Staying Abreast of the DHS

Here in Michigan the leaves are changing their colors, and so, perhaps, am I. After years of being the token New Dealer in these pages, I find myself flirting with libertarianism. 

This, I hasten to admit, is in part because I spent the anniversary of 9/11 going through the full version of the TSA’s official “What Can I Bring?” list. This document, which runs to some 50 pages, makes for curious reading. The 3.4 oz limit for bottled water, hummus, and carry-on snowglobes is going strong, as is the somewhat less well-known “7 inches or shorter” rule for screwdrivers. Nunchucks, I am sorry to say, are still flatly prohibited. Blenders, however, “are allowed in carry-on bags if the blade has been removed,” which will no doubt be hugely comforting to weary travelers whose idea of relaxation is sitting in their hotel rooms and watching oranges spin centrifugally without actually being chopped. (It takes all kinds!) Bottle openers, meanwhile, are okay but not bowling pins, presumably in case Daniel Day-Lewis is onboard; paddles for both kayaks and canoes are out, along with cast-iron skillets, cricket bats, drill bits, vehicle air bags, foam toy swords, hammers, hockey sticks, fencing foils, old-fashioned mercury thermometers, turpentine, Magic 8-Balls, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphone, and pool-grade chlorine. Phone chargers containing lithium batteries cannot be placed in checked bags. Scissors, one learns, are permitted only with “special instructions,” which presumably include no running.

One thing I have always wanted to know is why paying for TSA PreCheck® should entitle anyone to avoid having to remove his shoes, belt, jacket, and laptop. Surely Mohamed Atta would have passed the background check, right? He could certainly have afforded to pay a tax-deductible $75.

Speaking of security theater, it was recently reported that after 34 no doubt bliss-filled matrimonial years, Kristi Noem, a.k.a. “ICE Barbie,” the former secretary of perhaps the least necessary cabinet-level federal department, was seeking a divorce from her husband, Byron. Color me the opposite of surprised. Some of you will recall that last year Mr. Noem was caught sending hundreds of messages to models who cater to what used to be called a “specialist” crowd. To one of them he confessed his heart’s deepest longing, viz., to be the possessor of “huge, huge ridiculous boobs.” This was not simply locker room talk, at least not in the accustomed sense. A leaked photograph showed Mr. Noem wearing an unconventional tan garment—if pressed I would say that it looked like a bullet-proof version of Mormon lingerie— stuffed with what appear to be but obviously are not a Lefty Lucy and a Righty Heidi roughly the size of regulation NBA basketballs. Huge they certainly were, huge, huge even, and obviously ridiculous. Would they have passed muster with TSA, I wonder?

Longtime readers of this column will not be surprised to learn that unsolicited PR emails continue to be the more or less exclusive province of fruitcakes. A couple of weeks ago I received the following pitch from a publicist I’ll call “Emma”: “Hello – Good Day, Would you be interested in our newly refreshed database of Funeral Homes in the U.S. and Canada? Please let me know if you’d like more information.” Even by the standards of the genre, “Emma” must have known that this was a bit of a shot in the dark. She would have just as much luck asking me if I was by chance interested in speaking with the author of a forthcoming history of lint or scheduling an interview to discuss colonoscopy statistics. Bloody but unbowed, “Emma” pressed me for an answer a few days ago: “Just a quick follow up are you interested in email list of Funeral Homes across USA and Canada. Let me know [sic throughout].” What would she do if, five seconds from now, I sent her a floridly enthusiastic reply explaining that so far from being roughly as sparkling and jolly as it sounds, viewing “email list of Funeral Homes across USA and Canada” was, in point of fact, exactly what I wished to do at this very moment, that for years it had been at the top of my bucket list, just beating out conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, if not quite rising to the level of (say) writing a definitive history of the English Romantic poets in Rome. I might just go ahead and ask.

I realize that I have written almost 900 words without saying anything about war, Mr. Noem’s faux-bazookas notwithstanding. What is there to say? We are still going at it with the Iranians, and there is no end in sight. Meanwhile inflation continues seemingly unabated. Mortgage interest rates are climbing to 1970s levels, though, for reasons I hope that some helpful economist will explain to me, savings rates remain painfully low for anyone stupid enough to put money in the bank instead of “investing”—as my wife ruefully puts it—in the latest releases from the Decca Pure Analogue series. Meanwhile Trump’s approval rating is hovering at 32 percent. This is, of course, historically bad, like the Detroit Lions defense so far this season.