The Other Side

IS THAT A BOMB IN YOUR POCKET OR...

By Kelvin Wade

Airline security has been a big focus ever since 9/11. Much of it has been for show. Now, they’re going too far.
Last month, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy group, filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security to stop them from using full body scanners at 19 airports. The scanners can see through clothing.
When I first heard of the full body scanners, it gave me pause but it doesn’t seem like something that will slow the line down too much. And if someone gets a brief smile out of what they see when I walk my ample arse through it, knock themselves out. I’m on my way to my destination.
However, the Transportation Security Administration has started testing “enhanced patdowns” at two of the nation’s busiest airports. The new procedures are a departure from the old back of the hand patdowns. The new procedure is an aggressive palms-first slide down over the body with, as one passenger told USA Today, “probing and pushing” in the genital area.
So you’re telling me that in order to fly to your family reunion, you’ve got to let a TSA agent get to second base? This is a bridge too far. Never mind that TSA assures passengers that it will be a same sex patdown (I can see homophobes becoming apoplectic).
Just how soon until instead of just putting your laptop and shoes in that plastic tub at the airport, you’ll just have to put all your clothes in there and line up nude? Of course that wouldn’t be good enough either because someone could always have something hidden in a body cavity. Prisoners are experts at it. Will passengers get the full San Quentin treatment in order to fly?
“Hands above your head. Hands out in front of you. Wiggle your fingers. Reach down and lift…”
Are we really going to be fondling breasts and genitals trying to determine if what they’re feeling are actual body parts or explosives? Will those people unfortunate enough to be called out of line and physically probed then have to disrobe completely? What if its not you? What if it’s your wife, mother or brother? And who is going to be checking the teenagers and children, because terrorists are not above using them?
We could make driving safer by making the driving test harder. We can require that cell phone batteries be removed from cell phones inside vehicles. We can require drivers and passengers to wear helmets and flame retardant jumpsuits and drop the maximum speed limit to 25 miles per hour. We can have those limits strictly enforced with $1,000 speeding tickets. It would make our roads much safer but at what cost?
We try to make driving as safe as possible without regulating it to the point where its ridiculous.
Our focus needs to be on identifying and nabbing the bad guys before they ever make it to the airport. We should be enhancing our no-fly lists instead of enhancing patdowns. We have full body scanners in use at 19 airports that can see through clothing. There’s no doubt this program will be expanded.
But at some point, we have to realize that in a free society, there are risks to everything. At some point, they’ve got to let us just fly.

TWO BLOCKS FROM GROUND ZERO IS STILL AMERICA

By Kelvin Wade

    In a letter in 1803, Thomas Jefferson wrote "I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance, or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others." For a nation that was founded on religious freedom, this isn’t surprising. In perusing his, and other Founding Fathers’ writings, it seems obvious that they would be arguing in favor of the construction of an Islamic Community Center in Lower Manhattan, two blocks from Ground Zero.

       We’re supposed to be about tolerance. It’s like George Orwell’s Animal Farm where all animals were created equal but some animals were more equal than others. Well, here in the good ol’ USA, it seems some religions are more equal than others.
    It’s not easy. One of the commendable things President George W. Bush did in the aftermath of 9/11 was to make a distinction between Islamic radicals and peaceful followers of Islam. Tensions were high. On our TV screens were pictures and sounds of Arabs celebrating the cowardly act: ululations of Arab women and dancing and clapping from men and children.
Watching that in light of what had happened on 9/11, it was hard not to want the U.S. to lay waste to every Arab and/or Muslim in the Middle East. Rage and revenge was a normal emotional reaction to that horrific attack.    
    While we arrested Arabs, held many without charges, and there were reports of attacks and discrimination, the situation could have been a lot worse. For the most part, Americans didn’t meet Jihad with Jihad. We’ve tried to keep an open mind with a religion and culture alien to most.
    But the uproar over the Park 51 Islamic community center exposes the true simmering feelings of many Americans. We like to talk the talk of tolerance. We say all the right things about Islam. But the ugly truth is, many don’t trust ‘those people.’ Many of us conflate Islam and terror. The outrage over the community center reinforces Al-Qaeda’s message that we are at war with Islam according to Mark McKinnon, a former advisor to President George W. Bush.
    By opposing the center, we’re saying the enemy is Islam. I’m sure a lot of Americans have no problem saying that but is that who we’re supposed to be? Does sending that message help our soldiers in the field?
    The Ku Klux Klan claims they’re a Christian organization. Should Christianity be viewed through the prism of David Koresh’s Branch Davidians? What about the Rev. Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church and their picketing of funerals of those who died of AIDS and U.S. soldiers? Do they represent Baptists? Are all Catholic priests child molesters?
    We have no problem looking at these people for the aberrations they are.
    It’s true that a large swath of Muslims dislike the United States. Many, who don’t actively support terrorism, still don’t condemn it. Or they tacitly support it. That state of affairs is not unlike many right wing Christians who tacitly support Christian zealots who murder abortion providers. Our opposition to Islam isn’t going to help the situation.
    Yes, it’s easy to live up to our ideals when we’re not under attack. To my thinking, a Muslim tolerance center near Ground Zero isn’t a thumb in our eye. It’s a finger in the face of extremists.
    To me, the outrage isn’t a proposed Islamic community center  being built two blocks from Ground Zero. The outrage is that nine years after 9/11, we have a big, empty construction site at Ground Zero.
    Maybe more people wouldn’t mind a Muslim center being built in that location, if we’d built something tall and gleaming to be proud of at Ground Zero…if we even had a nice national memorial park. Something. The affront is a Muslim center being built there before we’ve built anything.

DR. LAURA'S LAME RACIAL RANT

By Kelvin Wade

    Radio talk show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger stepped in it last week when she used the N-word nearly a dozen times on-air during a call about race from an African-American caller. While most of the attention has been on her repeated use of the N-word, there were plenty of other issues she brought up worth challenging.

    Dr. Laura feigns confusion as to why some blacks feel they can use the word while whites cannot. In a perfect world, no one would ever use vile language of any kind. However, comedians of different ethnic backgrounds often make un-PC jokes about their race. Sacha Baron Cohen makes anti-Semitic jokes that would provoke outrage in today’s climate if he were not Jewish. There are gay people who use derogatory slang terms to reference themselves but would still be offended if a homophobe spewed them at them.

    We all know intuitively that you can badmouth your sibling but if someone else does it, those are fighting words. I didn’t make the rules but here we are.
    In her call, Dr. Laura said, “…a lot of blacks voted for Obama simply 'cause he was half-black. Didn't matter what he was gonna do in office…” Of course those who make this point don’t acknowledge the inverse, that a lot of whites voted against Obama ‘simply ‘cause he was half-black.’ Also, keep in mind that while Obama won 96% of the black vote, Al Gore won 90% of the black vote in 2000. Kerry won close to that in 2004. It’s important to keep in perspective that the Democratic candidate was going to get 90% of the black vote anyway.
    Dr. Laura also said, “We've got a black man as president, and we have more complaining about racism than ever. I mean, I think that's hilarious.” Well, I hate to be the one to break up the hilarity but racism didn’t end November 4, 2008. Her statement reveals the highest form of tokenism. “Racism is over because look who’s in the White House!”
    When Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947, it didn’t end racism in major league baseball. His own teammates ignored him, sportswriters ragged on him and many fans hated him. When schools were integrated in the south by pioneers like the Little Rock Nine in 1957, little Ruby Bridges in New Orleans in 1960 and James Meredith at the University of Mississippi in 1962, racism in public education didn’t vanish. There was a nasty backlash.
    While Barack Obama’s election is, so far, the ultimate symbol of the racial maturation of this nation, to think that it would end discrimination when all other progress has seen it flare, is grossly naïve.
    Dr. Laura told the caller not to take her out of context. She told the caller not to “NAACP me.” Really? Wasn’t it Andrew Breitbart who took the snippet of Shirley Sherrod out of context? Why didn’t Dr. Laura say, “Don’t Andrew Breitbart me.” What does that say about her?
    Schlessinger accused the caller of having a chip on her shoulder. Readers should go online and listen to the audio recording in context, in its entirety and see just who has the chip.
    Dr. Laura, with her 8 million listeners and $15 million dollar annual income is ending her radio show at the end of the year because she says her First Amendment rights have been usurped. She says she wants to be free to say what she thinks in books and on her website.
    She could’ve continued a national dialogue on race but it’s obvious, she’s only interested in a monologue. 

WORKING CLASS HERO? WHERE?

By kelvin Wade

   Am I the only one in America who wondered why this douchebag Steve Slater, the JetBlue sky waiter who cussed out folks over the PA aboard a jet, grabbed two beers and exited the plane via the emergency slide, has been considered a working class hero? Is it just because he made a dramatic exit from his job, (and ended up being arrested and charged with reckless endangerment and criminal mischief?).

    Lots of people make dramatic exits from jobs in America. Usually, they’re disgruntled and leave with guns blazing and bullets whizzing. Seldom are they working class heroes.
    I know. Apples and oranges, you say. Steve Slater basically said, “Take this job and shove it!” and it resonated with people. Everyone who has dreamed of telling their boss off and slamming the door on the way out and hitting the road in a convertible with a middle finger extended couldn’t help but smile when they read Slater’s story.
    I didn’t. From day one when I read it I thought, “What a jerk!”
    Anyone who has or have had a job working with the public gets it, I know. I worked at my dad’s convenience store back in the 80’s. Back then; we had to manually set the gas pumps when people came in to buy gas. It got busy one summer day and I forgot to set a guy’s gas purchase so when he went outside and tried to pump his gas, nothing happened. He came back in and asked me to set the gas. I apologized. Before he left out the door he added, “I already told you once but you just stood there with your thumb up your butt!”
    I wanted so badly to drop an F bomb or two, grab a couple of beers and hit the emergency exit. No, wait. I did want to drop an F bomb or two but I didn’t, of course.
    So I understand the desire to want to strike back. Dealing with the public, you have to bite your tongue.
    But when I read the Slater story, it didn’t sound like the whole story. And after the Shirley Sherrod debacle, I waited for more.
    Now, passengers are coming forward saying Mr. Working Class Hero was acting like a jerk before they even left on their flight. They’re saying that he dropped a curse word with a passenger before his tirade and snapped at another passenger. Maybe he’d had it up to here with some rude passengers on the flight before this one. But if that’s the case and he took it out on some different passengers, that doesn’t make him a hero. It just makes him a bad flight attendant.
    And the way our twisted society works, he’ll be on several talk shows. He may even write a book. He might end up with a radio show.
    When I choose my heroes, they’re still going to be the Chesley “Sully” Sullenbergers of the world: people who do their jobs exceptionally well.

TROLLING FOR VOTES

By Kelvin Wade

    A while ago I joined the Facebook page, "Suisun City - What's Really Going on." Now I’m not a resident of Suisun but I thought it was a good page. Anyone from Fairfield knows the two cities are like Rum and Coke, peanut butter and chocolate or eggs and bacon. Besides, my brother lives in Suisun and sits on the Planning Commission.
    Today, I received a message that the creator of that Facebook page renamed the site, “Brian Cain for Suisun City Council 2010.” I don’t recall a message going out asking the over 100 members of the group if they supported a name change or Brian Cain’s candidacy. Who would have the stones to do something like that?
    I quickly left the group. You don’t jack my endorsement. You don’t pull some low rent bait and switch on people and expect to be taken seriously as a candidate. Members of the page are posting on Mr. Cain’s wall that they feel manipulated and offended that he would do something like this.
    This isn’t Watergate. But this is probably members/voters’ first encounter with Brian Cain’s candidacy. And all we have to go on is that you’re shady. That’s the first impression. If this is the kind of stunt you’ll pull to gain some attention to get into office, what will you do once you’re in office?
    Maybe you have great ideas for Suisun. I just don’t think anybody you manipulated wants to hear what you have to say now.