More To The Story?

It's been fun watching the "Take This Job and Shove It" saga of JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater as it went viral this week - there were just so many juicy elements. The f-bomb-filled Farewell to the Troops oration over the PA! The beers! The dramatic slide down the slide! And was he really in bed with his boyfriend when the cops caught up with him at his home? That last part may be an urban legend, but still - it's a great story. Apparently Americans of all stripes have fantasized about walking away from their jobs in dramatic and slightly dangerous fashion and Mr. Slater is being called a folk hero. There is talk of a reality TV show. Media feeding frenzies like this, however, tend to play themselves out according to a predictable story arc, and sure enough, more information is starting to emerge.

The passengers are starting to talk, and some are saying the flight attendant may have initiated the confrontation that started it all. Some are saying Steven was rude to them throughout the flight, completely separate from the carry-on bag issue. There are also questions about JetBlue's handling of the situation. Why did they wait so long to notify authorities that there had been an incident on their flight? Was the tongue-in-cheek posting on their corporate blog really the best way to handle this? $100 to every passenger? Is that enough to compensate for the inconvenience? Too much?

The whole thing is taking on a Rashomonesque quality and we may never know what really happened and maybe it ultimately doesn't really matter. In the middle of the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer something interesting happened, something we can all relate to, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Does Us Weekly Get The Money Back?

Just when you thought things couldn't get any weirder up in Palinland, it's now been announced that Levi Johnston is indeed getting his own reality show, to be called "Loving Levi," in which he will, wait for it, run for mayor of Wasilla. If you're scratching your head and wondering, who is this guy and how did he get to this point?, a quick reminder: Sarah Palin and the McCain campaign plucked him out of obscurity, brought him down off an Alaskan hunting field, cleaned him up and dressed him up, then paraded him across the stage at the 2008 RNC as the beloved fiancé of daughter Bristol, trying to turn an "oops" teen-age pregnancy into the abstinence-only version of Ozzie and Harriet. That didn't work out so well, and as I mentioned a few weeks ago, I'm thinking about the Law of Unintended Consequences where Levi is concerned. This can't be what Sarah had in mind back at the convention, when she stood in front of Levi tenderly stroking his face, and right now I'd bet that her reaction is some mixture of relief that he's not going to be her son-in-law, annoyance that he's still in the public eye, and a fervent wish that he would just go away once and for all.

And speaking of unintended consequences, should a potential presidential candidate really share her reality TV stage with Kate plus 8? "Sarah Palin's Alaska" was supposed to be an anodyne travelogue about the scenic beauty of Sarah's home state, but if she had done her homework, she would know that on television "non-controversial and low key" translates into "boring and low ratings". You need controversy, conflict and scandal to make really good television and I'm sure that's what the producers are hoping for by bringing Kate Gosselin into the picture. But is this what Sarah wanted? Did she have any input into this decision?

I can't help wondering if Sarah is feeling any regret about selling her soul for the chance to go swanning around Alaska with a TV crew in tow. It's her name in the title, but once everything is filmed the outcome is in the producers' and editors' hands and no matter what they've said to her, they couldn't care less about making her look good. They just want exciting television. Kate and the kids will spice things up, that's for sure, but the end result may not be entirely positive for Sarah Palin. Gotta watch out for those unintended consequences...