Steven Slater’s rude landing

Steven Slater is on the tail end of his 15 minutes of fame, said Michael Idov in New York. Slater is the JetBlue flight attendant who improvised perhaps the most dramatic job exit of all time last summer, when he cursed out a rude passenger, quit, and slid down his plane’s emergency chute. “Within 20 minutes, there were lots of weird ‘Baby, I’ll make you a star’ calls,” says Slater, 39. “People wanted me to slide into everything. A bar! A club! A New Year’s party in a baby diaper!” None of the job offers were particularly inviting, so he’s been selling T-shirts to pay for his legal defense, and he isn’t sure what he’ll do next.

He says his infamous exit from the plane was less glamorous than it was portrayed, because he forgot to take his baggage. “I’m looking back up at the airplane, and I’m like, ‘S--t, now what?’” To retrieve the bags, he clawed his way back up the chute, and then slid down again. The story about him having sex with his boyfriend when cops arrived at his home is also a myth; in reality, they’d just had a huge fight. “Of course, they immediately put us where they always put the gays, in bed,” he says. There’s one place, he says, where he’ll always be a star. “You should see what goes on when I get on planes. Pandemonium!”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up