What is this thing?

While it hasn’t gotten me the full on TSA grope that Breda experienced, my podcast microphone always attracts special TSA attention.

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I understand that it’s odd looking, but it’s also clearly a microphone. Yet every time I fly with it, I get pulled aside for the “special” inspection. The suitcase gets a thorough inspection and swabbing and there’s always a little cluster of TSA’s finest holding my mic and trying to figure out what it is. After a few minutes one bright person usually turns to me and says, “What is this thing?”

If I was using misdirection to smuggle something else through, like the knife that’s frequently in my computer bag yet never noticed, I couldn’t ask for a better attention-getter.

It’s all a stupid waste of time and money. Checkpoints never have and never will catch a terrorist or hijacker. It’s theater of the worst kind because it takes resources from where they’d be effective and wastes them on useless institutionalized humiliation exercises.

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0 Responses to What is this thing?

  1. Old NFO says:

    They are ALWAYS responding to the last threat… sigh…

  2. Chuck says:

    Every time I see or hear something like this, I picture the monkeys in 2001 slapping the obelisk.

  3. Ted says:

    TSA provides the absolute finest in Today’s Security Kabuki. Top shelf.