As I’ve suggested a number of times here, Seattle’s KOMO News—especially the radio station—is your typical right-wing fear and paranoia-inducing media with occasional unfunny banter. Their show “Problem Solvers” is just an excuse for some swell-headed reporter with a beef with somebody to go out and ruin their day and make themselves feel like they actually did something to justify their pay. Take, for instance, a recent story about the alleged "security breaches" at Sea Tac Airport, where I work. Airline passengers constantly whine about being scanned, screened and patted down. I suspect some of them are KOMO employees full of self-pity. So they brought their “hidden camera” to the airport and found something “troubling”:
“In the hubbub of a Sea-Tac arrival, you probably never notice. But if you watch the right doors, at just about any time of day or night, you'll see what the our cameras found: A nearly constant parade of Sea-Tac workers carrying bags, backpacks, or purses as they go through. But there are no metal detectors here, no X-ray machines, and those doors lead right into the airport's most secure areas.”
That’s right. Employees arriving for work or leaving for home; you’d think those KOMO people have never seen anyone do that before. You'd think they see a terrorist in every (dark) face. Here's a new one for the uninformed fear freak: If your employer doesn’t provide you with your own locker you don’t have to share with somebody on the next shift, or supplies just a very small one that you can barely fit a sock in, then you have to bring everything you need with you every morning to get through an eleven-hour day (not counting transportation time)--mostly outside in all kinds of nasty weather.
“‘We can go anywhere,’ says an airport worker who asked us to disguise their identity. “‘Biggest concern that someone might bring a bomb onto the plane and blow it up… “The concern of this Sea-Tac worker is disturbingly similar to what a whistle blower first told the Problem Solvers three years ago.” ‘Shocking,’ that whistleblower told us in 2007, ‘knowing that you can go right underneath and not be screened, carry whatever you want.’"
I’d like to know who this ignorant, unnamed, lying scumbag is. I’ve been working here since 2007, and a far as I know, nobody has ever brought in any contraband or explosive devices in those sinister-looking backpacks, and likely for many years before that, if ever. The only people who have time to go "anywhere" are people who carry around hidden cameras or make unfounded comments just to get their 15 minutes of infamy. Now, of course, since the Port doesn't like any adverse publicity even if it is based on ignorance, there are TSA people harassing us every day to satisfy the pettiness of a few vindictive, stereotype-minded bigots. Ironically (or not), not all airlines are treated equally; I've never seen any TSA people checking the BIG airline's employees next door. It appears that a certain amount of profiling is going on; the higher the percentage of minority employees--particularly if they are non-union--appears to be the criteria for determining who gets checked.
So what is this really about? This about some self-pitying, prejudicial, swell-headed white people who because of their natural “gift” for stereotyping non-whites, think these minority-types can’t possibly be carrying around a backpack (or a purse, for that matter) for the same reason any “normal” person—i.e. a white person—is going to work with. Those people at KOMO throw around so many stink bombs they call “news” that somebody should be at the door putting hands on their food. Put somebody who looks like Danny Trejo with that swarthy, pock-marked face and that “What the (bleep) are you going do about it, whitey” expression, and see how they like being harassed every morning for no reason except to assuage the sensitivities of some racial bigot with issues.
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