Grab the Beer, Pop the Chute...

...or, one day I will get around to Edmund Ross.
Steven Slater is the hot topic of the day. He is the real life Howard Beale. For those of you, Beale was the crazy anchorman in the movie Network. Played by Peter Finch, he is best known for uttering the phrase, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore." This led to a ratings spike, but when they came back down, Beale was assassinated on live television.
For those of you who don't know, Slater is the JetBlue flight attendant who after asking a passenger to sit down ("until the aircraft comes to a complete halt") was cursed at. He may have even been struck by a bag being removed from the overhead ("remember articles may have shifted during the flight"). Evidently this was Slater's "mad as hell moment." He returned to the front of the plabe, got on the intercom, let loose a profanity laced tirade, grabbed a couple of beers, poppped the emergency chute ("remove shoes and other sharp objects"), and went home. Was Johnny Paycheck's Take this Job and Shove It playing on the radio?
In the Irony department, the other story of note was a woman who wanted Chicken McNuggets before 10:30 am. When informed it was too early, she went ballistic. Striking the attendant and breaking the glass, all caught on tape.
What has happened to Society? It appears we have become spoiled brats. I am a teacher and I see this type of behavior all too often. Students send you an email, and when you don't respond fast enough to suit them, they send a second. I am not talking days but hours, single digit hours. The requests go on ad infinitum.
There is a great little book called The Tyranny of Email by John Freeman that covers this aspect in more detail but I believe it is only symptomatic of a much greater problem. We have become flat out rude. Have you ever been parked between two SUV's and tried to back out? You carefully begin to move so that an approaching vehicle has time to slow down. What do they do? They honk at you and keep right on going. Makes you wonder how they treat blind people.