With all the coverage of Steven Slater’s bailing from a Jet Blue flight after dealing with passenger that cussed him out for enforcing the rules of the airline, there’s been talk of him being a ‘hero.’ His own rant and selfish (but spectacular) exit from his career does not really meet the definition of hero, but anti-hero or folk hero fits nicely.

Every time Slater comes up, I keep hearing a tune in my head. No, not “The Ballad of Steven Slater” which seems to be a exploitation of the vulgarities exchanged between Slater and the still nameless passenger who pushed him over the edge – but the “Hero of Canton.” Here it is performed by Adam Baldwin, the actor who played “The Man They Called Jayne” on the series Firefly.

The song is sung on a world where “mudders” or slaves, make ceramic bricks for a wealthy magistrate. Jayne and a partner robbed the magistrate, but in the escape Jayne ended up pushing his partner – and the loot – out the hatch to save his own skin. (Maybe that’s where I first made the connection?) Anyway, the money rained down on the oppressed mudders, who saw Jayne as a hero, despite his very un-heroic motives. In fact, as the mercenary muscle on the Firefly crew, nothing about Jayne is remotely heroic.

So like Jayne Cobb and Robin Hood, Steven Slater could be considered a kind of folk hero: someone lauded, cheered for a specific action, despite the dubious morality about how or why it was done.

What is being admired about Slater is, when push came to shove, he left a job in the middle of the recession because you couldn’t pay him enough to take the abuse anymore. The term wage-slave gets tossed around a lot, but when someone is continually subjected to verbal abuse, that is oppression.

Slater couldn’t walk away. He couldn’t go ask his supervisor to intervene. They were on a plane. All the usual ways of dealing with abusive bosses and customers were closed to him. He had been struck (probably by accident, but I’m sure it hurt anyway) and cussed at. He couldn’t not enforce the rules that were being broken, he couldn’t get sarcastic back or yell at the passenger without losing his job. So when he boiled over, he made a spectacle of it, and quit.

I can’t condone the manner in which Slater quit, but neither can I condone those who seek to crucify him. The National Catholic Register published a blog post by Danielle Bean, editorial director of Faith & Family Magazine in which Bean called Slater “a big fat baby.”

Real working man heroes are people whose names most of us will never know. They are the ones who show up, day after day, faithfully performing hard, thankless tasks without complaint. Because they know the value of a dollar. Because they are grateful for the opportunity to earn a living. Because they are driven to provide for their families.

Danielle Bean

Criticize him for being reckless, for disrupting service, for being selfish in his tantrum or for the vulgarity of language he used. Scold him for sinking to the level of the passenger. But do not call him names because he valued himself more than to take verbal abuse for money. Especially as a Christian magazine editor on a Christian website. You can’t serve God and money – so don’t tell people to “suck it up” for cash.

Prostitutes do the things that Slater was told to do, and they do it for money. There are obviously levels of abuse we are not to subject ourselves to for money. We are children of God, his creation. If we find it acceptable to endure verbal, emotional, or physical abuse for money we are spitting on his creation.

As Christians, there should be limits to what we will do. We are not called to provide for our families first and foremost; we are told not to store up earthly treasure, to forsake family, even parts of our bodies if they keep us from the kingdom of heaven. If we are called even to those scarifies, are we not called then to leave jobs too? Certainly it is easier to find a new job, even in this economy, than to re-grow an eye you have plucked out. Perhaps Slater felt if he kept swallowing the abuse he’d snap in a more violent way, and he had to do something drastic to keep from doing something worse. Or maybe he didn’t think at all, other than to end the oppression.

And that, at the very least, is admirable.

One Response to “A Song for the Quitters”

1. Paul says:

   August 12, 2010 at 4:17 pm

   Turns out there is more than one version of the ballad of Steven Slater. This one doesn’t use profanity:
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzcK8VXz4xk

   Besides, “first-class hellraiser” is another apt title.

   Reply