Why You Should Love the TSA Blog
Bloggers are gluttons for self-congratulation and petty ingratitude. Many remarked on the recent maneuver by our despised Transportation Security Administration to establish a somewhat freewheeling blog, though tagged with a clunker of a name ("Evolution of Security"). Now, bloggers are falling all over themselves with glee for having pointed out a foolish TSA screening process taking place at some airports, then wringing a blog apology from the TSA. Except it wasn't an apology, but a surprisingly forthright admission of a mistake. And even that gets mocked, ridiculed, and somehow also considered further proof of the TSA's incompetence. Bloggers! I'm here to tell you: Hang up thy swords, stow thy muskets, and relax. The TSA blog is the best thing to happen to American air travel since the noise-canceling headphone.
The most obvious reason to like the TSA blog is that they allow comments. Lots of them -- hundreds in fact on most every post. Sure, the comments are moderated:
In the spirit of transparency, we plan to note how many comments we've rejected and tell you why. Mostly the rejected comments include profane language, political rants or abusive posts that we just can't print, and some are completely off topic. Other than these, every post will go up as written and we will continue to operate this way.Sure, we'll never see all those deleted comments, but give me a break -- do you really want to? Even the most hardened net cynic knows that unmoderated comments = a thousand metric tons per second of insane bullshit. Just knowing the numbers of deleted comments would be relatively instructive. And it's not as if many of the comments that are posted are particularly flattering to the TSA ... quite the reverse, in the majority of cases.
This relatively open comment policy is what allowed the TSA to recognize and act upon the idiocy now making the news, that being San Francisco's airport screeners (and supposedly a few others) insisting that all electronics had to be brought out and individually scanned, a la laptops. After the bitchery tsunami whipped up in the TSA blog's comments and elsewhere, the issue was passed up the chain and someone took care of it, all inside a week.
In my multifarious dealings with governmental entities, that counts as warp speed in terms of getting something done. But no, it's not good enough. Various ingrates in the TSA blog's comments will not give an inch, because once you've done so much wrong (and the TSA absolutely has done lots wrong), you get no credit for finally doing something right. For example: "This is nothing more than a public relations stunt in which you've allowed things to deteriorate to the point where enforcing your own policies on your employees is considered an improvement." Tough room! I wish I had enough confidence in the Feds to think they could mastermind such an elliptical scheme.
It is faintly ridiculous that the TSA has seemingly ignored problems like this for so long, despite the wide discussions of same online. But I shudder to think of the avalanche of crackpot emails they get on an hourly basis. As a new, conflicted, underfunded, and generally screwed-up agency from day one, anyone who's worked at the TSA must adopt a siege mentality just to survive. Having something as silly as a blog to field questions and interpret problems may seem condescending, but it's probably more significant that there are actual TSA bloggers on staff now -- i.e., individuals who speak the lingo and know the culture, who can absorb the standard-issue madness and drain away the bile, identify a real issue that filters through the blogosphere, and then kick it upstairs to someone with the authority to effect change.
The TSA blog isn't going to shift course for the whole agency, and this small victory may be its most telling for awhile. But when was the last time bloggers recognized anything good coming out of the TSA? (Note also this blog is perhaps the most significant organ in the Bush administration to give such weight to the term "evolution," a concept which doesn't enjoy much favor otherwise.) The first indignant comment on the "apology" post asked, "Are you really saying this blog is one of the best mechanisms TSA has of regularizing and standardizing their operations?" To which I'd respond: Absolutely yes -- If we're lucky.
[Photo: Getty]
