United Airlines didn’t beat this guy up, although they can fairly be accused of contracting out their work without providing adequate guidance on how to address a situation like this.

The contract airline didn’t beat this guy up, although they can fairly be criticized for requesting law enforcement intervention when a more generous compensatory offer would likely have found another willing volunteer.

The cops didn’t beat this guy up although questions should be asked about whether the use of contract security in place of law enforcement followed established guidelines and whether those guidelines were or are appropriate.

Airport security didn’t beat this guy up. (Watch the video.) They explained to him that they were there to remove him from the flight and recommended it would be best for him to come peaceably. He clung onto the seat and screamed and when they pried him loose, he flew across the aisle and hit his face on an armrest.

This guy didn’t deserve to get hurt. But he is a shady dude with a troubled background who acted like a jack@ss. Yes, his ticket entitled him to get to his destination but so did everyone else’s and I can all but guarantee you had it been anyone else on that plane that had been selected for removal that day it never would have developed into a news story.

This was a perfect storm of events. There were as many chances on the part of airport and airline personnel to avoid this as there were for Dao himself to behave like an adult. He got his money. Let him go off and dump it into whatever shady enterprise he wants to blow it on. He can go ahead and try to drum up some fresh sympathy from the uninformed masses, but they never really cared about him to begin with and are now too fully engaged in today’s exciting new cause celebre to care about a drug dealing sexual harasser who’s sitting on a few million from a major airline lawsuit. We learned some lessons. Hopefully we’re better off for it. His 15 minutes are over. Move on.