A representative for Selma Blair came to her defense on Friday, just days after the actress pleaded not guilty after being arrested on two counts of second-degree assault in connection to a physical incident on a plane.
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Blair's rep says she did not intend to harm anyone; the charge sheet is up to three.
As it ran on the front
The first statement from Selma Blair's representatives arrived Friday, five days after a Delta flight from Los Angeles to Kennedy.
Sit with the verb. Intent is the element the statement contests, and it is the only element the statement contests. By Friday the week had already finished assembling the rest. The statement moves none of those three. It declines to engage with them at all, politely, in the passive register that publicists reserve for a count they cannot shrink.…
…(cont) Then there is the other document, the one argued in court on Tuesday. Her lawyer told the judge about a head injury and missed MS medication — a defense about a body, which is a serious thing and deserves a serious hearing. In the same breath, the same lawyers asked for leniency on the grounds that their client is "the gold standard." Two arguments in one room: one holding that a person was not in control of a body, the other that the person is the finest available example of one. By the Post's account of the hearing, the Queens judge was not persuaded.
Follow the last clause. The Fox version of Friday's statement includes the detail that authorities took her service dog. That is the single line in the whole release describing something done to her rather than something she did not mean, it is checkable, and if it happened it is worth a filing of its own. It arrives shoulder to shoulder with "much more to this story," the oldest sentence in the genre, and it is Friday evening, and the rest of the story is not attached.
What is supposed to happen when a passenger has a medical emergency in a sealed aluminum tube is treatment. Instead the record shows an arrest, a hospital, a second accusation at the hospital, and then, on day five, a sentence about what was in someone's mind. Note that the sentence is available at all. The other version gets a statement, a plea, and a memo calling the defendant a standard.
The statement names the dog. It does not name the three.
“Listen to what that sentence doesn't say — "did not intend to harm anyone" doesn't say the two attendants weren't bitten and struck, and it doesn't say the nurse wasn't kicked; it says we'd like to litigate the inside of a head instead of the outside of a chest. And the same lawyers who told the judge she wasn't in control of her body asked for a break because she's the gold standard, which is two arguments that can't both be true in one room. Anybody else has that emergency on that flight, there's no memo, no Friday statement, no "much more to this story" — there's a transport van and a court date.”
“Look, this was a medical emergency — a head injury, missed MS medication, and they took her service dog, which nobody wants to talk about because it doesn't fit the narrative. Nobody's saying nothing happened; what we're saying is intent, and intent is the whole ballgame, legally. Did I say ballgame? That doesn't sound like me. There is much more to this story, and we'll be releasing it at the appropriate time.”
The receipts
Selma Blair allegedly kicked a nurse in the chest at a Queens hospital hours after her arrest for an incident aboard a Delta flight to JFK Airport.
We have new details on Nick Reiner’s trust fund dropping a cool $350k for lawyer Alan Jackson. Plus, actor Bryan Cranston shares an emotional tribute after the tragic death of his Breaking Bad TV son RJ Mitte, and Selma Blair’s lawyer blames a head injury and missed MS meds for her wild airport arrest. Meanwhile,...
Selma Blair's rep says the actress had a medical emergency on the Delta flight and that authorities took her service dog, adding that she did not intend any harm.
Actor Selma Blair was arrested after an incident on board a Delta Air Lines flight from Los Angeles to John F. Kennedy International Airport Sunday night.
The "Hellboy" star was traveling on a Delta flight from LAX in Los Angeles to JFK in New York City when she allegedly became physically disruptive.
Lawyers for A-lister-chomping actress Selma Blair claimed to a Queens judge she deserved a break after her second bizarre mid-air meltdown because she is “the gold standard."
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.