We have become docile travelers, tamed and very compliant. Watch us be herded around the appallingly designed Terminal 4 of LAX by TSA teamsters trained (by Heathrow strumpets I imagine) in the cattle yards of Texas and who consequently have little discernible notion of what service looks or sounds like. Service is not their mission. Their mission is to keep the long tangled queues moving. And they are very long and very tangled. I look with some wistful nostalgia at the now unused escalators up which we used to bound arriving from overseas and heading off to our US domestic connections without a bag screening device in sight. Now the lines (I have Christened them the “Mohammad Atta Lines” for that is his enduring legacy in this country after all) snake out onto the sidewalk as passengers wait their turn to have their shampoo checked and shoes examined. As I joined the Mohamed Atta conga line this morning I was keeping a surreptitious eye on my watch as the countdown to my domestic connection started as QF107 arrived at the terminal at LAX. Fortunately, in the end I walked from the careless embrace of the TSA teamsters straight into an aircraft mostly boarded and getting ready to leave. But see what has happened? No hustle or bustle. No remonstrating at the counter. No rush from cab rank or connecting terminal to make a closing gate. We have learned to add hours to the check in process, how to pack our pockets to clear X-rays quickly, to don socks on the day of travel with no holes in them. We shuffle along, herded in murmuring acceptance of all the impositions made in the name of security. We even tolerate the bored attempts at humour by the TSA staff (“Ladies and gentlemen, if you do not have a boarding pass you do not exist” OK, two LA cops thought it was funny. They were the exception). 13 hours over the Pacific in cattle class does not predispose me to their jokes – even if they were trained to handle us in the cattle yards of Texas.
