23 January 2007

Terror theatre

Hip marketing guru Seth Godin has some observations about airport security during the recent holiday season.
Just on the other side of the line are the bureaucrats at the TSA. They tell a story too, but it couldn't be intentional.

“No Cake!” the screener yells. “No pie either!” and they make the person traveling to her family throw out her home-baked cake.

We got up to the line. I had an ounce of gel left in a five ounce bottle. They made me throw it out because the label said 5 ounces (though it was clearly more than half empty).
....
No Cake!

Is this the sort of government we want? We deserve? We should pay for?

There are 583 ways to hurt yourself and your fellow passengers onboard an airplane. Gel (and cake) are exactly two of them. How many more are we going to protect ourselves against? If the best our bureaucracy can do is scare us with cries of “No Cake!” and “too much gel,” then I think we need a new bureaucracy.

As I have said before, airport secuirty is a total f#$%@ing waste of time, money, and attention.

1 comment:

Jonathan Korman said...

There's some interesting discussion of this post at its LiveJournal syndicated version.