from a flight before takeoff for being a "safety risk," or in Smith's delicate words, "too fat."

What resulted was a debacle for the airline, as Smith spread the word of his ejection to his nearly 1.7 million Twitter followers. Much profanity was thrown about (which should come as no surprise to anyone who's ever heard the dialogue of a Smith film or the reaction of anyone who paid money to sit through "Jersey Girl"), and Southwest eventually apologized for the embarrassment (but not for its "Customer of Size Policy") by phone, on its Twitter account and on its Web site.

The press immediately referred to this juicy morsel of celebrity scandal as a "PR nightmare" for the airline. It was, although Southwest was able to defuse the situation fairly quickly and found a sizable amount of support for the policy from those who "tweeted" their two cents' worth.

What's obvious about this situation is that it's just like hundreds of other "PR nightmares" that have occurred since the advent of celebrity in our culture - the only difference being the speed with which the information was distributed to the public. What's less obvious is what the multimillionaire director of the new Bruce Willis movie was doing flying Southwest.

So Twitter is here to stay as the present future of public relations