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.

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.