Kevin Smith: Too fat for Southwest?
Southwest kicked director Kevin Smith off a flight for weighing too much. Did the airlines mess with the wrong fat guy?
Southwest Airlines has taken heat for making overweight passengers book two seats, but nothing like the burn it felt after booting filmmaker Kevin Smith from a flight because his weight posed a "safety risk." Smith — who made cult classic "Clerks" — trashed Southwest in an expletive-studded Twitter tirade. Southwest apologized, also over Twitter, but who's the wronged party here — Smith, or Southwest? (Watch a report about Kevin Smith's rejection from Southwest)
Southwest picked the wrong fat guy: Southwest made a big mistake, says Foster Kamer in Gawker, by disturbing a guy with 1.6 million "rabid" followers on Twitter. Still, Smith's revenge probably won't hurt Southwest's bottom line. His slacker fans are "probably too sedate to do anything...but bitch some more on Twitter."
"The Kevin Smith Southwest Airlines fat-flight tweakout of epic proportions"
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Smith IS too fat for one seat: If anybody should apologize here, it's Smith, says travel expert Teresa Rodriguez Williamson in The Huffington Post. Southwest and other airlines have overweight-passenger policies because planes can crash if they're too heavy or unbalanced. "Obese passengers don't have shoe bombs or box cutters," but they can be "just as deadly."
"Kevin you're fat? Then understand weight and balance of an airplane"
Smith has a history of fatsploitation: Smith's outrage seems a little contrived, says Chris Lee in the Los Angeles Times. His new movie, "Cop Out," opens next week, and thanks to "Fatgate" he's one of the hottest topics on Twitter. Coincidence? Maybe not. Smith "milked" his own "morbid obesity" before his last "under-performing" movie, too -- that's how we know he's so fat he broke his toilet.
"Kevin Smith's pre-'Fatgate' admission: 'I broke a toilet'"
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