Apparently the U.S. isn't

Apparently the U.S. isn't the only country where famous people are above the law. A British jury acquitted REM guitarist Peter Buck today of charges of "going on a drunken rampage on a trans-Atlantic flight." The AP article reports:

They claimed he overturned a breakfast cart, mistook a hostess trolley for a compact disc player, claimed a stranger was his wife and tussled with crew members, covering them with yogurt.

Prosecutors said Buck drank 15 glasses of wine. British Airways crew members testified that they had to pull Buck away from an exit door after he "announced he was 'going home' mid-flight." But they were no match for REM bandmates Michael Stipe and Michael Mills, and U2 uber-celebrity Bono, who all testified that Buck is a "gentle family man." For his own perfomance, Buck claimed he had only had six glasses of wine, and said he had "suffered a bad reaction to the combination of a sleeping pill and red wine."

Six glasses of wine? That's not a defense, you jackass, that's the sign of troubles at home. Of course you had a bad reaction -- Sleeping pills and alcohol generally tend to be a bad combination, unless you're not really interested in waking up, ever. And where were all the flashy rock stars when Raho Ortiz's trip to the bathroom on an US Airways flight caused him to get jumped by three sky marshals, one with a gun drawn?

[Full disclosure: the author of this editorial has spent more money on REM concerts and CDs than he cares to admit anymore.]