Don't Touch My Junk Guy
I agree with Glenzilla that The Nation's hit piece on "Don't Touch My Junk" guy, who started the meme that swept the internets and spilled into the nation's airports, is shameful. It's the sort of work you expect to see from the Malkins of Blogtopia. Certainly surprising coming from a magazine with a liberal bent and a propensity for sticking to the facts.
However, I do have one small quibble about Glenn's characterization of the guy as an innocent and naive bystander:
That doesn't excuse the rest of the hit piece but this guy is obviously an intelligent person. And his motives may well have been good, wanting to draw attention to a troublesome policy. But, you don't tape something like this and put it on the internets unless you're hoping to become the next internet sensation and maybe cash in on the attention. If he was really worried about the impact on his personal life, he could have, and should have, kept it private.
However, I do have one small quibble about Glenn's characterization of the guy as an innocent and naive bystander:
I spoke with Tyner several days ago and he was very worried that his public stance would jeopardize exactly the ordinariness which The Nation claims is fake: his job, his family, his reputation, and the cost from government recriminations.I have to agree with The Nation on the one point. It also immediately struck me, not so much strange, as deliberate, just in case he got pulled out for the patdown. The "don't touch my junk" line just felt pre-planned and designed to become an internet meme.
That doesn't excuse the rest of the hit piece but this guy is obviously an intelligent person. And his motives may well have been good, wanting to draw attention to a troublesome policy. But, you don't tape something like this and put it on the internets unless you're hoping to become the next internet sensation and maybe cash in on the attention. If he was really worried about the impact on his personal life, he could have, and should have, kept it private.
Labels: Activism, internet, national security
posted by Libby Spencer at 12:15 PM
4 Comments:
Agree, if you don't want the attention, the solution is simple; keep it off the internet. However, nothing will reconcile me with TSA since they took my can of olives! Okay, I admit I was going to use it to bomb the subway.
Quiet, private protests accomplish nothing; injustice must be exposed before it can be attacked. Internet exposure is the surest and quickest way to disseminate this kind of information these days, with or without self-aggrandizement.
That said, I think "injustice" is too strong a word for the TSA procedures in question:
(http://rc3.org/2010/11/23/things-we-do-to-innocent-people-to-prevent-terrorism/)
Land of the free and home of the brave - right.
Perhaps it is too strong a word, Perhaps plain harassment is more apt, but having crossed through Checkpoint Charlie a number of times; into and out of East Berlin back in the day, I recall, although I thought the procedures comically paranoid at the time, that it was a breeze compared with what one goes through visiting the grandchildren these days.
The comedy is still there however, one can still board a plane in Yemen and fly to Detroit with a C4 suppository up the hoo-ha and our touchiness about "profiling" would have Jesus groped while Mohammad walks through. I don't think it's going to make any real difference to people who want to terrorize American fear junkies. All they have to do is say BOO anyway.
Who the hell wants to live in a country where everyone is a suspect, needs to carry papers and is subject to random searches and seizures? Not me. And to think we used to gloat that people in other countries had to put up with this and we didn't - 'cause we're FREE!
What there is no excuse for, is the rudeness, the surliness, the ineptitude and the lack of training behind it. The ripped open ostomy bags, the public display of mastectomy prostheses and catheters -- and the hassling of people with hip replacements and metal plates and screws in various places. It's unforgivable.
And then there's the fact that we've let them create a transportation system making it very difficult to get anywhere without airplanes - it didn't happen by accident. Is it also a coincidence that Chertoff sells these scanners and gets rich off the paranoia he did so much to foster?
Oh damn, the comment I left last night apparently didn't publish. The TSA is a bad joke and I'm unconvinced that it makes us any safer.
Don't travel like I used to so I haven't been subjected to the latest paranoia theater. Shortly after 9/11 is the only time I've been patted down. When I flew through Charlotte and Atlanta in May, it was a breeze. Only went through the metal detectors. The scanners have concerned me since May 05 when I first heard about them though.
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