Did you see the story about 14 Middle Eastern men flying to LA whose behavior spooked a WSJ reporter?
The reporter may have over-reacted to innocent activities. If you read
Annie Jacobson’s story believing (as authorities later told her told
her) that the men were all in a band flying to an engagement, you see
it with different eyes.
Jacobson was unnerved when men in different seating groups swapped
significant glances–maybe they weren’t being sneaky by sitting
separately, maybe they just couldn’t all get seats
together. She thought they might have planned making a bomb in the
bathroom–but maybe they were conspiring to get high in there. She was
upset that a man coming out of the bathroom pantomimed to his friend
the action of cutting his own throat and saying “no”–maybe he was just
dramatizing the disgusting state that he’d found the bathroom in.
How can we keep terrorists out of airlines? I
strongly disagree with Annie Jacobson’s conclusion that racial profiling
is the best answer to this real and serious question. I strongly
disagree with James Lileks’s idea that we should happily throw civil
liberties out the window to ensure our safety. Uh huh–is that the kind of safety Israelis enjoy from Palestinians?
I even more strongly disagree with some of my fellow
liberals. Instead of using this story as a springboard to discuss
government response to terrorism, many are sticking to diatribes
against the writer. She is a racist who thinks “flying while brown”
should be a crime. She got upset just because they used the rest room.
She is nothing but an emotional woman, a hysterical woman, a housewife,
a soccer mom–and her husband is a bigger pussy than she is. And the
flight attendant who tried to calm her fears should be fired at
once–so should security officials who later told her the men were a
band. Maybe the men were trying to put their fellow passengers in fear
of their lives just for fun, and they’re entitled to do so because
Annie Jacobson is such a racist….Or maybe she made a lot of this
stuff up anyway.*
Really, people, get a grip. Even if you could prove to the world that
Annie Jacobson is more evil than Hannibal Lecter, does that solve the
problem of balancing airplane security with civil liberties and common
sense? Wouldn’t you rather make a contribution to that more important
question?
So, taking my own advice, I think that prosthetic shoes, etc. should
not be off-limits to airport security searches. I think the rule that
you can’t question more than two people of any ethnic group, if such a
rule exists, is dangerous hooey. I think that questioning people about
their flight plans, etc. does not violate their civil liberties. I
think that people who do weird stuff on airliners should be told by
flight attendants to behave themselves. I think that airline passengers
who intentionally scare other airline passengers should be charged with
assault.
And I think political discussions should try to steer clear of personal attacks on people who hold opposing viewpoints.
* Jeez–In this paragraph, I’m quoting some of the nasty things bloggers said about Annie Jacobson and her story, trying to make the point that too many ugly, personal attacks were getting mixed into the discussion. I’m not trying to write the mother of all ugly personal attacks myself, as some people who emailed me comments on this blogpost seemed to think.