…And I only bring up 9/11 at all because a) I coincidentally happened to just finish re-reading David Foster Wallace’s “The View From Mrs. Thompson’s” today, b) I am extrememly disappointed in how The Events Of are still hanging over this country as we are determined to allow the most ridiculous security measures be taken against our most basic freedoms to feed some strange sense of patriotism we all feel that earned the hard way 6 years ago (in other words, I’m leaving for Amsterdam in two days and I’m very upset that I have to decide wether to pack the hair product OR the facial cleansing system, seeing as I can’t very well squeeze BOTH into a quart-sized ziploc bag), and lastly, c) I feel strangely guilty for having entirely skimmed over the whole anniversary thing two weeks ago while I was vacationing in Florida. Don’t ask me why.

So.

Does it show some lack of judgement to walk into an airport with a circuit board strapped to your sweatshirt? To be sure.

But is that any excuse for law enforcers in this country to take the “better safe than sorry” approach? It’s disgusting the way that they’re touting their handling of the situation, as though they did this girl some favor by not completely overreacting from the onset. I mean really, what could she have possibly said or done, apart from running away, or throwing her ball of play-do at their faces, that would have caused them *justly* to use deadly force?

And I feel the same way about that UF student at the John Kerry lecture last week. Sure, he was an asshole, but really, how much physical power are we willing to let law enforcers exert over an obviously harmless person? All because of what…”we’re in the orange!?”

Fuck this shit, dudes. Fuck. This. Shit.

Honestly though, unlike CNN seems to imply, I don’t think the MIT student is an idiot. I do think it’s kind of sad that we live in a world where her self expression, be it badly implemented wearable art or a “hoax bomb” or whatever, seems so obviously “stupid” to the rest of us. At worst maybe she was trying to embarass her local airport police, and at best, impress her inbound friend with her new MIT engineering degree.

But to the media, and to the police who probably harassed the shit out of this poor girl, none of that matters. They were certainly not impressed, and the big clue to their total LACK of embarassment is the fact that headlines read “Bomb Hoax” when they probably should’ve said something more along the lines of “Boston Police Totally Overreact to Perfectlly Harmless LEDs again.”

Is Boston, like, totally jealous that 9/11 didn’t happen in their crappy city or what?