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ShareI was so distraught over the news that Kevin Smith had been thrown off a Southwest Airlines flight because he was too fat that I immediately ordered a pizza.
In all fairness, if he hadn’t been forced off the flight, I still would have ordered a pizza.
Just in case you haven’t been riding this media-fueled bull, the rotund director of “Clerks,” “Chasing Amy” and “Jersey Girl,” boarded a flight from Oakland to Burbank last week, and then was asked to leave the plane for safety reasons, or because anorexic flight attendants were offended by his girth.
Smith, who coincidentally has a new movie opening Friday (“Cop Out” with Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan), later got on another flight, after first purchasing two seats so that his weight could be distributed equally over a larger area, thereby saving the plane from plunging into a snowy Iowa cornfield with the Big Bopper and Richie Valens.
Before he boarded the second flight, however, the 39-year-old filmmaker began tweeting to his 1.6 million Twitter followers. Hell hath no fury like an angry overweight guy from New Jersey.
Smith argued in his tweets that he had been wronged by the airline, and has since maintained that this was not a publicity stunt tied to his new movie.
The mainstream media immediately picked up on the story, and what has been coined “Fatgate” became an international sensation. The airline apologized for the harsh treatment of a customer with enough clout to defend himself and embarrass the airline, but for Smith, the apology was too late.
In the latest People magazine, Smith said he was “humiliated” by the incident, and added that he had turned his humiliation into his life’s mission to protect people with weight issues.
“If I had less self-esteem, I’d be in tears,” he told the magazine.
He also related a story from that second flight, on which he claims that he overheard a flight attendant telling an overweight woman that she might consider buying two seats on her next flight.
“My heart broke for her,” Smith said. “This ain’t about me anymore. I just want them to change their policy, and stop insulting people.”
Experts continually tell us that obesity is a growing problem in the United States, but it seems to me that the underweight people are still making the rules.
Isn’t it enough that the underweight people are probably going to live longer than the overweight people? Do they have to make our lives miserable in the little time we have left?
I would like to be thinner, not only for health reasons, but because I still have a white linen suit in my closet that last fit me in 1978, and I hope to wear it again one day. But that’s just me.
If other overweight people want to lose weight, that’s their business. I don’t want underweight people to tell them how to live their lives. There is enough government regulation in this country; we don’t need skinny people regulating us as well.
After all, I have plenty of complaints about flying with underweight people, and you don’t hear me complaining.
OK, I’ll complain a bit.
First, I believe that there are no overweight terrorists. They’re always on the thin side, and that is foremost on my mind as I sit in the waiting area, scanning the passengers who are going to be on my flight. Oh, don’t tell me you don’t do the same thing. We all profile silently, and my eyes always look beyond the overweight people. They don’t scare me. I wish the entire flight was full of overweight people.
Second, I’m fed up with paying for meals on flights because fit and trim airline executives want to penalize those of us who actually eat solid food. I can imagine these executives sharing a salad and setting a price schedule for food that they used to serve free with their overpriced tickets. “I don’t know about you guys,” one executive might have said, “but I can make it coast to coast on one granola bar. Why should I pay extra because a bunch of fatties can’t control themselves?” I’m not saying that conversation did take place, but it could have.”
Finally, underweight people are a safety concern for me. Most of them are weak from not eating enough, and many of them insist on requesting seats in the aisles with the emergency doors. Legally and morally, that puts them in a position to assist other passengers in case of an emergency landing. I don’t want my life to depend on some skinny guy with no muscles who got online faster than me to secure those seats. If he can’t carry the heaviest person on his flight, then he shouldn’t be sitting in that aisle.
Pizza, anyone?
