Optimus Prime on T-Shirt Leads to Airport Detainment
What did FDR say? "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." We've allowed ourselves to fear, and thus, the terrorists may already have won a victory - not the war, but a victory.
Brad Jayakody, 30, from London, was stopped from passing through security at Heathrow's Terminal 5 after his Transformers T-shirt was deemed "offensive." Offensive? His shirt had a picture of Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots on the front.
Jayakody said the a guard started joking with him about the Transformers character depicted on his T-shirt. "Then he explains that since Megatron is holding a gun, I'm not allowed to fly. It's a 40ft tall cartoon robot with a gun as an arm. There is no way this shirt is offensive in any way, and what I'm going to use the shirt to pretend I have a gun?"
I'm wondering if the guard had known it was Optimus Prime and not Megatron (a bad guy for those not in the know) it would have made a difference?
A spokesperson for BAA said:
"If a T-shirt had a rude word or a bomb on it, for example, a passenger may be asked to remove it. We are investigating what happened to see if it came under this category. If it's offensive, we don't want other passengers upset."Hmmm. I would think only a Decepticon fan would be upset, but ...
1 comments:
It's mindless beaurocracy like this that detracts airport staff from providing adequate security against actual threats. My husband mentioned the saying that if the police can't catch criminals, they'll criminalize the people they catch, and that sounds very much like what many airport staff are engaging in. Seems they just want to appear to be doing something, anything to protect against terrorism, when all they're doing in most cases is protecting against non-threats (as in the case of the nipple piercing), or regulating possible offense. Considering that both Americans and Brits are supposed to have freedom of expression, that borders a bit too closely on Thought Police behaviour for my liking, and from the myriad examples you've presented here, such knee-jerk behaviour from airport staff sadly seems to be on the increase.
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