30 Dec 02
In case you needed yet another reminder of how embarrassingly
stupid our nation’s current airport security is, I offer up the following
true story as reported by the Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel:
A man and his wife get on a plane in Madison on Christmas
Eve. The man leans around the door to the pilots’ compartment and
says, jokingly, “I hope you haven’t been drinking.” The pilots then
empty the plane of all passengers. The passengers wait in line to be
rebooked on another flight while the pilots are subjected to blood tests for alcohol
consumption. The man is pulled out of the airport by sheriff’s
deputies and charged with disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor that
carries with it a $225 fine. Meanwhile the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office
are debating whether or not to level charges of “interfering with a flight
crew” at the man. That particular felony carries a maximum
penalty of twenty years in prison
All of this because of a simple joke. Apparently, airports –
previously terrible places to spend time because of their scale, atmosphere,
and generally poor aesthetics — are now completely humorless by law.
That’s your Homeland Security department at work.
If you missed Dave Barry’s year 2002 in
review, here are some excerpts to pique your interest:
…government officials kept issuing alarming, yet vague,
warnings. “We have received reliable information,” an official would s
ay,
“that something bad might happen. We don’t know what, or when, or where. Bu
t
it is very, very bad. Also we are seeing the letter ‘E.’ So we urge all
citizens to continue leading normal lives, while remaining in a state of
stark, buttpuckering terror. Tune in tomorrow and we’ll see if we can’t
ratchet this thing up a notch or two.”
But the big domestic issue is Homeland Insecurity, which is most
noticeable at airports, where the Department of Transportation, having
determined that every single 9/11 hijacker was a young male from a Middle
Eastern country, has implemented a shrewd policy of hassling randomly
selected elderly women.
In the War on Terrorism, security personnel at Chicago’s O’Hare
airport wrestle would-be passenger Merline A. Grelpner, 91, to the ground
after an alert screener notices that she is carrying an object that is later
confirmed, by the FBI, using spectrographic analysis, to be a pretzel. The
Department of Homeland Insecurity places the nation on a Code Magenta Alert
(“A Tad Higher Than Relatively High, But Not Totally High.”)
In other Florida news, police shut down I-75 for hours and
arrest three men of Middle Eastern descent after a woman reports that she
overheard them in a Shoney’s restaurant talking about what she believed to
be a terrorist plot. It turns out to be a misunderstanding: The men are
medical students. Responding quickly, the Department of Homeland Insecurity
orders all 350 Shoney’s to install metal detectors.
Speaking of terror: Saddam Hussein, having campaigned under the
catchy populist slogan “A Vote For Saddam Is A Vote for Not Getting Both
Your Feet Chopped Off Without Anesthetic,” is re-elected with a solid 127
percent of the popular vote, which includes several thousand votes
apparently cast via Internet from Broward and Miami-Dade counties.