I‘m introduced to Lowell Handler. He gets close — invades my body space — and touches my shoulder. Not in a friendly way. Or authoritatively. His touch is just weird. The man himself seems normal — to a point. His speech is OK. He’s in his early 40s. He isn’t short, but there is something slightly gnome-like about him. Especially when he makes his little honking noises. Lowell Handler touches my shoulder several more times as we walk into a
conference room up in the Salon offices off Times Square in Manhattan.
I set up my tape recorder on the table and Lowell Handler touches this Sony instead of my shoulder. I’ve been reacting to his actions like the worldly cosmopolitan that I am. I’ve ignored him. I know that Lowell Handler — freelance photographer, college teacher, author — suffers from Tourette’s syndrome. This is why he must do what he does.
“How many people suffer from TS?” I ask. He answers by saying, “How many people have it and how many suffer?”
“Two hundred thousand people have it,” Sue Levi-Pearl answers as she enters the room and takes a seat. She is the president of the Tourette’s Syndrome Association, a family organization that’s been around for 27 years. Levi-Pearl is pleasant looking. Like a librarian. Or a dentist. “TSA was started by the handful of folks who believed they were the only ones in the world who had a child with this disorder,” she explains.
I reach out and check to make sure my tape recorder is running while Levi-Pearl explains that her brother-in-law has Tourette’s. “I married into the family with certain professional abilities. My father-in-law determined that I should become involved in encouraging more science.”
Just what is Tourette’s syndrome exactly? Levi-Pearl waves her hand at Handler. He should answer. “It’s a neurological disorder which in its essence is a lack of ability to inhibit,” he says. “A lack of ability to inhibit movement, noises, thoughts, gesture and behavior.”
Handler’s first book, “Twitch and Shout” (published last year), is his memoir of the disease. “Before I was 24, I had no idea what Tourette’s was,” he says. “I’m 43 now. I felt a relief when I learned that there were thousands of people who have it. But I felt a tremendous burden — I had fooled myself into thinking that it would go away. And here is this doctor telling me that it’s never going to go away.”
So just what is a “Tourette” exactly? “Dr. Georges Gilles de la Tourette,” Handler answers. As he talks, I check on my tape recorder. “He was a French neurologist. He practiced in the ‘Golden Age of Neurology.’”
You should know that I am checking my tape recorder because of an optical illusion. This little Sony looks like its tape is still instead of running. Handler reaches across the table and touches my Sony as well. He doesn’t care whether the thing is working or not. He just has to touch it. “Tourette was a contemporary of Freud,” he continues. “He was the first one to see that this disorder was not psychotic. There is a spectrum of Tourette’s and compulsive/obsessive disorder in the frontal lobe of the brain.”
The first official sufferer of the malady was Marquise de Dampierre, a 19th century French noblewoman whose symptoms included tics and coprolalia — the involuntary shouting of curses and obscene language.
“A friend once said to me, ‘There’s a little Tourette’s in all of us.’”
Handler laughs, touching the tape recorder again. “‘We all want to say “Fuck you” to our boss. Only you guys have the ability to do that.’”
Levi-Pearl is quick to point out that only 15 percent of Tourette’s sufferers have symptoms of coprolalia. Wow. “Only?” That’s 30,000 people. Thirty thousand people shouting, “shit, motherfucker, goddamn, goddamn” in church. In court. In bowling alleys.
“If I had Tourette’s syndrome I’d know it, right?” I ask Levi-Pearl.
“Would you know it if you had it?” she repeats. “You may go through life having a little involuntary movement and clearing your throat irregularly. ‘Oh that’s just David’s habits.’ Then you would see one of our public service announcements and say, ‘That’s me.’”
We talk about children. “Kids that get diagnosed fairly early are lucky,” Levi-Pearl says. “Parents realize what the child has instead of thinking they have brain tumors. Most children with classic Tourette’s syndrome do quite well in mainstream education. There are those who have TS as well as learning and attention problems.” She pauses. “In a third of cases there are varying degrees of obsessive traits.” She looks across the table and smiles
at Handler. “And by my even saying it, Lowell wants to do some stuff.”
Handler honks.
“I don’t even have to look at him,” Levi-Pearl says. “He’s already thinking about his stuff. Everyone has their own obsessive stuff.”
Handler touches my tape recorder.
“What exactly is your stuff?” I ask him.
“I do a lot of touching of inanimate objects and people,” he answers
matter of factly. “There are other people who have obsessive-compulsive stuff who are just the opposite — they can’t stand to be touched. There are people who have to have specific symmetry in every object. There are people who have to get dressed in a specific order or else they have to get undressed.”
I point out that I basically ignored his stuff. “How should I react to you?” I ask, and then imitate him reaching out to touch the tape recorder.
“People have all kind of reactions,” he answers. “I was on the subway a few months ago. This guy was in the subway car and I was on the platform. I’m Touretting and shaking and doing all kinds of things. This guy looks up at me and shouts, ‘You must be some kind of fucking retard.’ And I said, ‘You’re right. I’m retarded. And you must be a very smart man.’ And the doors closed and he was screaming at me as the subway went away.” He pauses and
halfheartedly touches my tape recorder.
“It’s easy to get interested in the strong reaction,” a newcomer says. It’s Jonathan Lethem, the final participant in this discussion. This prolific, brilliant novelist’s latest novel, “Motherless Brooklyn,” stars a private detective who has Tourette’s.
“I’m fascinated by the things that point exactly in the direction ‘Should I ignore it?’” he says. “What Tourette’s exposes — someone behaving strangely — is the way that we all weave together a social world where we allow a certain amount of strangeness. We filter it out. Have a built-in denial that says, I’m not seeing that. That didn’t really happen. There was a reason for it and I don’t
know the reason. I don’t need to think about it. Or, I’m not going to react to that. Tourette’s can become an example of something that exposes aspects of human interaction that are at work everywhere.”
I check my tape recorder as Lethem adds, “I found that writing is extremely Tourette. It’s got rituals. My revision takes an obsessive grooming of the text. My generation of metaphors is to turn ideas upside down. Wordplay. A game like written tics.”
Levi-Pearl raves about Lethem’s book. “I read it in one sitting and
thought, Either this guy has Tourette’s or all his friends have it. He had so captured the essence, the feel of Tourette’s. There is an intuition there.” She pauses. “When I learned that Jonathan had never seen anyone with TS I was truly blown away.”
Handler touches the tape recorder and gives a honking laugh. “You’d never seen anyone with it?”
“Seen is the wrong word,” Lethem answers. “Because I had of course seen them. But then I read about Tourette’s in Oliver Sacks. It was moving and intriguing to me. I also read ‘Twitch and Shout.’ I was going to have to explore Tourette’s in my work because of the enormous level of identification that I felt. Tourette’s became my own response to the world even if no physician would ever consider me a candidate for diagnosis. I had voluntary Tourette’s.”
“You should have called me up,” Handler honks, touching the tape recorder again. “We could have gone Touretting through the East Village.”
“I was tempted and at the same time I was protective,” Lethem says. “Once I had my notion of my narrator Lionel in place I put up some walls, because I only wanted to know what I knew because I was on fire with my character and I needed to just go.”
“The aspect of Tourette’s syndrome illustrating larger aspects of human nature is what I’m hoping people pick up on from my book,” Handler says to Lethem (just two authors talking). “It’s something that illuminates universal aspects of human nature.”
“Do you know when you’re going to start doing your stuff?” I ask Handler.
“Sometimes I can get a premonition,” he answers. “Sometimes it just jumps out without warning. Stress affects it negatively.”
“That’s universal,” says Levi-Pearl. “Anxiety and stress.”
“And exhaustion,” Lethem adds.
I ask if there are medications. “Yes,” says Handler. He takes something called Orap, or pimozide. And Prozac. “I helped get Orap approved by the FDA,” he says. “I testified in 1983. I started taking Prozac right after it came out.” He then adds, “I was prescribed the Haldol. It just blew me away. It was horrible. I took that hoping the side effects would go away for almost a year.”
I ask Handler something personal. “Do you drink?” I say. Then add the word “recreationally.”
“Yes,” he answers. “I drink recreationally. It lessens the symptoms of Tourette’s. But not for everybody. It might make the symptoms worse. For me it’s a tranquilizer.”
“You said sometimes you can forecast Tourette’s when it’s about to happen,” I say. “But when it’s happening are you always aware?”
“I’m aware all the time,” Handler answers. “It’s like someone holding a mirror up to your face. If I’m alone in my apartment I don’t notice it much. But I notice it in the reactions of others.”
“I’m completely comfortable with you,” Lethem says. “But I still watch your hand go out to the tape recorder. I watch it and you see me watching you. That’s me holding the mirror up right there without any ill will or misunderstanding or lack of information.”
Handler honks good-naturedly, but doesn’t reach for the tape recorder again.
“Do you have to touch it?” I ask him.
“I have these compulsions to do things,” he explains. “An obsession is the thought. A compulsion is the action. I had the thought I have to touch not just the tape recorder, but one specific spot on the tape recorder. And if I don’t I will feel terrible. So until that action is complete I will feel amiss until there is another action I must do.”
“It’s a little like me checking to make sure it’s running.”
Lethem, Levi-Pearl and Handler all look at me and give dramatic nods. “You’re discovering your place in the spectrum,” Lethem says.
“I bet you do other stuff,” Levi-Pearl says to me, a little wickedly.
“Yeah,” Handler adds.
I confess to the three that there are times when I exhibit compulsive behavior in private. I don’t tell them that this behavior exclusively involves rituals I must perform before I can leave my apartment: I must check to make sure that A) the stove is off, and B) the iron is too. I do this checking even when I know that I did not drink any coffee or iron any clothes.
“When someone has compulsive-obsessive disorder with no tics,” Levi-Pearl says, “their need to complete an activity is so pressing because something terrible will happen: My mother will die. I’ll get run over by a truck.”
My apartment will burn down and kill my dog, I say mentally.
“That is a classic disorder,” she continues. “For folks with TS, those
forethoughts of doom do not seem to manifest. But rather, they have to do this. They just gotta do it.” Then she looks at me. “Is that clear? Because we know what you got now …”
Handler begins arguing good-naturedly with Levi-Pearl about the association’s position on Tourette’s jokes.
“I really disagree with a stand that feels compelled to criticize every joke about Tourette’s,” he says. “I have heard some hysterical things. I heard a thing on the radio about a guy with Tourette’s calling a whorehouse. The madam didn’t know the caller had Tourette’s. But it should have been apparent as the caller got crazier and crazier. Asking about different fetishes. And
finally he goes, woo woo woo” — Handler really puts his heart into his woo woo woo’s — “and the madam says, ‘That’s between you and the girl, thank you, good-bye.’”
He pauses, then says, “I understand part of TSA is to be a watchdog organization, but we’re in a society here where really anything
goes. Anything is ready to be made fun of. But at the same time anything is OK to be taken seriously too. People know the rules.”
Then he touches the tape recorder. He does it almost casually, like a man flicking a cigarette in an ashtray. “Of course it’s funny. It is funny having Tourette’s. It’s also sad. It’s a million different things at the same time.”
Handler takes his hands away. And I reach out. But stop. I want to see with my own eyes that my little Sony is running, that everything is working the way it’s supposed to. Then I say, “To hell with it.” And drop my hands in my lap like Handler, the one with Tourette’s syndrome.
The other day at Bergstrom Airport in Austin, Texas, I witnessed a striking manifestation of the new American plutocracy. Along with getting a photo at the Department of Motor Vehicles and sitting in a jury pool, standing in line at airport security with a mob of other people, miserable though it is, remains one of the few examples of civic equality in our increasingly oligarchic republic. Much airport security, of course, is theater, designed to provide alibis for bureaucrats and politicians in the event of a terrorist attack. But while we can debate what a rational airport security system would look like, no rational system would discriminate among passengers on the basis of ability to pay.
That is what makes the policy of Delta Airlines so shockingly un-American. In Austin, Delta had not one but two lines that fed into the Transportation Security Administration checkpoint area. One line was mixed race, mixed class and mixed age. The other line was usually empty. Now and then a white, middle-aged man would appear in the second line and the first line would be halted as he went directly into the TSA checkpoint.
“Who are those guys?” I asked a TSA officer, when I reached the front of the second-class citizen line.
“Delta has total control over the passenger line all the way up to here,” the officer answered. “They’ve decided to let priority passengers as well as pilots and steward staff go through ahead of others.”
“So that’s the rich white guy line?” I asked.
The TSA officer laughed. “On our side of the line, everybody is equal.”
Now I would be the first to concede that what Delta and other airlines do beyond the government security checkpoint at the gates that lead to airplanes is their business. At the moment, the model of America’s pathetic, predatory, deteriorating airline industry seems to be eking out nickels and dimes by playing crudely on the snobbery of their customers, with the use of two separate lines at the terminal gates, one for priority passengers — labelled, by various airlines, Gold, Platinum, Elite and so on.
The priority line, needless to say, goes to exactly the same door and entry ramp and does not get the “elite” to its destination one second earlier. Neither de Toqueville, who commented on the contrast between the status obsessions of Americans and their professed democratic egalitarianism, nor Veblen, who coined the term “conspicuous consumption,” would have been surprised by this method of showing off. Such silliness is a matter for satire, not lawsuits or protest marches.
But going through airline security is different. It is not a choice, like belonging to an airline’s frequent flier points club. Security screening is an onerous civic duty. Like other civic duties, it should be shared equally by rich and poor alike. Remember the motto of Jacksonian populism? “Equal rights for all, special privileges for none.”
Nearly all the airlines now allow well-heeled passengers to pay for the privilege of cutting ahead of the rest of us at the TSA checkpoint. At many airline checkpoints there are two lines. The long line looks like America; the short line is made up mostly of affluent white men.
Is this the future we Americans want: two lines at all airline security checkpoints, one for the privileged 1 percent and the other for the 99 percent, who have to stand aside to let the people with lots of money pass? Alas, it appears that making economic apartheid formal in U.S. civil aviation is a bad idea whose time has come. The TSA is experimenting with a “precheck” program with built-in class discrimination, including the government’s crony-capitalist invitation of frequent fliers from private U.S. airline programs, but not other American citizens, to participate:
If you are a United States citizen and are currently a member of CBP’s eligible Trusted Traveler programs (Global Entry, SENTRI, NEXUS), you are automatically qualified to participate in the TSA Pre ™ pilot as long as you are flying on a participating airline at a participating airport. (If you’re a more frequent flyer with Delta or American, you must opt in to the program by responding to the communication sent to you, which is why it’s important to find that email and follow the directions in it.)
In other words, if you do not fly frequently — and most low-income and middle-income Americans cannot afford to — you would not be allowed to take part in this public government program. In true crony capitalist fashion, the precheck program blurs the line between the government’s security function and the airlines’ purely commercial frequent flier programs.
The precheck program is advertised as an experimental program, holding out the possibility that after a period in which they are subject to more scrutiny than affluent business travelers, low-income grandmothers traveling to visit their grandchildren at last will be able to take part. More likely, the precheck program would never be extended to the masses rather than the classes. It would simply become another permanent perk of the elite, whose members would have no incentive to lobby for democratizing the program — rather the contrary.
But wouldn’t it help an overburdened airport security system to reduce the number of people to be rigorously screened by TSA? Not if it means more screening for low-income grandmothers and less for frequent business travelers. Indeed, as anti-terrorist measures, trusted traveler programs allowing affluent people who are frequent international travelers to be subjected to fewer security procedures might well backfire. Osama bin Laden and Mohamad Atta were members of the affluent social and educational elites in their countries who lived abroad and traveled frequently.
These “trusted traveler” systems will not make America safer. Their unacknowledged purpose is to create yet another area of American society that is privatized and segregated by class, to the benefit of the mostly white economic overclass.
Very well then. Why don’t we just make the new class-based discrimination official? Instead of leaving it to airlines and other corporations to construct the new apartheid piecemeal and informally, let the government issue a Premium Elite Citizen Card, valid for multiple purposes. For the right price, a price carefully calculated to be unaffordable by the majority of Americans, those willing and able to pay would be allowed to cut in line, not only at airports, but everywhere: at taxi stands, movie theaters, restaurants. All they would have to do is flash their Premium Elite Citizen Card to force the rabble to step aside and make way. The degeneration of America’s democracy into a banana republic would be complete, once the Land of the Free became the Land of the Free Points With Membership.
Thoughts running through my head at the TSA checkpoint …
All of these measures in place today — the liquids and gels rules, the pointy object confiscations, the multiple ID checks, the body-scanners and the pat-downs — would they have stopped the Sept. 11 attacks?
Of course not. The success of the 2001 attacks had nothing to do with box cutters. The hijackers’ critical tool was an intangible one: the element of surprise. That is, taking advantage of our understanding and expectations of a hijacking. What weapons they had in their bags was irrelevant. They could have used anything.
For that matter, would any of these measures have prevented the terrorist bombing of Pan Am 103? How about the bombings of Air India 182 or UTA 772?
Again the answer is no. It was bombs in the lower holds that got those planes.
I don’t know about you, but when I’m on a plane I worry a lot more about what’s going on below deck — in checked luggage and cargo — than I do about passengers and their carry-ons. The Transportation Security Administration tells us that all checked bags are scanned nowadays for explosives, and that’s about the most valuable thing the agency does for us. I just hope agents do it with as much over-the-top scrutiny as they use to paw through carry-ons looking for forks and toothpaste.
I’m traveling off-duty, just a regular old passenger. Approaching the body scanner, I “opt out,” as I always do. I’ll be taken aside for a thorough pat-down.
I don’t opt out because of worries about radiation. I do it because I find it appalling that passengers are effectively asked to pose naked in order to board an airplane. And because the scanners are strategically ineffective. I don’t “believe in them,” you might say. I mean, think about it: You’ve got a scanner at one checkpoint, but no scanner at the one right next to it; scanners at some terminals, but not at others. Are terrorists really that stupid? And what about overseas? If somebody is going to sneak something deadly through a checkpoint, it is far, far, far more likely to happen at an airport in Asia, Africa, South America or the Middle East, than in Peoria, Wichita or Cleveland.
Is this one of those “follow the money” situations? Are these machines really in the interest of safety? Is that what this is about? Or is it about the corporations who stand to make billions of dollars in their design and deployment? Why not explosives-sniffing dogs instead? Are they not just as effective, and cheaper and friendlier to boot? Or is that the problem?
I’m chatting with the TSA guard about this while he frisks me. He shrugs. “A lot of waste in government,” he says.
“Bag check!” A woman’s voice, loud.
Oh great. Off to the side, the X-ray machine has detected an extremely dangerous 6-ounce bottle of aloe vera gel in my roll-aboard.
“Is this your bag, sir?”
“Um, er, ah, yes.”
She sticks a gloved hand inside and pulls out the tube. The look she gives me — it’s a scolding sort of glare with an unmistakable glint of satisfaction.
“But … but it’s only half-full.”
“I don’t have a scale to weigh liquids, sir.”
“Why do you need a scale? You can just look at it. It’s a 6-once tube and obviously it’s only half-full.”
She doesn’t look. “Sorry. You cannot bring this through.”
“But …”
Plop. She throws my aloe into a waste barrel.
Aha! But in tossing it away like that, hasn’t she just admitted that the container is harmless? After all, if it was something potentially dangerous, you wouldn’t just fling it into the garbage.
Are TSA screeners looking for bombs, or are they looking for innocent liquids? I’m reminded of those tests I’d heard about, when, supposedly, water bottles were attached to mock-up bombs and sent through the X-ray machines. Screeners found the bottles, while the bombs went sailing through. “An Easter egg hunt for minor banned items,” in the words of former TSA chief Kip Hawley, from his upcoming book, “Permanent Emergency.”
“Look,” I say. ” Since you’re throwing that tube away, you’re telling me that you know it’s nothing harmful.”
Perturbed stare.
“So, like … can I have it back?”
She stares at me, clearly annoyed and unable to tell if I’m kidding or not.
I am kidding, of course. My gel is gone for good; another $4.65 into the TSA hole. But am I not correct at the same time? I’ve lost my property, but I feel that I’ve made a useful point and can walk away having established the upper hand. Yeah. I’m proud of my snappy little assessment: so tight, so logical and righteous! Take that, TSA!
And it’s exactly at this moment, the screener’s eyes still fixed on me, that my cellphone goes slipping out of my hand. I drop it; catch it; drop it and catch it again. My arms are wiggling and flailing in a ridiculous little dance until finally the phone flies completely away from me. It goes clattering off a stack of gray bins and slides pathetically onto the floor — directly at the screener’s feet.
She picks up the phone and hands it to me. “Good day, sir.”
I skulk away feeling like the biggest goofball in the world.
And maybe this was a kind of divine intervention, a dose of humiliation engineered to shut me up and kick me on my way. A lesson summed up in two easy words: lost cause.
If the TSA’s tactical flaws are ever going to be fixed, it certainly won’t be me who gets it done. I spend too much time writing about it, and too much time worrying about it.
—————
GO-AROUNDS
Re: Airport bookstores, or lack thereof
As various emailers pointed out, not every airport bookshop is a glorified magazine stand. There are still some good retails options in U.S. terminals. Renaissance Books at Milwaukee, for example, got several kudos from readers. There’s Powell’s still at Portland’s PDX, I’m told. I can personally vouch for a place called BookLink (formerly a Borders franchise) at terminal A in Boston. Even JFK’s Terminal 3, for all its demerits, has a decent bookstore just inside the east-side security checkpoint, abeam gates 4 and 5.
And the following letter is from a vice president of Hudson Booksellers, one of the companies mentioned in my story:
Having been a buyer for airport bookstores for over 15 years, I have witnessed the amazing growth and diversification of airport bookselling, as well as the recent downturn, largely due to the e-book effect. Blending customer expectation with personal passion is the essence of our selection process. Yet, so frequently when we see Hudson in print, including in your article, we are pigeonholed as corporate peddlers of “airport books.” Clearly our message and product isn’t getting through the way we’d like.
Airport bookstores are in competition against many other product categories. For the last 15 years my team and I have been turning over every stone in trying to meet the challenge of bringing the best books to the most readers. One of your reader comments mentioned — incredulously — discovering Roberto Bolaño at the airport in San Francisco. But that type of thing honestly happens every day at Hudson. We’ve sold hundreds of Bolaño’s novels, which are part of our core bookstore selection. You mention Gary Shteyngart, another personal favorite, who we have been promoting since “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook.” We went all out with “Absurdistan” and sold over 26,000 copies the year it came out, which I believe was more than 25 percent of all copies sold. We have many great locations with a locally curated assortment that I would put up against Powell’s or Compass, etc. — in Denver, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Newark, Raleigh.
I am also surprised at your statement about your own book, “Ask the Pilot.” We have carried your book since it came out in 2004, selling over 1,000 copies in one LAX store alone — thousands more over the years — and we are still carrying it in a few locations.
Sara Hinckley
Vice President of Book Purchasing & Promotions
Hudson Booksellers
Author’s note: In retrospect, I ought to have been a little more gracious in my references to Hudson. Indeed, many of the chain’s airport outlets are full-fledged bookstores with a very good selection, and the chain did stock and sell many copies of my book when it was new. (Though, honestly, the thing is so out-of-date at this point that I’m pleased when I don’t find it for sale.)
Did you hear about TSA and the cupcake?
That’s right, two week ago guards in Las Vegas took a frosted cupcake away from a woman named Rebecca Hains as she prepared to board a flight to Boston. The frosting, you see, was “gel-like” and thus a potential security threat.
I’m really not sure how to approach this one, other than to weep uncontrollably.
According to a Transportation Security Administration spokesperson the confiscation was in error — the work of an overzealous (or maybe just hungry) screener. “In general, cakes and pies are allowed in carry-on luggage,” said the spokesperson. Still, I don’t know if that makes it OK. That we can use the words “cupcake” and “security” in the same sentence is a bright red flag that something is very, very wrong in America. TSA says the incident is “under review.” I’d love to be a fly on the wall for that meeting.
This is yet more fodder, of course, for my American Hysteria Hall of Shame. The hall isn’t limited to airport security foibles, but clearly TSA is gunning for the bronze, the silver and the gold. Operation Cupcake joins a pretty fat list:
TSA confiscates a butter knife from an airline pilot. TSA confiscates a teenage girl’s purse with an embroidered handgun design. TSA confiscates a 4-inch plastic rifle from a GI Joe action doll on the grounds that it’s a “replica weapon.” TSA confiscates a liquid-filled baby rattle from airline pilot’s infant daughter. TSA confiscates a plastic “Star Wars” lightsaber from a toddler.
All of these things really happened. There’s no real need to arrange them in order of ridiculousness, but it’s that last one, with the lightsaber, that really makes you wonder if we haven’t lost our minds. (I mentioned this incident in a column last month, but it deserves another reckoning.) In earthly terms a lightsaber is a toy flashlight covered by a rounded plastic cone. As a “weapon,” though, it is something that exists only in fantasy. The product neither looks like a real weapon nor does it contains part that, by themselves, are TSA contraband. It is an imaginary weapon hazardous only to a race of imaginary space-people invented by George Lucas.
Thus, confiscating a lightsaber is a little like confiscating a genie bottle or a magic wand.
Actually, it’s a lot like confiscating a genie bottle or a magic wand.
And so here we are, having reached a point where truth has become fully and truly stranger than fiction. I challenge anyone to invent a scenario more farcical than those listed above. Come on, give us your best lie. “You won’t believe this, but they actually …” Actually what? What could possibly be more demented than the truth?
And our tax dollars are paying for this, in case you’ve forgotten. To be fair, I don’t disagree that TSA does some useful and effective things. The vast majority of these useful and effective things, however, take place out of view. What we experience on the concourse remains embarrassing and ultimately counterproductive, from cupcake confiscations to the multibillion-dollar scam of those walk-through body scanners.
It could be and should be better. For everyone …
As discussed in my last column, a program is currently under testing that, if all goes well, will allow pilots to bypass regular TSA screening — a privilege already enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of airport ground workers. Although most of you sympathized with the silliness of pilots being asked to hand over their silverware, remove their belts, etc., not everybody agrees that the best solution is to exempt them entirely. “You sound like an elitist asshole,” submitted one reader. “Making a class of people exempt from idiotic rules only sets them apart and builds resentment,” added another. “As any security expert will tell you, if you’re going to screen at all, you need to screen everybody. The system is only as strong as its weakest link.”
But except for the elitist asshole part, I pretty much agree. Honestly — and I’ve said this before — if security were reasonable and efficient, I would have no problem going through it as a crew member. The only reason I want out is because the existing rules are so foolish, and nobody — neither the airlines, the politicians nor the traveling public — seems interested in fixing them.
In a way, TSA is going about this backward. It’s working to come up with a system to safely exempt pilots, when what it ought to be doing is rationalizing the system for everybody.
There are those moments when you look for the hidden camera.
A couple of weeks ago I proposed my idea for the American Hysteria Hall of Shame, a ranking of our more laughable and self-defeating overreactions to perceived security threats over the past decade. Motto: “Malignantibus Parta! Timor vincit omnia!”
Safely assured of a top spot in the Hall, or so I thought, was the time I had a butter knife confiscated by overzealous TSA guards. I mean, what could be more ridiculous than taking a butter knife from a uniformed, on-duty pilot?
Answer: confiscating a fork from a uniformed, on-duty airline pilot.
It happened the other day in Mexico City, at the special crew inspection checkpoint at Benito Juarez International Airport. Yes, I’m dropping the “American” part and changing the name to the “Security Hysteria Hall of Shame,” since, as you’ll see, we are not the only ones who have lost our minds.
I knew there was trouble when the X-ray belt came to a stop and I was asked to open my bag.
The offending item was a fork — one of the small, five-inch kinds more or less identical to those dispensed by airlines in first and business class. Like my long-lost knife, it was part of the silverware pack that I carry in my luggage for those late-night hotel room ramen feasts.
“No, no, no, no,” said the guard. “You cannot take this.”
Really? Let’s ignore for a moment the fact that even the most hell-bent of terrorists isn’t going to get very far with a hand-held weapon of any kind, let alone something as goofy as a fork. The logic in play here is something simpler: Every day, hundreds of thousands of stainless steel forks, not to mention knives, are handed out to passengers in the forward cabins of airplanes. (And why not? The hijacking paradigm exploited on Sept. 11 no longer exists.) Yet on-duty pilots are not allowed to carry them through the checkpoint?
“No, no, no, no.”
“Pero … en el avion … el mismo!” I pleaded, deftly employing five of the 11 words I know in Spanish.
No sale.
And this is the moment when I expected the camera to appear. It was all a joke, right? The guard would break out laughing and slap me on the shoulder. “Estoy jugando, señor! Yo vi su artículo en Salon!”
Instead I got a “Sorry, sir,” and a kind of shrug-wince. For what it mattered, his expression was sympathetic, and I could tell that he understood. He knew the rule was a silly one (I mean, how could he not?). He wanted to make an exception, but was powerless — or afraid — to do so.
This is the lunatic world of security we now live in: one of blind adherence, stripped of reason and logic, in which even the stupidest policies are enforced to the letter of the law.
It gets worse. Together with my fork was a plastic picnic knife — my sad replacement for the metal one taken by TSA. This too was of concern. At one point the supervisor carefully ran his fingers across its deadly serrations, mumbling instructionally to his colleague.
The picnic knife was given the all-clear and returned to me. The fork, though, would be tossed into a bin, carted off to wherever it is that airport security brings its troves of pilfered property. (I propose these raw materials be melted down and used to build new terminals, each with a majestic fountain in the center bubbling with recycled soft drinks, shampoo and mouthwash.)
And so everybody was that much safer.
There’s that expression: “You can’t make this up.” Well, really, you can’t. My head spins and my bones ache just writing about it.
Like I said, we’re not the only ones who’ve gone off the security deep end. I’ve encountered similar nonsense in Thailand, Nicaragua, the U.K.
In the meantime, did you catch the front-page New York Times story about the drug-smuggling and theft ring broken up at Kennedy Airport in New York? Apparently dozens of American Airlines luggage handlers were involved in a years-long operation in which they stole from passengers’ suitcases and smuggled cocaine in aircraft cargo holds. They would, in some cases, hide the drugs behind the sidewall panels of the lower-deck compartments.
Baggage handlers, by the way, do not have to pass through airport security. Not before 9/11, and not since. They, like almost all tarmac workers, are subject only to occasional, random TSA checks.
I realize that the vast majority of airport ground staff are honest employees and not criminals or terrorists. I’m not suggesting that they, too, be required to hand over their forks. That’s not the point, pardon the pun. It’s not that they aren’t patted down and X-rayed and relieved of their pointy things, it’s that pilots (and flight attendants) are.
Could there be a more demented double standard? It basically nullifies everything we’ve been asked to believe about the supposed importance of screening airline crew members. And no offense to the hardworking baggage handlers, fuelers, caterers, cabin cleaners and mechanics out there, but who is the higher-risk employee from a security perspective, a tarmac worker or a pilot? I suppose anything is possible, but let’s be realistic. If we’re going to screen at all, can we at least do it rationally?
As we speak, a program is being tested that, assuming all goes well, will eventually allow on-duty pilots to bypass the normal checkpoint. It’s a simple enough process that confirms a pilot’s identity by matching up airline and government-issue credentials with information stored in a database. That it took 10 years and counting for this to happen, however, is absurd.
I know this comes across as a self-serving complaint, but ultimately this isn’t about pilots. It’s about how diseased our approach to security is overall. A system that is stupid enough to devote valuable time and resources relieving pilots of tableware isn’t just an unfair one, but a potentially dangerous and self-defeating one.
And I needn’t be reminded of the indignities endured by passengers. What’s further unfortunate about the incident down at Benito Juarez is that it steals the thunder of a reader named Stacey Goldring, who shared with me a story of such sublime brainlessness that, until I lost my fork, was ready to take top honors in my Hall of Shame.
One day, flying from Dallas to Jacksonville, Fla., Goldring and her toddler son were refused passage through the TSA checkpoint because they boy was carrying … get ready now … his Star Wars lightsaber. A lightsaber, if you’re not familiar, is a flashlight with a plastic cone attached — or, perhaps more to the point, a toy in the shape of a make-believe weapon from a galaxy, and a line of reasoning, far, far away.
“I believe it was green,” says Goldring, “indicating my son’s future Jedi path. We were told by the TSA professionals that the saber, which technically is something that does not exist, was a weapon. We were escorted out of security and sent to the ticket counter, where I had to fill out paperwork in order to check the lightsaber in as baggage.”
That might have the fork story beat, actually.
Like I said, you can’t make this up.
The saddest part is that few people seem to care. We grumble, we gripe, and sometimes we laugh, but there is little if any organized push to change this madness, neither by citizens nor their elected leaders. In the end, we get what we deserve.
As for me and my silverware, my patience can’t bear these episodes anymore. I think I’m switching to chopsticks.
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Congrats to Jerry Aubin, of Austin, Texas, for winning last week’s Hüsker Dü trivia contest.
The questions was this: There is a mistake in the liner notes to the “Zen Arcade” album. What is it?
“Who ever wrote the song sings it,” it says among the credits, “except for ‘Somewhere,’ which Grant wrote the words for.” This doesn’t make sense, as Grant has the vocals on that song.
Not even Paul Hilcoff, host of the mind-bendingly thorough Hüsker Dü archive site, knew the answer offhand.
Aubin gets one of the last remaining Ask the Pilot baseball caps, autographed ballplayer-style under the brim. I have one or two left, as well as a handful of small and medium-size T-shirts. My pre-holiday clearance sale is on: your choice for $10, including shipping.
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Do you have questions for Salon’s aviation expert? Contact Patrick Smith through his website and look for answers in a future column.
(Credit: Reuters/Frank Polich) 
(Credit: Reuters/Salon) 
(Credit: Jason Reed / Reuters) 
(Credit: B Calkins and antipathique via Shutterstock) 
(Credit: Salon) 
