Parlor Spider...Step In, Little Fly

Insightful thoughts and/or rants from atop the soapbox from one who wishes to share the "right" opinion with everyone.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Sticks and Stones? Try "Idiot."

It seems as if everyone is getting a bit testy these days. Sometimes it's a big deal as in the cases of killers and would-be killers in our schools. Wisconsin has had a couple of high-profile cases lately. Interesting to me is that in one case, a student actually told someone when his friend made a threat, and in the other case, a student did nothing after he was warned that "the principal won't make it through Homecoming week." In one case, the tragedy was averted, and in the other case, sadly, the principal DIDN'T make it through the week. In each case there were reports of name-calling and general mean people behaviors which led to the potential for destruction. Calling into question a person's sexual orientation or pointing out somatotypes hurts, no matter what anyone says; it shouldn't happen in school though it does. But how about at the airport?
If you've flown any time in the last few years, you know the screening thing is tough. Getting patted down every time I go through a check point simply because I fly standby has gotten to be an irritant. The woman in Wisconsin last year got so irritated by "getting felt up" that she clocked the TSA woman, earning her a day in court. Mind you, this was a retired English (I think) teacher! She didn't conjure up any Mike Tyson references to me.
Anyway, with the new regulation barring certain liquids and/or certain volumes of liquids, trying to get on a plane must be like trying to understand Medicare Part D. No wonder Ryan Bird was upset! Bird, a vice president for an industrial manufacturing firm was so incensed by what he called "idiocy" in screening techniques and policies that he wrote "Kip Hawley is an idiot" on a clear plastic bag into which he had placed the aforementioned liquid items. Hawley, of course, is the guy in charge of TSA. As the bag went through with his belt, his change, his shoes and his first-born, Bird was summoned by the operator...who called a supervisor...who called the Milwaukee sherriff's dept...well, you get the idea. The screener told Bird, "You can't say things like that." Freedom of speech, it would seem, ends at the security check point.
After something of an upper-level disturbance in terms of conversation, Bird was allowed to board his plane.
What's next? Jay Leno getting hauled off for a monologue bit about Donald Rumsfeld? Me getting hauled off for mentioning Hawley and Rumsfeld in the same blog entry with the word "idiot"? Maybe this is all a result of not being able to post The Ten Commandments on the courthouse lawn...or maybe it's the parents' fault (Freud might agree). Somewhere along the line we need to take name-calling and such idiotic behaviors out of schools and into the airports where they belong.

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