Plax

Here’s how things work in clubs, at least how I understand it:

A celebrity calls someone who has a connection at a club. I don’t know exactly whom they call, but they have someone at their disposal who has the phone number of a club’s VIP host, bottle host, manager or owner. It could be any of these. It could be someone else. I have no idea, really. People would drop so many names when they came up to us that I lost track of which connections were important and which weren’t. I stopped giving a shit after a while.

Anyway, a call is placed, and the celebrity is told the sequence of events that will allow him or her to proceed safely from the sidewalk to the VIP sofa as quickly and efficiently as possible. This means they’re not going through the same door you’re going through, at least in the places where I’ve worked. It means someone’s coming out to the sidewalk to “get them” and escort them in. It also means they’re not being checked for weapons.

Who’s going to check a guy who plays for the New York Giants for a weapon?

What, then, does the VIP host, bottle host or VIP bouncer do when he knows a celebrity customer is carrying a gun? Do you tell him he can’t come in with it? Do you make him “check” it? Or do you just let the guy through and leave him alone, figuring nothing’s likely to happen?

Tough call. From the comfort of my living room, it’s easy to sit back and say, “Nobody carrying a gun should be allowed into a nightclub,” but that’s too easy.

If the security staff at Latin Quarter – where I’ve admittedly never been and know little about – knew he was carrying but let him in anyway, I can’t really blame them. I mean, you’re not expecting a professional athlete to shoot anyone, much less himself, even if the guy is someone with a reputation like the one Plaxico Burress seems to have cultivated. Most places would let him through and hope for the best, figuring there’s about a 99.9% chance everything will be fine.

The “dildo” and metal detector at the door, however, are not the problem here.

It’s a ridiculous situation for everyone involved. When wealthy people – especially athletes, who often don’t know any better – flaunt their wealth publicly, they become targets for people who want to take some of their wealth away from them. Once they realize they’re targets, they start carrying guns because they think they need to protect themselves. It’s what happens when an entire society has started to turn to shit.

Plaxico Burress is going to jail – he will do time for this, mark my words – because he’s a dumbass who’s both exploited this bit of absurdity and been victimized by it. At 31, however, he should've known better.