thedrifter
05-04-07, 07:16 AM
Happy Warrior
MARK STEYN
The Shoeless Shuffle
Here’s a sign of the times. On July 6, 1916, Leslie’s Weekly gave its cover over to a portrait of a finger-pointing Uncle Sam by James Montgomery Flagg. And with the finger-pointing came a question: “What Are You Doing for Preparedness?” — i.e., preparedness for war. When it came, Mr. Flagg’s rendering of Uncle Sam was pressed into service again, for a famous recruiting poster:
“I Want You for U.S. Army.”
I saw that portrait again the other day. Same uncle, same finger, new war. This latest poster is above the machine that scans your shoes and cellphone and loose change at Burlington Airport, Vermont. The familiar Flagg figure now bears an updated slogan:
“Uncle Sam Needs You to Be Safe.”
A message from the Department of Homeland Security.
It was a long line at security. So I had time to wonder how the government’s poster would strike Ben Franklin or whoever wrote the words usually attributed to him: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” And I had time to reflect on the pronounced Orwellian frisson of the slogan as I shuffled forward sans shoes, sans BlackBerry, sans everything. The slo-mo rituals of airport security are all the “war on terror” means to most Americans, and may well be all that survives once a new president is sworn in.
It’s theater for the most part: You show your picture ID, but so what? Everyone’s got picture ID. The 9/11 guys had multiple picture IDs. And many American states provide, as a matter of policy, picture ID to people who are in the country illegally. But we go along with the theater, and the weary shuffle, as a TSA man walks along the line bellowing at us to make sure we don’t have prohibited items, such as a large tube of toothpaste or the weaponizable quart of New Hampshire maple syrup for my aunt with which my little girl foolishly tried to board the plane the other day.
And every few minutes over the speaker a voice tells us that the Department of Homeland Security has “raised the threat level to . . . [dramatic pause] orange.” He drops an octave on “orange”; it’s the butchest “orange” you’ve ever heard. Invited to come up with a rhyme for the famously unrhymeable fruit, Irving Berlin proposed “door hinge,” which I always thought was pretty feeble. Berlin’s fellow lyricist Sammy Cahn explained to me that “orange/door hinge” rhymes in a certain kind of dense Bronx accent, but I said I’d traveled widely in the Bronx interior and wasn’t persuaded. Yet this deep manly octave-dropping voice on the airport intercom almost pulls it off: The threat level has been raised to oorhinge.
Ellie
MARK STEYN
The Shoeless Shuffle
Here’s a sign of the times. On July 6, 1916, Leslie’s Weekly gave its cover over to a portrait of a finger-pointing Uncle Sam by James Montgomery Flagg. And with the finger-pointing came a question: “What Are You Doing for Preparedness?” — i.e., preparedness for war. When it came, Mr. Flagg’s rendering of Uncle Sam was pressed into service again, for a famous recruiting poster:
“I Want You for U.S. Army.”
I saw that portrait again the other day. Same uncle, same finger, new war. This latest poster is above the machine that scans your shoes and cellphone and loose change at Burlington Airport, Vermont. The familiar Flagg figure now bears an updated slogan:
“Uncle Sam Needs You to Be Safe.”
A message from the Department of Homeland Security.
It was a long line at security. So I had time to wonder how the government’s poster would strike Ben Franklin or whoever wrote the words usually attributed to him: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” And I had time to reflect on the pronounced Orwellian frisson of the slogan as I shuffled forward sans shoes, sans BlackBerry, sans everything. The slo-mo rituals of airport security are all the “war on terror” means to most Americans, and may well be all that survives once a new president is sworn in.
It’s theater for the most part: You show your picture ID, but so what? Everyone’s got picture ID. The 9/11 guys had multiple picture IDs. And many American states provide, as a matter of policy, picture ID to people who are in the country illegally. But we go along with the theater, and the weary shuffle, as a TSA man walks along the line bellowing at us to make sure we don’t have prohibited items, such as a large tube of toothpaste or the weaponizable quart of New Hampshire maple syrup for my aunt with which my little girl foolishly tried to board the plane the other day.
And every few minutes over the speaker a voice tells us that the Department of Homeland Security has “raised the threat level to . . . [dramatic pause] orange.” He drops an octave on “orange”; it’s the butchest “orange” you’ve ever heard. Invited to come up with a rhyme for the famously unrhymeable fruit, Irving Berlin proposed “door hinge,” which I always thought was pretty feeble. Berlin’s fellow lyricist Sammy Cahn explained to me that “orange/door hinge” rhymes in a certain kind of dense Bronx accent, but I said I’d traveled widely in the Bronx interior and wasn’t persuaded. Yet this deep manly octave-dropping voice on the airport intercom almost pulls it off: The threat level has been raised to oorhinge.
Ellie