Welcome to America. Please give us the finger. Smile for the camera. Now please get the hell out

Steve Schear s.schear at comcast.net
Fri Jan 9 09:05:52 PST 2004


Scenes From A Sad Airport
<http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2004/01/09/notes010904.DTL&nl=
fix>

         By Mark Morford
         Look at those eyes. Perturbed and bemused and just a little furious.

         Look at those eyes as the baffled woman from east Texas stares down
at the table as the security agent rifles through her luggage and pulls out
the contents for all to see.
         And out pops the skimpy latex thong and the anal beads and the
Astroglide and the smallish travel dildo that isn't really a dildo at all
but is really a "sexual-education device," because, as everyone knows,
dildos are completely illegal in Texas. But not guns. Guns are mandatory.
         Note how she notes the irony. Note how she considers suing for
embarrassment and humiliation and for the sheer idiocy of it all. Note how
the security agent mumbles something snide and derogatory.
         Note how we, as a paranoid nation, are just confused and sad and how
our airports have become these comical circus sideshows, invasive and racist
and draconian and pornographic all in the name of, what was it again?
Protection? For our own good? Is that it?
         And look there, look how that conservative Christian U.S.
congressman is just so red faced and enraged when they search through his
manly black Samsonite carry-on and find, well, not just a nice new Bible and
clean white Jockey underwear and assorted envelopes of cash from the
director of Destroy Gay Marriage Now! of Colorado Springs, Colo.
         Look there, just under the argyle sweaters and the signed head shot
from Pat Robertson, at the stash of sticky Honcho magazines and some Hello
Kitty Speedos and, lo and behold, the metal in the congressman's boots
induces an unfortunate backroom strip search, where what do we see but the
assorted bright red welts of spankdom as incurred from Mistress Carlita's
Pleasure Bunker in downtown Phoenix, from the night before. Oh, Congressman.

         Do you hear that? That screaming? Of course you do. Just another
outraged mother of three, her appalled shouts echoing all the way to the
food court as LAX security gropes the living hell out of her stunned
2-year-old daughter after the tot's teddy bear appeared to have some
odd-looking wiring in its cute fuzzy little arms.
         And the mother up and slaps the scowling groping security agent and
alarms are sounded and guns are drawn and children are screaming and
Spongebob backpacks tumble to the ground and spill their bright happy
contents all over the stained tiles in terrible slow motion, like a bad
Tarantino outtake.
         And thus were lines held up and 16 flights from Dulles and O'Hare
and JFK delayed for nine hours, causing a domino-effect 27-hour backup
systemwide and thusly pumping yet another enormous and savage dose of
frustrated rage and angst and sighing ennui into another artery of the
cultural bloodstream.
         Look. Look there. See the hobbled, 86-year-old man forced to put
down his cane and remove his threadbare belt to pass through the metal
detector. Terrorists are everywhere! Bush said so! We can't be too sure! Do
you have metal pins in your hip, sir? Can you please remove them or
something?
         Let us watch in humiliated shame as he struggles to keep his pants
from falling down as it looks, to all appearances, like he's being led
though a scanner to some horrific prison cell where he will be fed old
oatmeal and dangerous drugs in harsh fluorescent concrete rooms, when all
he's trying to do is fly to Poughkeepsie for his granddaughter's third
wedding.
         Because God knows you just can't tell who might be a terrorist these
days, and you can't be too careful, because they could indeed be anyone at
all from anywhere at all, including but not at all limited to white Lutheran
octogenarians from the Shady Pines retirement-condo complex in Butte, Mont.
Not to mention them dang furriners.
         Let us now welcome the overwhelmed visitor from China, or Latvia, or
Johannesburg, or Brazil, or India, or (heaven forefend) Turkey. It's OK,
come on out of that plane. Ignore the stun guns and the growling dogs.
America loves you.
         Let us now note how our fair visitor walks into the American
security miasma feeling like she is entering one big draconian maze of weird
overlit American racism and paranoia, as all visitors from all "suspicious"
countries have their photos taken and their fingers imprinted and their
self-respect jolted and their identities filed for 20 years by the FBI, just
in case.
         Welcome to America, foreign traveler. Please hold still and place
your finger here and smile for the camera and enjoy your first taste of our
trademark, wickedly ironic and hypocritical joke about America being the
land of the free. Is that weird necklace a religious symbol or something?
Are those beads filled with white-hot hate for our glorious freedoms and our
24-hour Safeways and our love of low-rise jeans on teenage girls? Are you in
some sort of cult?
         Repeat after us: Bring us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses
yearning to have their spirits snapped like chicken bones and be made to
feel as if they are all, by default, criminals and thieves and Bush's
"gol-dang guilty durty heathen furriners." Thank you. Please proceed like
mad cow-infested cattle to the next airport screening agent.
         Just a couple questions at this point. Do you have any nasty
homemade bombs or lethal biotoxic intentions or rampant simmering hatreds of
George W. Bush on your person at this time? Damn right you don't. Now please
proceed to the painful urine-sample room to have your dignity forcibly
removed. Souvenir?
         Look closer. Look domestic. See how so many Americans standing in
all the various airport lines for 2.7 hours seem to just sigh and suck it
up.
         See how they all cast their eyes down and tolerate the multiple
driver's-license checks and the general insanity and the obvious
government-sponsored invasions of privacy and the happy perky assaults on
our civil liberties because, well, it's for our own good, right?
         All in the name of inducing a bogus feeling of protection and safety
and never you mind America's hilarious gaping arcade of exploitable
opportunities for terrorism, from our huge wide-open shipping ports to the
intricately distributed unprotected food supply to our antiquated water
systems to a thousand other ridiculously obvious apertures.
         And never mind that even tiny raging splinter-cell terrorists aren't
so stupid as to try the same vile hijack stunt twice. And never you mind
that none of this would've stopped any of the 9/11 thugs. But oh yes, let's
fingerprint old ladies from Latvia. That oughta do it.
         Wait, you're from Andorra? Wonderful! You're perfectly OK and we
need no fingerprints. Come on in. Ditto Australia. And Austria. And Belgium,
Brunei, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan,
Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, San
Marino, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, Portugal and
Singapore.
         Hey, you couldn't possibly hate America enough to wish us harm.
Could you? Besides, we stop only swarthy Third World types and guys with
scary-looking beards and unpronounceable names that sound like rare kidney
diseases.
         Welcome, all, to the new-millennium American airport. Observe the
perfectly imperfect microcosm of new American ideals and values, all about
isolationism and quiet cancerous paranoia and a huge increase in government
employment and expenditure and bureaucracy and very sorry but you can't
bring that coffee into the boarding area.
         Welcome to the all-American fear of the Other, coupled with a sad
acceptance that this is the way it is and the way it will be for years and
years to come. Please remove your shoes. And your belt. And your watch. And
your self-respect. Bush forever. More war in '04. Enjoy your flight.  





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