Your Best Lawsuit Now

In case you haven't heard (and what rock have you been under if you haven't?), Joel and Victoria Osteen are being sued by a distraught airline flight attendant after a confrontation on a 2005 flight to Vail, Colorado.

Now, I'm no big fan of the Osteens. And it's pretty clear that Mrs. Osteen acted like a prima donna at points in the flight:

Victoria Osteen said when she first told a flight attendant about the spill, she was handed some napkins. She said she responded, "'It's not my job.' I didn't say it in an ugly tone of voice."

Now, I clean up spills at restaurants all the time -- it comes with the territory when you've got two kids. And I'm sure that the next time I fly with my family, my son will spill something. In which case, I'll probably ask for a few napkins and clean it up. Is it my job? No -- but it's my mess. I'll clean it up.

My biggest concern in all of this is that there's an airline flight attendant who is suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome because of .... what? From what I can tell, it boils down to a rude passenger. Shock and horror -- someone acted like a jerk on an airplane. And the fact that it was a prominent Christian also means that "her faith was affected" as well.

Y'know what? People act like jerks all the time. When I worked retail, people were jerks to me on a regular basis -- most of the time for things that were totally out of my control. I just wish I knew then that I could sue people for that -- I'd be a wealthy individual right now, I can tell you that much. And Christians aren't any nicer -- in fact, my wife often says that Christians are some of the rudest, nastiest people in the world, and it's unfortunately true. But if your faith is affected because people are jerks, I wonder what your faith was in to begin with.

As much as I'd love to say that this is just a symptom of the prosperity pseudo-gospel that the Osteens preach, I think it's more a symptom of the American mentality of "You offended me, you're rich, I'm taking you to the cleaners."

Posted by Warren Kelly at August 9, 2008 12:18 PM | TrackBack