To recap: because he was told to wait until take off to use the bathroom, actor Gerard Depardieu whipped it out and urinated on the floor in front of everyone. The plane was forced to return to the gate and a couple of unlucky members of the grounds crew spent two hours cleaning up the mess. Try to imagine being on that plane at the time, a sealed plane where odors never die. Upon hearing this story, my first thought was that the actor should’ve either been thrown in jail or had his butt kicked gang initiation-style by his fellow passengers. But now I’ve seen the light.

Writing in The Wrap, Richard Stellar puts it all in the proper perspective. Depardieu isn’t a pig, he’s a Freedom Fighter against The Man, the awful corporations who make these silly rules and — gasp! — dare to sell alcohol to the weak-willed:

Gerard Depardieu is my new hero.

I equate him with the lone demonstrator who faced down a squadron of Chinese Type 59 armed tanks in Tiananmen Square, holding nothing but an empty shopping bag. (Editor’s note: For those of you who missed it, the actor was thrown off an Air France flight from Paris to Dublin for urniating outside the confines of the restroom.)

Depardieu, in his own way, faced down the culture of corporate greed and control, holding something much more symbolic than an empty shopping bag, albeit equally vacant and non-threatening.

Depardieu’s urgent need to relieve himself is metaphoric to the basic rights and privileges that are denied to many of us.

It doesn’t matter if it’s an international airline, a media conglomerate, or the United States Government — the basic needs that we pay taxes for are circumvented, denied, and so wrapped in red tape that they have become invisibly impenetrable and unattainable.

Depardieu’s condition was in part a result of the need for transportation conglomerates and municipal airports to up-sell traveler’s on products and services that have no place in public transportation hubs.

There is no need to serve alcohol on a plane or in an airport.

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Remember back in the early 1960s when blacks could get any job they wanted in the American airline industry? Oh, and remember back then how no one smoked cuz it was really, really bad for you and stuff? Yeah. No one else does, either. Well, maybe not no one. Big Three Network ABC seems to remember it because that is how they are envisaging how the world worked back in 1963 for its new TV series about airline stewardesses entitled “Pan Am.”

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In yet another example of Hollywood PCism run amok, producers, we are told, “admitted” that studio execs at ABC-Disney nixed any chance that the show’s characters or extras would be smoking during the series even though the historical fact is that the bulk of the adult population of 1960s America smoked.

In fact, smoking was as common as “Coffee, tea, or me.” Everyone was allowed to smoke on airline flights in the 1960s. It is just a fact. Yet producers have decided that the show will never portray a single fuming butt in flight despite the historical reality.

Heck, who over 45 does not remember cigarette ads portraying doctors telling consumers how smoking was good for your health? I sure do!

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