April 23, 2005
Homeland Security Department
A Funny Thing
My wife went on a business trip on Wednesday and came back Thursday with an amusing story about how she almost got strip searched at the airport.
Strip searched. Ha, ha, ha.
She and her boss were going through the line and the security folks sent her boss in one direction and my wife into some side room. They made my wife take off her shoes. They X-rayed my wife's purse and found something that bothered them, so they started going through it, taking stuff out and spreading it all over.
Making my wife stand there barefooted while they go through her purse. Great.
They couldn't find the problem, so this dragged on and on. Meanwhile, my wife's boss didn't know what had happened to her, so she called my wife on her cell phone. My wife reached for it, and Skippy the TSA twit yelled at her not to touch it. You know, because they're in the middle of a search.
I'm seething with anger that this stranger, this self-important little prick would be yelling at my wife. I don't want to let it show, because my wife would only get upset, and this doesn't seem to bother her as much as it bothers me.
Eventually, they found what they were looking for: a small utility knife in a credit-card toolkit at the bottom of my wife's purse. Before they said anything, my wife just told them to take it so she could go.
The worst part is that even if I'd been there, there'd be nothing I could do. They've got the numbers, they've got the guns, and they've got the overbearing federal law enforcement. Yell at them, call them the idiots they are, and they could accuse you of trying to distract them in their duties or some such bullshit. They've done it to other people.
Eventually, my wife caught up to her boss, who'd been a little worried. My wife tells it like it's funny, and maybe it is to her.
Me, I think that internal checkpoints are one of the surest signs of creeping totalitarianism. I think that when the authorities can question you and you can't question them, it's tyranny. Only a little bit of tyranny in this case, but even a little bit is way too much.
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