On the day Kevin Smith got his definitively fat ass booted from his flight on a Southwest Airlines plane, I happened to be in the air as well, though with a different company. My immediate reaction to the situation was indifference. I don't care enough about Smith, the state of health and fitness in America, or the increasingly uncomfortable experience of air travel to really get in a tizzy about any of the many things involved with Smith's story. But then the whole thing snowballed. What should have been a minor and instantly forgettable development turned into some kind of miniature media frenzy. Sure, the various news outlets of our nation should have been spending a little more time on the giant, war-defining battle that took place in the hills of Afghanistan, but instead they decided to spend half the day prattling on about a fat geek and his Twitter account. So, here I am at the back of the bandwagon.

In all fairness to Kevin Smith, Southwest Airlines is really freaking awful. Every time I've ever flown with them it felt like eating at Rally's (or Checkers, depending on where you live). See, fast food in general is kind of a sorry experience, but some restaurants are worse than others. I don't feel satisfied or, ya know, any father from a heart attack after I've eaten at Burger King, but there's an extra layer of disgust and self-loathing that comes with choking down a burger at Rally's. Nothing about the meal can be construed as enjoyable and the only reason you even put that junk in your mouth is because you were desperate.

Southwest is pretty much the same thing, only where air travel is concerned. You only fly Southwest when you must have the cheapest flight possible and you have no regard for your own dignity or comfort. That's why it doesn't surprise me that it was Southwest that actually enforced the overweight passenger rule. When you're an organization with no class whatsoever, you don't give a damn about PR.

But here's the rub: Kevin Smith isn't that fat. Unless the guy has put on an extra hundred pounds since the last time I saw him, he's what scientists would classify as Moderately Tubby. The only explanation for why a guy of Smith's medium girth would be bumped from the flight is that Southwest has been gradually reducing the size of its seats and this was just a hiccup in the system.

Or maybe the stewardess saw Clerks 2 and was, as are all who watch it to completion, full of righteous fury. This whole debacle has made me think more about Kevin Smith as a celebrity than it has about anything else. It's actually pretty bizarre that Smith is even famous to begin with. The guy got famous by making a movie that is sub-Youtube level in quality and only really sounds profound or funny when you're 15. Through some cosmic fluke the majority of Smith's audience never re-watched Clerks as adults so their admiration of the man's work remained untainted.

I'm not suggesting that Smith's movies are all bad. Dogma, for all its faults, is at least unique and the man did manage to make approximately half of Zack and Miri Make A Porno as oddly endearing as was intended. That still doesn't explain how an entire nation of people gave this nerd with no real directorial flare a permanent position among the Hollywood elite.

The only reason I can imagine Smith has remained popular over the years is because he's a shameless populist. The guy spends as much time on the Internet as his fans and he stoops to their level by blogging, tweeting and showing up at comic book conventions to promote his own self-referential creations. People like Kevin Smith because Kevin Smith likes them.

The cynic in me wonders if this whole airline mess is just a publicity stunt to drum up public attention for Cop Out, a movie that seems sure to wind up on several Worst of 2010 lists. After all, what millionaire celebrity flies coach on the worst airline in the country? No, I call shenanigans on this whole ordeal. I want to like you, Smith, but maybe you should stop making terrible movies instead of fabricating controversy to build up interest for another forgettable stinker.