Tuesday, 20 August 2024
The one where it's the kids' fault Trash Bag Johnny is a dimwitted shaygets who jokes with Homeland Security.
Synopsis: We're at the border. The TSA agent wants to know if the kids belong to the Pattersons because he knows what an Amber Alert is. John makes a jokey, dismissive comment that gets the car searched.
Summary: The kids are getting blamed ( Read more... )
I remember going to Canada with my family when I was young (Grade 7) including my two younger sisters. What they did was to ask each of my sisters what their birthday was. I also remember the horrified look on my parents face when my sister picked that moment to forget when her birthday was. Fortunately for her she had an older brother to prompt her, so it did not look as bad as it would have if my parents had done that.
Looking it up for the modern world:
Any Canadian child under the age of 16 can arrive in the US without a passport and still get into the country, according to the US land and sea border rules
Those kids can travel to the US without a passport, but they will need to have one of these documents:
a Canadian birth certificate
a Canadian Citizenship Card
a Consular Report of Birth Abroad
a Naturalization Certificate
Why do I have the feeling that John has none of these things for his children?
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Because he's stupid enough to think that he can be waved through on his own say-so. It's clearly the fault of someone else that he's not treated like The Protagonist Of The Human Race.
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Whereas the author, Lynn Johnston, has simply never taken her kids driving through the Anointed States and because of that, knows nothing about what it takes to drive kids out of one country and into the other.
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Because doing so would have cost money and also reduced her status from "adult worth taking seriously" to "Mom".
As I have said before, Lynn impresses me as being a mean-spirited and slow-witted child with a kid's idea of how adult life works. When she blathered about the generation wheel turning at fifty, she meant it so she thinks that if people see her kids with her, they're going to take her strip away and make her give back all the money!
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I have often suspected that the whole business of the Patterson parents taking exotic vacations without their children was based on real life. This kind of comic strip reinforces that idea.
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When my mother and I went down south in 2009 to bury my father's ashes in the old family cemetery, it was the first plane trip we had made since I was a small child. Airport security had become much more strict because of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. My mother warned me, "Whatever you do, don't say, 'I am not a terrorist.'" "But I'm not one. I want to reassure them that I'm not," I told her. "I know, but you can get in trouble just for saying the word 'terrorist,'" she told me. We got through security without any trouble on the flight south and on the return flight.
After 9/11, a lot of people complained online and in newspaper columns and letters to the editor about the new security measures. People complained that they should be exempt from security screening because they didn't "fit the terrorist profile."
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What the fuck does one look like? Someone who doesn't 'look' like one, that's what!
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There was more than a little bit of racism and bigotry in those complaints. People would whine, "I don't have dark skin," "I'm not a Muslim," "I don't wear a turban," "My children and I are blond-haired and blue-eyed," etc.
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I hope she won't say anything racist or bigoted in her notes for this strip, but you never know.
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Yes, I get it.
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In the years immediately after 9/11, the running joke in my family is how often I would get tagged and pulled out of line for the "random" close-in search where they feel up and down your body. Wife and small children would go right through, but I got stopped every time for the personal search. After awhile, they just thought it was funny that daddy must look like a terrorist.
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As soon as someone told me "I am not a terrorist, I want to reassure them that I am not" I would have said "then take another plane, several hours after mine leaves." I have zero interest in having my plans disrupted by numbties.
I remember an incredibly annoying scene in Seinfeld in which George is stopped at security and asked questions about what he may or may not be carrying. Instead of complying, George simply keeps repeating the requests back to the security officer in a voice of incredulity. "Take off my SHOES? Open my JACKET? Take off my BELT?" I wanted the officer to just slam him to the floor and carry him off to another room so he'd stop holding up the line.
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If I want to watch a man baby with a persecution complex vanish up his own rear end, he should at least host a telethon for muscular dystrophy.
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That was why I didn't actually say, "I am not a terrorist" at the airport. I was only thinking it. I should have been more clear. That discussion with my mother of what to say and what not so say took place in the privacy of our home. My mother warned me not to say "I am not a terrorist" while we were preparing for the trip. I didn't say, "I am not a terrorist. I want to reassure them that I'm not" at the airport.
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