This summer, I had to get on a plane for only the second time since 9/11 — and the first time without using prescription medication. There was no other reasonable way for us to get Jack to DisneyWorld®, and sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. But I was not sanguine about it, and friends asked me why.

"You know it's safe," people would say, "You used to fly all the time." And it's true; in the late '90s, I was a Platinum-level business traveler, 50K miles a year. I actually understood, on a fundamental level, why "wake me up for meals," in Warren Zevon's "Mr. Bad Example" was such a grimly funny world-weary metonymy: ask a trans-Pacific traveler who once round-tripped to Tokyo for a 3-hour meeting. But that was all before.

Then, there is a blank gap. Planes scream by in telephoto shots; there is smoke, buildings fall.

After September 11, the Bush Administration, prodded into bureaucratic action, nationalized transportation screening and proclaimed the system secure. The reports of people sneaking through all manner of contraband either accidentally or as deliberate tests, aberrations. The appearance of infants and the president of Bolivia on the vaunted "no-fly" list, statistical noise. All is well.

Jeffrey Goldberg, in a delightful piece in this month's Atlantic, describes the total failure of what the pros call "security theatre," an airport screening process designed to create a highly visible illusion of safety.

On another occasion, at LaGuardia, in New York, the transportation-security officer in charge of my secondary screening emptied my carry-on bag of nearly everything it contained, including a yellow, three-foot-by-four-foot Hezbollah flag, purchased at a Hezbollah gift shop in south Lebanon. The flag features, as its charming main image, an upraised fist clutching an AK-47 automatic rifle. Atop the rifle is a line of Arabic writing that reads THEN SURELY THE PARTY OF GOD ARE THEY WHO WILL BE TRIUMPHANT. The officer took the flag and spread it out on the inspection table. She finished her inspection, gave me back my flag, and told me I could go. I said, “That’s a Hezbollah flag.” She said, “Uh-huh.” Not “Uh-huh, I’ve been trained to recognize the symbols of anti-American terror groups, but after careful inspection of your physical person, your behavior, and your last name, I’ve come to the conclusion that you are not a Bekaa Valley–trained threat to the United States commercial aviation system,” but “Uh-huh, I’m going on break, why are you talking to me?”
— Via the Atlantic

Here's my modest proposal. They should make it an actual theatrical experience. Dim all the lights, throw up a mirror ball, and give each traveler a pin spot and hand mike. From the moment you take off your shoes, you must boogie to the magnetometer while doing a karaoke version of "I Will Survive." Think about it, Mandrake. Have you ever seen a terrorist do The Chicken Dance?

But I digress.

Want to keep up with this stuff? I read Bruce Schneier on Security.