• CNet, Wednesday, February 17, 2010 1:23 PM

Sounds like the crew of one Southwest Airlines flight just asked the wrong passenger to leave the plane (before takeoff) because of his, er, size. The passenger? Outspoken film director and Twitter celebrity Kevin Smith. "Dear @SouthwestAir - I know I'm fat, but was Captain Leysath really justified in throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated?" is the message Smith's more than 1.5 million Twitter followers received this past weekend.

Southwest -- no Web 2.0 novice with more than a million Twitter followers itself -- followed up with a blog entry apologizing to Smith, and admitting that the situation was poorly handled. The damage, however, was already done. "What the whole thing amounted to was about the worst scenario imaginable," says CNet's The Social blog. "An airline was awkwardly executing a controversial policy with a passenger, and that passenger happened to be one of Twitter's most popular and opinionated users."

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