aspect of his life in
its most humiliating detail. It’s to his credit, and his fans love him for
it.
But after dozens of tweets and a 90-minute(!) “emergency” podcast released
Sunday night, enough is enough.
To be fair, Southwest appears to have genuinely fucked up. If Smith is
telling the truth about being able to latch his seatbelt and put both
armrests down without trouble, then the airline is clearly in the wrong and
digging the hole deeper with every successive blog post. But like every
other celebrity who suddenly discovers for themselves the horrible state of
the airline industry/customer service/the DMV, Smith is now on a crusade to
punish the offenders. That’s certainly his right, and he’s fortunate indeed
to have 1.5 million followers on Twitter to spread his righteous
indignation. It’s just too bad none of it will make a difference.
Oh, the airline will probably go out of its way to make sure his legions of
fans don’t make good on their probably empty threats of a boycott (Southwest
is still the cheapest option available in most markets, after all) and
eventually issue some sort of statement or offer itself up for sufficient
humiliation, but if Smith thinks this is going to change how airlines do
business (when actual legislation by Congress failed to improve things),
he’s been smoking more than usual.
And having listened to my first ever “smodcast” (or most of it), I’m not
feeling much in the way of sympathy for the dude. He says he only wants to
be treated “like every
other paying customer.” And he was. Like everyone else, I have my share
of airplane horror stories. There was the time I was given a boarding pass
for a Continental flight from San Diego to Houston, seated, then removed
from the plane because they’d double-booked the seat and had nowhere else to
put me. Or the time my connecting flight from Phoenix to Houston was
canceled while I was in the air flying from Salt Lake City to PHX.
I wrote letters and made phone calls, and received the same $100 voucher for
my complaints Smith was offered by Southwest.
Maybe if I had a million Twitter followers I could’ve scored some drink
tickets, too.
Second, it’s hard to tell if Smith is serious when (in his podcast) he acts
incredulous about things like airlines using one desk to service multiple
gates in airports, which has been the case for over ten years around here.
The Clerks director is, in general, considerably down-to-earth for
a celebrity, but some of the things he rants about are making him sound
increasingly like those political candidates who draw a blank on the price
of a gallon of milk.
Finally, let’s not forget — as Mr. Plug himself once said — there’s no such thing as bad
publicity. Especially when your new movie is opening in less than two weeks.
If nothing else, at least he’ll have plenty of material for his upcoming speaking
engagements (March 5 in Houston).
This article appears in Feb 11-17, 2010.
