![\"Steve](\"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/steve-slater-nypost-headline.jpg\" "\\"steve-slater-nypost-headline\\"")
<\/p>\nIt may be the most creative way to quit a job in American history. <\/p>\n
A baby had been crying since take-off. Two female passengers had been fighting about overhead bin space since boarding in Pittsburgh. As soon as the Jet Blue plane touched down at JFK, one of the women hopped up to grab her bag. Never mind that the fasten seatbelt sign was on. Never mind that flight attendant Steven Slater had repeatedly told her to wait until the plane taxied into the gate. She told him to go sleep with himself and whipped out her suitcase, accidentally whacking him in the forehead. And that\u2019s when Steven Slater lost it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He stormed back to the intercom system. He cursed out the passengers before grabbing two brews from the drink cart. He then ripped open the emergency exit, bounced down the emergency slide to the tarmac, and drove home. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Steven Slater is no longer employed by JetBlue Airlines. He has, however, enjoyed the fruits of 15 minute celebrity. He was offered a reality TV show. He even made a (heinous) rap video<\/a>.<\/p>\n Slater\u2019s eruption was hardly the stuff of Rosa Parks, but he struck a chord with many as a working class hero. He\u2019s a totem of a disillusioned American working-class sick and tired of the same old in 2010. 138,000 people liked the Steven Slater Facebook page within 48 hours. Republicans evoked Slater\u2019s grand exit in a campaign ad to mirror Democrats bailing from President Obama<\/a>.<\/p>\n Steven Slater had the audacity to do what every annoyed employee has only dreamed of. He wasn\u2019t going to take it anymore. He\u2019d been patient. He tried to be civil. But nothing changed. It just got worse. So enough already, Steven Slater said. Enough with the forced smiles. Enough with the whiny passengers with too much baggage for overhead. Enough with corporate. Slater said he died a little on the inside the first time he had to charge a passenger for a sandwich. Enough with the same old. <\/p>\n If 2008 was the year of Too Big To Fail and 2009 was ballyhooed as the year of Change, 2010 was More Of The Same. The recession is only over to economists and Wall Street. Firms are back to record profitability, but the unemployment rate still hovers around 10 percent. Our troops are still in Afghanistan and will be for another four years. <\/p>\n Historians may look back 2010 as another driftless year of the American Empire. A wasted year where a paralyzed Congress squabbled over semantics and swallowed up the once-promising Obama presidency. Meanwhile, China quietly passed Japan as the world\u2019s second largest economy and bought up vast swathes of Africa and the Middle East.<\/p>\n Now, it wasn\u2019t all bad in 2010. One billion people tuned in to see the 33 Chilean miners rescued after 69 days entombed 2,000 feet underground. Myanmar\u2019s beloved politician Suu Kyi was released after 15 years under house arrest. Drew Brees and an unthinkable onside kick right after half-time delivered New Orleans a Super Bowl title five years after Katrina. The BP oil spill, while tragic, was not nearly as devastating as feared. Turns out the Gulf of Mexico is far tougher than we gave her credit for. We had the World Cup and even a Winter Olympics we forgot about. And, of course, there was Season 2 of ABC\u2019s \u201cModern Family\u201d.<\/p>\n 2010 was an especially good year for these guys:<\/p>\n 2010\u2019s Person Of The Year: Julian Assange<\/strong><\/p>\n He\u2019s the second most wanted man in the world. He has divulged more confidential documents than the rest of the world press combined. Not bad for a pale, 39 year old hacker. <\/p>\n Julian Assange moved 34 times by the age of 14. A quarter century later, he is even more nomadic. The most connected man in the world lives a rootless existence. He says he resides in airports and has virtually no material possessions, save for his Australian passport. <\/p>\n He doesn\u2019t have a red button but an all-powerful Touchpad on his laptop. Assange orbits the globe with the power to sink politicians, companies or wars with a key-stroke. He is an information \u201cterrorist\u201d who deals in official government memos, not bullets. He sets their own words back on them for all the world to see. <\/p>\n Assange is the purported founder of WikiLeaks.com, the website that released more than 250,000 State Department cables. He gave us the seedy underbelly of American foreign policy. We saw beyond the glossy press releases and photo-ops and peered into how the American Empire works backdoors. The cables exposed our diplomats\u2019 raw, unfiltered feelings about the rest of the world. <\/p>\n A few of the revelations are disturbing: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered the State Department to spy on the UN. Washington tried to bargain off Guantanamo Bay prisoners to Belgium like poker chips . Saudi Arabia wanted the U.S. to bomb Iran. <\/p>\n But nothing is veritable Abu Ghraib bomb-shell material. The cables are more embarrassing then they are enlightening. They are the juicy tidbits of diplomats\u2019 water cooler talk: Qaddahafi always travels with a \u201cvoluptuous blonde\u201d nurse. German chancellor Angela Merkel is boring and \u201crarely creative\u201d. And, unsurprisingly, Italy\u2019s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is \u201cvain\u201d and should not be Italy\u2019s Prime Minister. <\/p>\n Russia\u2019s blustery Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is steamed our diplomats see him as the \u201cBatman\u201d to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev\u2019s \u201cRobin\u201d. But Putin is an exception not an example. Most foreign leaders and diplomats have brushed aside the cables. We knew this already, they shrugged. We\u2019ve called each other worse.<\/p>\n Hillary Clinton has stoically maintained the State Department will \u201cget through this\u201d. But deep down she knows it will never be the same. She will never be able to look French President Nicholas Sarkozy in the eye the same way again after he knows the State Department thinks he\u2019s thin-skinned. <\/p>\n Interpol placed Assange on the wanted list last Wednesday. An international manhunt is underway for Assange over alleged attacks on two women during a lecture stop in Stockholm this August. Justice Department lawyers are pouring over the 1917 Espionage Act to see how they can arrest him. <\/p>\n Sarah Palin wants Assange hunted down like Osama Bin Laden. And to many, Assange is a terrorist. He deals not in car bombs but information dumps. Assange similarly hopes to topple Western governments. But he seeks to implode them from within. As they tell it, WikiLeaks will force governments to clamp down and centralize to keep their secrets within. But the governments will ultimately topple under their own Orwellian Big Brother weight<\/a> and \u201cmore open forms of governance\u201d will emerge.<\/p>\n The debate about Julian Assange is a debate about: have we reached a point of too much information? Yes, WikiLeaks will clean up American embassies. Heads will roll. His alleged \u201cterrorism\u201d is truth. He\u2019s simply releasing the real story of tales the government doesn\u2019t want you to know. He\u2019s the savior for the X-Files Truth is Out There information hounds.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s the other side. The peril of no secrets. Hillary Clinton argues Assange put lives at stake by releasing the cables. The Pentagon points out Afghan families are mentioned in the cables. The Taliban knows who and where they are, and they will hunt them down. Their lives are at risk because Assange clicked the button. The cables will inevitably serve as an anti-American recruiting tool for al Qaeda and splinter cells across the globe. <\/p>\n WikiLeaks has next set its sights on a major U.S. bank in early 2011 (probably Bank of America). Assange has already warned the event will unleash an investigation of Enron-esque proportions. <\/p>\n Governments and companies have never had to reckon with a force like Assange before. He is a rogue truther who can reach billions with a click of a button. And even if Julian Assange is arrested or disappears under mysterious circumstances, he will not be the end. The next wave of younger and better hackers will take his place. Nations and corporations must accept a new, more transparent world order. A world order where anything they say can and will be used against them.<\/p>\n For striking fear into the heart of every crooked politician and banker. For showing us the gift\u2014and the curse\u2014of too much information, Julian Assange is 2010\u2019s Person of the Year. <\/p>\n Runners-Up:<\/strong> This 8 Year Old Break-Dancer<\/p>\n![\"Modern](\"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/modern-family-abc-television.jpg\" "\\"modern-family-abc-television\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"Julian](\"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/julian-assange.jpg\" "\\"julian-assange\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"Vlad](\"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/vlad-putin-horse.jpg\" "\\"vlad-putin-horse\\"")
<\/p>\n