Get Over Yourselves, Airports

Years ago, we used to have a feature on Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher called "Get Over Yourself." It was given to the person or place most in need of lightening the fuck up. There's nothing that needs to lighten up more than airports -- or more specifically, our national attitude about airports.

I flew back to Los Angeles from Portland, OR last night on an airline that shall remain nameless (hint: the name rhymes with "Horizon Air, a regional carrier for Alaska Airlines"). When my wife and I got to the airport, we were informed that I was checked in but she was in danger of being bumped off the flight because it was oversold. I reacted to this news by informing the agent I felt that this was "unfair." The ticket was pre-purchased. We were traveling together. It was the last flight of the night and we needed to be on it. I was firm but I wasn't overly aggressive -- no cursing, no loud talking, no six vodka tonics before boarding (three, max). Plain and simple, the woman behind the counter was being a derogatory term for the female anatomy. I asked if I could speak to a supervisor, to which she replied, "Go sit down or you can talk to the police." After I wondered aloud if Sting and Stuart Copeland were on the flight, she repeated herself. "Go sit down or you can talk to the police." Yep, she was serious. She was trying to turn a minor disagreement into a jail-worthy confrontation.

On my way back to my chair, Carol Gotbaum popped into my mind. In case you forgot, she's the woman who died while in police custody in the Phoenix airport. She's been on my mind ever since a friend told me last week that he knows the family. And it got me thinking. Is this what it has come to in America? If I dare to demand that a contract I entered into with a service provider be honored, they threaten me with the police? Airports aren't airports anymore. They're Communist China.

If you want evidence that the terrorists have already gone a long way toward achieving their goals, look no farther than American airports. We have become so oversensitive at airports they're close to becoming college campuses. I mean, sure, taser a kid for yelling at John Kerry. If that kid had gone any farther, he could have ignited an open exchange of ideas. And we can't have that at our educational institutions. But don't threaten me with the cops because I want some decent service. Imaging being turned away from a sporting event because they sold your seat twice -- doesn't happen.

In America it seems like we react with senseless emotion first and logic way later, if ever. Think about terrorists in airports. Have they ever gone out of their way to call attention to themselves? No. They do to the opposite. They try to blend in. They HIDE AMONG US. They don't reek of booze or act demanding in line. And by the way, so far, none of them have been 45 year-old soccer moms from the Upper West Side on the way to rehab.

Last night, if I didn't have a couple of kids to get home to, I might have requested that the airline employee call the police. I could have told them that someone was attempting to steal from me. I paid for something and then that person I paid refused to give it to me. You can go to jail for that. I just wanted a cramped seat in coach on a musty airplane with a bunch of farting sleeping old people (I know it was you, lady in the orange sweater).

It's not really airports that need to get over themselves. It's us as a society that has turned these dung heaps of human misery into modern Indian burial grounds -- walk with respect and don't look sideways. The terrorists hit us once. Hard. They changed our way of life. I have the confiscated bottles of Aveda Confixor to prove it. But can we just take a deep breath and realize that even in these bad times, people still have bad days, even at airports. We've suffered enough. Let's not live by the motto "Don't freak out in an airport -- OR YOU MIGHT DIE."

Comments

[OkieMon]

9/11 was simply a colossal failure of American capitalism. 800 dollar hardened cockpit doors were not in place because that would affect the bottom line, and a bribed congress would not do the right thing and mandate them.

[dadw5boys]

STOP FLYING PEOPLE!
IF YOU WANT THINGS TO GET BETTER JUST STOP FLYING!
LET THE AIRLINES GO BANKRUPT THEY ARE REALLY GOOD AT THAT.

[monty]

Airlines won't go bankrupt, the Congress and Senate will use our tax money to bail them out! They can do no wrong, just like the Telecomm companies. "Do Our Evil, Get Immunity" seems to be the US government's M.O.

[rshadoan]

Airport security is beyond farce. Flew out of Sea-Tac this weekend and saw a group of about 10-15 soldiers going through security, in uniform, with military ID and they made them take their boots off!! Flipping ridiculous!!!

[wmbear]

I ***ALWAYS*** GET STRIP SEARCHED...

It never fails. (Must be the Ahmadinejad beard.)

[MajorKong]

They make everybody take their shoes off. I'm an airline pilot and I have to take my shoes off just like everybody else, even when I'm in uniform and carrying my airline ID.

Even military personnel traveling on a military transport plane, flying from a military base, have to go through screening.

[drumz]

But it doesn't make it right Major. It's ridiculous that you and the stews have to do that yet the cleaning and maintenance crews don't.

[cam]

While I agree with the overall sentiment of the article, having worked as a security professional myself I am heartened by this news. No one should get a free pass - not soldiers, not pilots, not even security itself (some of the worst transgressions are committed by security personnel).

Nevertheless, the anecdotal evidence of abuse is mounting. A person should have the right to know why he/she is considered a threat. Misunderstandings can then be resolved before they becomes a basis for serious mistakes.

[laserbob]

I've gotta say this and it may not be very popular, but here goes: Ok, 9/11 was one of the most horrid days in America, 3000+ death's, and it was a tragedy. But I have to think, that any of those 3000 would be horrified to know that their deaths caused such a hard right turn of the USA into a police state. And not even a good police state as these aren't the police causing problems, but lots of wannabee's, and others that shouldn't have the kind of authority they do over others lives. America has given up waaaay too much for the sake of those 3000. The deaths of 50,000 in Vietnam is no less horrible, yet the the country didn't go into Facist Overdrive at the result of their deaths, so what about these 3000 was giving up your liberty for? I think there will come a time soon where things will either get much worse, or the public is going to have to realize that the supposed "safety" as a counter to "terror" is not a bargain worth giving up what is the basis of American life. Freedom and the pursuit of happiness, traded away for 3000 lives..
And somewhat on topic: What do you think will happen with those 100,000+ "contractors" in Iraq when they come home? Those guys from Blackwater are going to be bored, wealthy, and have nothing to do except make lots of trouble, and I don't hear anyone thinking that scenario out.. You can bet a lot of them will end up in
the private security biz, at places like airports. Now that's truly scary.

lb

[tommjk]

This is a comment on the broader topic of the pervasive state of fear most Americans live in. The other day I was talking to my dad about different sports activities I thought my two seven-year-old nephews might like. My dad said something like "It's not like when you were young--kids can't run around outside by themselves anymore; it's too dangerous." People actually believe that serial killers and pedophiles are hiding behind every bush, just waiting to snatch any child left unattended outdoors for more than a moment. The average American lives in a constant siege mentality, terrified of human monsters that are mostly the product of an imagination that's been well nourished by the media. What sort of psychological disturbances will manifest in the children raised under these circumstances? Their parents reassure them that there are no monsters under their beds or in their closets, but then those same parents turn around and insist, wrongly, to their children that there ARE monsters everywhere else waiting to rape and murder them.

[prochange]

I lived in Europe before I moved to the U.S. 25 years ago. Even 25 years ago the children here were overprotected and driven everywhere by their parents instead of walking or bicycling to their schools or other activities.

I was regarded as an irresponsible parent because I let our son walk and bicycle around by himself. So it is not a new thing. What has changed in the last years is that television discovered that you can make a lot of cheap TV programs fueling fear and exposing all kind of pedophiles etc.
If the TV programs would concentrate on helping these offenders , there would not be so much interest.
The fearmongering has become so bad that I do not dare to talk to little children anymore in stores or in the street because I might get arrested.

[saxmaniac]

At the risk of offending many of my Huffpo friends, I've found the antidote to airport terrorism. I learned to fly years ago, and came back to it three years ago. Now, a trip 200 miles or so is not only a pleasure, but an intellectual challenge and feeling of real accomplihment that I made it there and back safely and quickly. With an airport picture ID around my neeck, I simply proceed to the plane, pre-flight, file my flight plan, and go.
Enroute, the air traffic controllers are polite, professional and thoroughly accomodating while keeping everyone going along smoothly and without trauma. I realize that flying oneself is not for everyone, and I'm exremely grateful that the GI Bill paid for 90% of my flying lessons after Viet Nam. In my case, the terroists have not succeeded, and the airport nazis can go to hell.

[deedrdo]

next time try going sober and maybe things will seem more clear to you.

she probably smelled the booze and thought "oh boy, another drunk ahole".

[chriscase]

I was under the legal limit. And I'm sure she couldn't smell it through her haze of awful perfume. Don't get me started on second hand perfume. Chris

[lurxst]

You never finished the story...

Did you get to talk to a supervisor? Did you both get seated on the plane?

[ezekay]

I was with this post right up to "farting sleeping old people." We all fart on the average of 14 times a day, and we all sleep, especially on planes. Chris, you may dream of not having an asshole, but you don't have to be one.

[chriscase]

Wow, a defense of farting on airplanes. You are a true liberal. Chris

[avergejoe]

"If you want evidence that the terrorists have already gone a long way toward achieving their goals"

The terrorists did not 'achieve' anything.
They could never influence a free and open society.

It was the neozioncons, and their 'yes men' in the govt and msm, who removed any hint of such a society;
who removed honest debate in the name of 'patriotism';
who are warping the constitution to meet their needs;
who removed us from the international community in the name of...;
who implemented 'bombing back to the stone age' as the preferred diplomatic strategy;
who are spreading a destructive climate of fear and hate.

QUOTATION: Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element. Public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustible energy and boundless experience direct and rule.... Such conditions must inevitably cause a brutalization of public life: attempted assassinations, shootings of hostages, etc.
ATTRIBUTION: Rosa Luxemburg (1870–1919), German revolutionary. Prison notes, 1918.

[Meanwhile]

"In America it seems like we react with senseless emotion first and logic way later, if ever."

It took a bad day at the airport for you to realize this? It's been this way my entire life, and very blatantly so.

If we did things logically, we'd be Canada.

[Fez]

I had a similar experience last year at Thanksgiving when the new restrictions on "liquids" went into effect. I had a tube of toothpaste in my dopp kit and was told to toss it because it was a "liquid." When I tried to point out the physical differences between liquids, solids, and gases the TSA agent got irate and called the police over. This was at 6:30 AM and I made a quick decision to dump the toothpaste rather than spend the day in jail. Ruined my whole day. If I had a gun I would have shot the TSA agent just to watch her die and then left for Folsom Prison. Someday soon that will happen when someone who has been hassled one too many times "goes off." Meanwhile, the actual terrorist will quietly slde into seat 13B wearing a set of Adult Depends made from plastic explosives and will blow his ass and all the other passengers straight to Hell or Disneyland, whichever is less crowded at the time.

[lemurfemur]

I've had to step aside to have some olives examined at one airport (are olives solid, or are they liquid?), and some cheese examined by a supervisor and the supervisor's supervisior at another (isn't cheese a gel?). The books I am carrying on to read on the plane are routinely examined. (Books can be as dangerous as bombs, remember?) At one small airport I used to fly into regularly, one of the guards routinely slipped his hand down the front of every man's pants who went through his metal detector. One time I protested, and was warned that I could be arrested for registering any objection to "security measures." We've all seen the grandmothers humiliated right in front of us by the strip-search routines. We all have our stories. And they are not just airport stories, are they? A few years back, standing in line to see the Washington Monument, I watched a security guard confiscate a half-chewed pack chiclets from an 8-year-old. Thus was he instructed in the principles of patriotism. The same guard then passed around a little plastic bucket and told all the tourists to give up their Tic-Tacs, or face detention. "They could be plastic explosives," he explained. "No mints are permitted inside the monument." It's easy to make fun of such guards, who are too dumb to qualify for the jobs at Wal-mart; so what choie do they have but to put on a uniform and a funny little badge? But we the people are the real idiots, for putting up with them and for electing _and re-electing_ the nitwits who put them on our federal payrolls.

[CraigB]

As a flight attendant for a major US air carrier for the past 18 years I'm afraid I must take issue with this and similar posts. On September 10, 2001 airport security was a joke. Knives up to 6" were allowed in carry-on baggage. Security screeners received minimum wage and little or no training. The terrorists studied our system with all of its holes and weak points and used it to their advantage.

Today they would still strike US aviation in a heartbeat. A major terrorist attack on a US flag carrier or at an airport would have severe impact on the industry and create a ripple effect on the country's economy. If you need evidence consider the shoe bomber who almost brought down a jumbo jet (so now we all have to remove our shoes.) The lads in London had another multi-prong attack nearly in execution phase using inert liquids that when combined onboard would blow the plane to smithereens.

The terrorists have us under surveillance. They study our system to ascertain our vulnerabilities. If we relax the standard for little old ladies, or families with children, or the disabled or air crew or ANY seemingly non-threatening group...we hand them the key to success.

In the days immediately following 9/11 we found ourselves inconveninced at airport security. Lines took hours to clear, we faced immense scrutiny passing thru the metal detectors. We had to show picture ID not once but two or three times from check-in to boarding. We accepted this as the new norm, and realized that air travel would never be the same again.

While traveling by air is inconvenient, weather causes delays. Aircraft sometimes need a mechanic to come fix the plane before it can get back on schedule. Everyone who flies must have this reality check. But if you come unhinged or decide to create a situation where the police are called, please understand the airline doesn't have to take you anywhere. Its just the way it is now, and its unfortunately the way it must be.

[rc2250]

What would happen if 5 terrorist came aboard with 3 oz of high explosive each for a total of 15 oz of C4?

I think it would bring the plan down, wouldn’t you agree? Butt where could they hide it without detection????

[UtahLiberal435]

Terrorists no longer have any interest in targeting U.S. airports.

It's just a matter of terrorist priorities. They can save time and money to use elsewhere.

Since the airlines are already doing a superb job of terrorizing the public anyway.

Airlines: The only business on earth (aside from defense department contracting) where you still have to pay full price for a service that wasn't delivered.

Gotta love deregulation, and how it unleashes the 'magic of the marketplace.'

And yes, then there's the TSA. Liquid prohibitions and shoe removal. How comforting.

[nomoredead]

Bingo! The terrorist have moved on long ago from airplanes. They are way ahead of us. Sad

[Jakdrippah]

My guess is that most would-be threats to terrorize American soil are de-virginating hairy burka laden "beauties" in "heaven" thanks to a close encounter with a US Marine in Iraq.

Is it a coincidence that despite unprotected borders, virtually non-existent port of entry security, and supposed hatred of America that we have experienced ZERO grand terror attacks on US soil since the US invaded Iraq?

Or does the sight of a lifeless Saddam Hussein hanging from the hangman's noose give pause to those who otherwise would fund, train, and order young brainwashed Islamic automatons to attack America?

Equally probable is the American policy of forcing Islamic terrorists to fight in a place and time of our choosing (Iraq) thereby diverting resources that would be used against the US homeland.

For example, to misuse an old football adage "a good offense is a good defense"

I will now eagerly await your ad hominen attacks devoid of objectivity, logic, and empiricism.

[JimR]

Look, if you keep thinking logically, you're never going to get a job in airport security!

[desthmoneses]

thats like saying you should spend 6 years in college working full time come out owing 100,000 dollars so that you can wok in a cubicle making 60,000 a year before taxes.

[davidly]

I have long been an advocate of no airport security. How long before this is the case at the train station? The bus terminal? Do we really want check points like the ones in Israel? I say away with the draconian fascism whatever the cost, but the authorities don't want that because then we'd see that we don't need them.

[kkuchenb]

Yes, I find it interesting that sometime in the last 20-odd years we went from people or citizens to consumers, and at the same time "customer service" across the board had deteriorated to African levels. (I used to live in Africa, and I know what I'm talking about.) Just trying to get phone help from any computer company, HMO, multinational etc. is an exercise in frustration. The airline employees know you have nowhere else to turn because their competitors are just as jerky.

[TTigerX2]

Late breaking news: Rent-a-cops, acting as airport security at Vancouver's International airport on Saturday, tasered a man -- killing him. He was no threat to anyone and the murder was caught on film by numerous people with the cellphones handy. Who are the terrorists now? Anybody with a taser, a badge, handcuffs and rage.

[WIpatriot]

Not even rage, just a hint of absolute authority.

[lunaoscura]

Whoever said power corrupts people didn't get it. Corruption precedes power. The acquisition of even a small amount of power will lead the corrupt person to abuse that power.