Yesterday, when we wondered whether or not escape-hatch-fleeing JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater was a folk hero, we expressed wonderment that there weren’t any tribute songs written for him yet on YouTube. We didn’t have to hold our breath for long: There are now a handful. But the best tunes so far are by Jimmy Fallon, and MetaFilter’s cortex and Astro Zombie. “It ain’t that easy to ride the skies / laboring for JetBlue / A man’s got to keep widened eyes / For terrorists or shampoo,” goes the latter. “And worser still are the passengers / They turn a kind man to a hater / Won’t nobody stand up to this? / One man: Steven Slater.” (Seriously, go listen to it.)
Jimmy Fallon turned the tale into a country anthem, with the repeated refrain, “You’ve Gotta Get Two Beers and Jump.” It’s pretty catchy!
And, of course, here is the inevitable Taiwanese animated version of the story:
Sadly, this one isn’t as sexually graphic as the one they did for Al Gore.
Somehow, it seems, JetBlue doesn’t have as much of a sense of humor about this as everybody else does. But somehow Slater himself does. He even kept it when, according to the Post, not one but two livery cabs kicked him out after picking him up outside of lockup after he was released. They were scared off by the media attention — to be expected when producers from Good Morning America do things like jump in the car with you uninvited. As Slater stood on the sidewalk yesterday outside of the precinct, abandoned, someone asked him whether he’d forgotten something. The bruised flight attendant replied: “My dignity.”
