Letters to the Editor
-
tidy, no?
cosmic mojo, implying that he was raped lets him off the hook for not speaking up about his hiv.
it can't be easy to be either gay or hiv-positive or even just smaller than average in prison. but without him saying directly (to us, but especially to his partners!) that he didn't want sex, it sounds like he's (yet again) avoiding responsibility for incredibly serious bad behavior.
-
after a nightmare flight?
shouldn't it be "after causing a nightmare on a flight"?
-
Customer Service Staff
lil' petey complains about the treatment airport "customer services" (arf) staff get.
I have frequently had to put up rudeness and pettyness from airport staff because they have a little bit of power over you and they know they can get away behavour that they couldn't without being either pulled up or beaten up. Inadequates hiding behind the "rules".
Similarly, British Airways and their staff's behaviour in getting someone banged up in the Scrubs - arguably England's worst prison - over the Christmas period because of a situation which they had a lot to do with creating is just as pathetic. Is the stewardess happy that Kurth was repeatedly bummed because he called her a rude word? Should my tax money be spent locking up someone just acting as a wanker just so some people can go through the motions of airline security rather than making airlines secure?
-
Just desserts
The pie-in-the-sky bray of a clutch of childish and naive libertines notwithstanding, most of the responses here have it exactly right. Not only did Kurth earn at least some significant portion of what happened to him, he was practically begging for it.
What kind of an imbecile doesn't for one second think that any amount of the behavior he exhibited would somehow fail to land him in hot water? Menacing and abusive behavior towards a captive population, trapped in a small cabin 30,000 feet over the north Atlantic? It's not like they could just turn their backs and walk away. Impossibility of retreat equals total justification for use of force in self-defense. And really, he's lucky he didn't take a hiding from another passenger for his troubles.
I once had the misfortune of flying on a transcontinental flight from Istanbul to Joburg, seated directly behind a drunken lout, just like Kurth. He happened to be British and not American, but the behavior--the total lack of restraint or self-awareness, etc.--was almost identical. He reeked of gin even as he was taking his seat before we departed, and I knew it was going to be trouble. Sure enough, he did not disappoint, and not 30 minutes into the air, and he starts up with me, trying to elicit some sort of response with a series of progressively asinine and invasive questions or "observations", half of which any reasonable individual would have interpreted as fighting words. I ignored him, courtesy of my discman and a copy of The Economist, but he simply proceeded to start harassing the German tourist who was seated next to me, who was probably 30 years his senior and either too well-mannered or timid to tell him to fuck off. It got ugly, and I mean ugly. All kinds of insults, insinuations, bizarre, out-of-nowhere shit.
Eventually I had to take my headphones off and tell him to just turn the fuck around and shut his damn mouth or we were going to have it out, right then and there. FYI, by my estimation I had at least 80-100 pounds on him, and was in fact on my way to play a season of tighthead prop for a local rugby union squad, and doubtless could have split his intoxicated skull open like an overripe melon. The crap that was coming out of his mouth, unsolicited, unwanted and unwarranted, would have totally merited such treatment. The German guy had done nothing to this jagoff, he just wanted to be left in peace. Same with me. The Turkish Airlines staff, while very professional and courteous, wanted nothing to do with the altercation, and could not have hoped to intervene on the clown's behalf if it had actually happened, they may as well have attempted to lasso a wolverine with a length of dental floss, given the physics involved and the close quarters. The one and only thing that saved the day is the clown's traveling partner, similarly soused, at least had his wits about him and maintained some control, and hauled his friend back up with him and begged him to cool it. The crew cut him off and apologized profusely, and it was all well.
Unfortunately for Kurth, he made the mistake of traveling alone. He had no one with him who was aware of his propensity towards assholery, and no one who could talk him down once he started down the path. He absolutely deserved to go to jail, if for but a night or two, and then to be summarily deported. However, if in fact the courts were closed for the holiday season, well, thems the breaks. I can assure you, even in the good ol' US of A, if you screw up on a Friday night, you probably ain't coming before a judge before Monday morning for a bail hearing. If the week delay or whatever attended all such crimes, for locals and foreigners alike, then there was no call for him to be treated differently.
-
a reason for the hyperbole
"Tell me that you've never abused a service person and will nominate you for sainthood. (This includes the phone too, folks.)" I've never abused a service person. Nominate away.
I think that most people who say "He deserved it!" are using hyperbole - that if they were on a jury to decide what happened to him, they would not vote to incarcerate for five weeks.
But I understand the emotion. I've spent a life watching bullies get their way - in shops, on the road, in our government. The reason so many people are belligerent assholes is... it WORKS! Yell at the minimum wage earner enough, and his manager will come and give you your way.
So many people read about him, the asshole we've all seen on planes, on the return-line, in the bakery, and they read about him getting tossed in jail and raped in the butt... and there is this moment of... "about time."
And because this is the internet, you have time to write "He deserved it!" and hit SEND before that moment passes and you are rational again.
P.S. Yes, I had that moment. But I did not hit send.