As a few people here know, I'm not much of a dKos participant anymore. No hard feelings involved, just "other priorities," to paraphrase Dick Cheney. But yesterday I had the most incredible encounter with a TSA screener at the Dallas/Ft. Worth international airport, and I needed a venue to vent.
As I approached the ID/boarding pass checkpoint in DFW's Terminal E, the screener, a white woman in her 50's, was in conversation with another TSA employee. I heard her say "...at least he would have kept us safe" just before handing her my ID and boarding pass.
Presumably she was referring to Sen. McCain because upon handing my documents back to me, she continued, "Obama is going to get us all killed."
Now, this sort of statement would be unprofessional in just about any security setting, but coming from a TSA screener it's beyond the pale. You could get pulled aside for saying much the same thing while waiting in line.
I said nothing during the entire exchange, but walked away shaking my head. The screener then made reference to me personally by saying "this guy..." and gesturing in my direction.
I didn't stick around to see what she said next. Ordinarily I would, uh shall we say, engage the person in situations like this but I was in a bit of a haze after driving over two hours to get to the airport and not having eaten since the night before (it was now close to noon). So, I just continued on my way.
In retrospect, however, a couple of things occurred to me. First, if this bitter woman couldn't muster any respect for even the office of the president (no matter who holds it), then she should at least have some respect for the travelers she is supposedly there to protect. Second, I was amazed again at the ability of people to deny certain facts while accepting other fictions.
Need we compare Obama's first nine months in office to that of Bush on the metric of terrorist-related deaths? Oh, right--9/11 was Clinton's fault. But the economy, that's Obama's fault. Yep, got it.
Anyway, I submitted an edited version of the above to both the TSA main Contact Us page and a "feedback" form from the TSA blog (yes, they have a blog, and are even on Twitter!). We'll see what happens.