Ed Schultz: TSA Controversy Is Just Racist Right Wingers Wanting To Promote Racial Profiling
I’ve often said that Ed Schultz is less a serious political commentator than the pundit equivalent of a professional wrestler. He’s not really trying to analyze political issues for our edification, just as professional wrestlers aren’t really competing with one another. He’s there to put on a show by getting red faced and shouting and blaming everything on “right wingers” and “tea baggers.”
Case in point, the TSA controversy. This has actually been an issue that has crossed ideological lines, because as it turns out having your genitals touched by a government bureaucrat (or a scan made of your nude body), isn’t really a political thing for most people.
Except for faux-pundit lightweights like Schultz, who base their stance on issues not on analysis, facts and logic but rather on whether or not it’s a “Republican issue” or a “Democrat issue.”
Schultz has, clearly, decided that the TSA controversy is a “Republican issue.”
I’ve actually had a lot of my conservative friends tell me that profiling is the solution to the TSA mess, and to a degree they’re right. But not all profiling is the same.
Cops rounding up the “usual suspects” because they’re making assumptions based on skin color, etc. isn’t just bigoted it’s lazy and ineffective police work. On the other hand, allowing that people who meet a certain series of criteria – some of which are things like race and religion – may be more apt to commit an act of terrorism and singling those people out for additional screening is common sense.
We don’t want to treat a person like a terrorist just because they’re a Muslim. Tea partiers who were all but accused of being borderline secessionists/domestic terrorists by the Department of Homeland Security over the summer should understand that bit of caution. On the other hand, it’s folly to ignore that much of the present terror threats comes from adherents to Islam.
Personally, I think we get a little bogged down in all of this. Rather than trying to fight terrorism on the micro scale, we should fight it on the macro. Rather than trying to stop terror plots from happening at airport security, we should be focused on breaking up the terror networks that inspire and plot the attacks.
Because we could have the most intrusive anti-terror security in the world and the terrorists would still be able to hit us if they wanted to.