Thursday, January 25, 2007

Tiny terrors in the name of homeland security

January 24, 2007

My friend phoned me long distance sounding really ticked off. "They took away my Lancome Bienfait Multi-Vital moisturizer," she said with a disgusted clip in her voice.

I began to visualize the wrinkles already popping out on her skin, the age spots browning her cheeks, the crows' feet deepening around her eyes. The horror.

The shakedown artists who grabbed my friend's moisturizer were none other than the Homeland Security agents at the X-ray machine in O'Hare Airport. They have been instructed by their august superiors in Washington to nab all suspicious-looking liquid or gel items, including, apparently, Bienfait Multi-Vital moisturizer, a cream generally used by women of a certain age. These were their orders after men were arrested in London trying to carry liquid explosives aboard a plane last summer.

Darn thing is my friend had the moisturizer in her carry-on when she came to visit me, and the guards at Toronto International Airport, where she boarded, kept their paws off her moisturizer.

"What was the difference," she asked impatiently. "They told me at O'Hare that if I'd had the moisturizer in a Ziploc bag that would have been fine. But what difference does it make if it's in my cosmetic case or a see-through bag? Can't they zip open my cosmetics case and look through everything?"

She tried making that argument to the guards, but logic has never been their strong suit. They have a job to do. They have power over you. They can humiliate you if you don't obey.

Recently I was going to Pittsburgh, flying from O'Hare. I stepped up to the X-ray machine, dutifully took off my shoes, coat, hat and scarf and loaded them into the requisite plastic containers. I had made sure I wasn't wearing any chunky metal jewelry or belts to set off the alarm.

"Take off your coat," a woman security official demanded. "I have taken it off," I replied, pointing to a gray lump on the X-ray conveyer belt. "Take off your coat," she repeated, more assertively. By then I realized she really meant my suit jacket, and as I began to doff it, she commanded me to go to the side where she could frisk me and go through my luggage. I lost half a tube of toothpaste that morning, but they left my wrinkle cream. Crow's feet trump bad breath.

Former NBC war correspondent Ashleigh Banfield recently talked to the New York Times about traveling with her infant son from New York City to Fort Myers, Fla. She was loaded down with baby paraphernalia, including a stroller, a diaper bag and a car seat, and the security agent asked her to dismantle the stroller. She asked the agent to hold her son.

"I can't break the stroller down without your help," she explained. He said he couldn't help her, and she replied, "It's either that or we put my son through the X-ray machine." After a moment's hesitation, he took her son.

There is no doubt that we need strong security measures at our airports, but some of the rules are making the war on terrorism seem more like the theater of the absurd. Look at the results: Women are aging more rapidly, babies are being handed to total strangers and toothpaste is being confiscated.

It certainly doesn't do much to make me feel safer. It only makes my skin dry.

• • •

DEAR READERS: This is my final Scribble column. I have enjoyed writing about life's foibles, my daughter's tight blue jeans and other parental worries over the past couple of years. I am starting a new assignment at the Sun-Times so my byline won't disappear, and I look forward to still receiving your letters.

All my best,

Jennifer

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