National Review’s Kevin Williamson had a more interesting Wednesday night than most, but he’s not to be envied: Williamson writes at The Corner that he got to experience the unique sensation of being ejected from a theater, after he grabbed the phone of a woman he considered rude and threw it across the room. The “vulgarians,” as Williamson describes them in his headline, were “two parties of women of a certain age, the sad sort with too much makeup and too-high heels, and insufficient attention span for following a two-hour musical.” It’s best to let Williamson tell the story, starting after a theater staffer “apologetically assured us that the situation would be remedied.”
“It was not. The lady seated to my immediate right (very close quarters on bench seating) was fairly insistent about using her phone. I asked her to turn it off. She answered: ‘So don’t look.’ I asked her whether I had missed something during the very pointed announcements to please turn off your phones, perhaps a special exemption granted for her. She suggested that I should mind my own business.
So I minded my own business by utilizing my famously feline agility to deftly snatch the phone out of her hand and toss it across the room, where it would do no more damage. She slapped me and stormed away to seek managerial succor. Eventually, I was visited by a black-suited agent of order, who asked whether he might have a word.”
Williamson is pretty sure that if we lived in the “civilized world” he’d get some kind of commendation for acting like a 5-year-old. But as we live in a state of total anarchy and vulgarian rule, “there is talk of criminal charges.” Gawker’s Taylor Berman suggests, for starters, criminal mischief in the third degree and menacing in the third degree.
