In The Crunch Report's
eerily prophetic dystopian play about being at the airport,
a character asserts that under the terms of the so-called "Patriot Act,"
it is now illegal to tell jokes while in transit. Just
another fantastical science-fiction scenario that could never actually happen.
Many mysteries lie within the ten billion pages of the Patriot
Act, however. And there must be a provision somewhere that reads, "Any
wisecrack that could be construed as a bomb threat by an obtuse dunderhead is in
fact a bomb threat, regardless of whether it would be thus construed by any reasonable person."
That's what poor tin-eared wise guy Gregory Hastings discovered
when he responded all too jokingly to a ticket agent's "security questions."
It seems that Hastings
is one of those people always telling painfully unfunny jokes and then laughing
at them himself during the ensuing dead pauses. When
asked by the ticket agent if anyone had given him something to take on board,
Hastings--a very infrequent flyer, hence relatively untutored in the minutiae
of modern security precautions--answered, ''What do you mean? Like one of those
ticking cardboard boxes?'' Now, if it had been Gary Shandling, the ticket agent
would have been in stitches. It's all in the delivery.
But it wasn't Gary Shandling. So--out of painful, and
pained, necessity--the police were paged pronto. At some point in the
proceedings there was a scuffle, apparently. Hastings and the cops disagree about
exactly what happened. But withal, the Boston
Globe reports that the witticist's luggage was never even checked; which, if true, sort
of belies the notion that anybody at the airport really thought the lumpen-prole had made a bomb threat.
Anyway, Hastings was tossed in the hoosegow for a few hours,
then released after agreeing to serve two years probation, perform 100 hours of
community service (presumably teaching tots how to avoid making dumb jokes in
public), and fork over $500 to charity. (Though it's not quite clear how charity
had been injured by the joke.) One of the charges against Hastings
was "making a false statement." (There goes the Internet.) Heh-heh-heh-heeeeggggggg-gghhhhhhh....
Ticket agent didn't know whether the stranger was joking. Seems
if it's so friggin' opaque, you'd ask. "Is that supposed to be some
kind of joke, sir? If so, it's not jolly-well appreciated, okay? We're all pretty uptight here in the post-911
environment."
(Also, if it's so darn crucial that nobody ever josh out of
turn, why not stipulate that in the eternally iterating airport security
announcements? "This is a non-smoking environment... in the name of
security, please stay with your luggage at all times... also... please... do
not... for your own safety, do not
try to 'lighten the mood' with any ill-conceived humor about the bureaucratic-security-hellhole
in which you now find yourself....")
Hastings concedes
that it wasn't exactly bright of him to be kidding around about bombs while in
an airport. Ergo, it's "hard to empathize with [his] plight," according
to the Boston Globe's un-empathetic
reporter, who presumably drives everywhere.
But there's a difference between saying something dumb and
doing something criminal. Or there used to be.
--David M. Brown, 6/26/02
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
The Prisoner, Patrick McGoohan. Complete set of 10 DVD videos; also available in video. Are you a number or a free man? Find the answer--maybe--in one of the most interesting and independent-minded television shows ever made. GET IT
