Sneak preview, next TAR: Steven Slater
Runner-up for top story of the month:
Flight attendant Steven Slater, 38, who was described by his attorney, friends and family as a likeable sort who did his job well, until he didn’t and used a JetBlue plane’s emergency chute to leave his job—permanently, with two cans of beer in hand. Slater claimed a gash on his head occurred during the flight, but several passengers said the gash was there before the flight took off and told reporters he spoke rudely and used expletives during the flight. As clues 4 and 7 under “Supreme Being complex” (“regularly uses foul language” or, in this case, uses such language in an entirely inappropriate setting, and “has a ‘rules don’t apply to me’ attitude”) in “How to Spot Hidden Alcoholics: Using Behavioral Clues to Recognize Addiction in its Early Stages” suggest, odds are he relapsed (he was a known alcoholic, reportedly in recovery) sometime before and was sloshed during the entire flight.
Alcoholic victims of the month:
The thousands of passengers who were delayed while the JetBlue plane’s emergency chute was put back where it belongs, along with the likely extensive maintenance it had to go through due to flight attendant Steven Slater’s inconsiderate actions.
Alcoholic would-be victims of the month:
The passengers aboard the JetBlue flight with flight attendant Steven Slater. As a number of observers pointed out, deploying the emergency chute could have caused a panic, ground personnel could have been seriously injured or killed had they been in the way and can you imagine how inappropriately he might have handled an emergency occurring during the flight?
Enablers of the month:
The 100,000 or so people who joined a Facebook page supporting the actions of flight attendant Steven Slater, who slid down the emergency chute of a JetBlue airplane after instigating at least one confrontation with a passenger. We’ve honored many famous addicts to their deaths, from Marilyn Monroe to actor Health Ledger; it’s only fitting I suppose that an unknown becomes known for his alcoholic antic and that we honor and enable him.
Quote of the month:
Steven Slater’s boyfriend Kenneth Rochelle, who called Slater a “lovely, classy, beautiful person,” and Slater’s ex-wife, Cynthia Susanne, who called him a consummate flight attendant who would always act in the most appropriate manner. “I can’t believe he murdered someone!” is a common remark about a “nice guy” committing homicide. Yup, nice guy, until he isn’t, due to brain damage stemming from alcoholism. As pointed out in the chapter on “Beauty, Brains & Success” in “Alcoholism Myths and Realities: Removing the Stigma of Society’s Most Destructive Disease,” being nice, successful, smart and charming are entirely consistent with alcoholism, except when Mr. Hyde rears his ugly head.