Kurtz mostly nails it in his critique of “The Media’s Pat-Down Frenzy,” but misses a key cog in this story’s engine: the intersection of public outrage and proponents of racial profiling.

Kurtz accurately traces the story’s Drudge-watered roots, a viral video by software engineer/hardware protector John Tyner in which he tells a TSA screener, “If you touch my junk I’ll have you arrested.” Tyner likened the pat-down procedure to a “sexual assault,” an absurd bit of hyperbole that should have earned him a bitter rebuke from anyone who has ever actually been sexually assaulted, or by anyone who has ever been frisked. I’ve been patted down before, and since my chest is now held together with wires, I’m sure I will be again. It’s a commonplace occurrence for anyone who accesses secure areas, and while a first-timer can be forgiven some discomfort, it is surprising that Tyner’s metaphor went unchallenged.

From there, it was off to the races, and Kurtz cannily observes the atmospheric conditions that led to the media cyclone:

The narrative combines a number of elements: Hassled airline passengers (who can’t relate to that?); terrorism concerns; invasion of privacy, and a hint of sexual naughtiness. But the key here is that every local news outlet in America could send a reporter or a crew to a nearby airport and grab a piece of the action.

To be sure, they found a few revolting cases.

Indeed, they did, but as TSA administrator John Pistole (an unfortunate name for this junk-centric story) pointed out over and over, these were aberrations from the standard procedure. In addition to the anecdotal horror story, the Junk-gate beast munched hungrily on empty calorie sound bites like Hillary Clinton‘s declaration that she wouldn’t submit to a pat-down (but ignored her eminently reasonable qualification “if I could avoid it. Who would?”), and instant celebrity-seeking opportunists like the scanner-proof underwear guy and the hot TSA stripper girl with the see-through lingerie and utter lack of video-editing software.

To be sure, practices such as these pat-downs should be monitored vigilantly for abuses, but Kurtz correctly takes the media to task for a lack of perspective:

The obtuseness of these TSA clowns boggles the mind. And in the modern media world, anecdotal accounts rule. Perhaps some customers, not the disabled ones, were being oversensitive; doesn’t matter. We all identify with bedraggled passengers, having removed their shoes and belts, having dumped their drinks and packed their tiny toothpaste tubes, being oppressed by a rigid and inflexible system. But that doesn’t mean the excesses are widespread.

Kurtz also tackles questions about the efficacy of the Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) machines, but such concerns are more resonant before the fact than after. The machines were already being rolled out when last year’s Christmas Day bomb attempt occurred, revealing the machines’ weakness at detecting the explosive PETN. Lost in the angst over this is the fact that screening measures have forced the terrorists to use PETN, a substance that doesn’t work. The only successful use of PETN as a primary explosive was an attack that killed 1 and injured 23, and that took 24 kilos of the substance to accomplish. It takes a 50 lb set of balls to ignore this.

Tyner, among others, has also raised the possibility of using so-called “puffer machines” to detect PETN, but the TSA abandoned that program before the Undiebomber because those machines didn’t work.

Whether the expensive machines  and pat-downs are worth the investment becomes somewhat moot, however, once you’ve already made the investment. How does TSA put that genie back in the bottle? If they abandon these measures, how does John Pistole explain that to the families of the next airline disaster that might have been prevented by them?

Kurtz’s deft critique swings and misses at an important element of this story in his conclusion:

On the other hand, it seems absurd to be screening grandmothers and young kids, and has this elaborate and expensive enterprise caught a single terrorist?

No self-respecting man wants a hyperactive security guard touching his junk. But I’ve about had it with media types who insist on turning this into a junk story.

This is really at the heart of the TSA whine-fest. True abuses aside, the loudest complainers have one thing in common: they don’t care so much about privacy as they do about their own privacy. While The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg invokes the mythical non-racial profiling of El Al, conservative provocateur Ann Coulter cuts through the bullshit and just comes out and says it: profile the Moose-lims. Every single interview I’ve seen on this subject has included the “Kids ‘n Grandma” code for “Don’t do it to us” (John Tyner is neither, though it’s hard to tell from the whining), and every panel has proffered the El Al model as a worthy replacement for our current system.

There are a host of problems with this, but the most insidious is the notion that it doesn’t involve racial profiling. This is achieved through verbal sleight of hand, by saying that El Al doesn’t “simply” rely on racial or ethnic profiling, they imply that the Israeli airline uses techniques like “behavioral profiling” (aspects of which are already in use here) to narrow the number of people scrutinized, when in reality, the opposite is true:

Despite their current anxieties, Americans also might balk at El Al-style ethnic profiling. Staff scrutinize the passengers’ names, dividing them into low-risk (Israeli or foreign Jews), medium-risk (non-Jewish foreigners) and extremely high-risk travelers (anyone with an Arabic name). These people automatically are taken into a room for body and baggage checks and lengthy interrogation. Single women also are considered high-risk, for fear they might be used by Palestinian lovers to carry bombs.

Such profiling ignores the fact that the terrorists are actively recruiting outside that profile, and heavy reliance on it would actually make us less safe. The TSA was rightly derided for chasing the terrorists’ tail by scrutinizing shoes and shampoo, but this appears to be an attempt to get ahead of the evildoers. At yesterday’s White House briefing, Robert Gibbs tried to point this out without showing our hand: (Transcript via email)

Jake Tapper:   You’re a parent.  The President is a father.  There are a lot of parents out there whose children have been subjected to pat-downs, and they’ve been very upset by it.  There have been individuals with medical conditions who have been forced into humiliating situations.  This is evolution?

MR. GIBBS:  No, I think it’s important to understand that anybody under 12 goes through something much more modified.  I would say, first and foremost — and I think if the TSA Administrator was here, he would say this to you as well — has all of this been done perfectly?  No.  If somebody feels as if they have been unduly subjected to something that they find to be far more invasive than the line of convenience and security, they should speak to a TSA representative at the airport.

Again, without leaning too far into this, Jake, I think it’s important that it’s not out of the realm of possibility to think that — I’m trying to be somewhat careful here — that those that wish to do people harm via an airplane haven’t looked at some of the ways through explosives in devices or luggage or on themselves that we know can get around and through security.  And we have to be careful about that.

Whether they’re acting on specific intelligence or not, it only makes sense that if a terrorist knows we’re not going to search Grandma, a halfway-decent pickpocket could smuggle a weapon aboard an airplane simply by getting behind her in line. A pregnant woman from England might well become a viral video star in today’s climate, were she subjected to enhanced screening, but that’s the danger of reactionary policies. When discussing the Israeli model, it’s important to note El Al’s success at catching people who don’t fit the profile:

Other catastrophes have been averted since. One bomb was found in 1979 in Zurich in the bag of a German passenger who looked nervous: He had thought he had been hired to smuggle diamonds. Another bomb was discovered a few years ago in the bag of a pregnant English passenger in London, placed there by her Palestinian lover, whose identity security officials had checked beforehand.

In fact, the current white-hot furor over the screening procedures could act as a deterrent for terrorists, who might think twice about making a move during a time of such heightened awareness. Bowing to public pressure at a time like this might have the opposite effect.

Since the Christmas Day bombing attempt last year, the government has continued to work on improving intelligence efforts, with some recent success, but our airports are the last line of defense. I hope the TSA busts some heads over the misuse of screening procedures, and comes up with better detection equipment, but if properly executed, the current procedures don’t step over the line between privacy and security. Hell, if the TSA really wants to keep an x-ray of my junk, I’ll even autograph it for them.

See, here’s the real elephant in the room: all the nekkid body-scanners, and puffer machines that don’t work, and color-coded alert systems, and pat-downs, and even profiling, will never eliminate the threat. The truth is, we can be safer, but never completely safe. The actions of terrorists, especially suicide terrorists, are anomalous to human nature, even to dark-sided human nature. Even “bad” people have an instinct for self-preservation, and even most killers don’t kill indiscriminately. For a person who doesn’t care who he kills, including himself, the whole world will always be a target-rich environment. The best way to stop them is to either kill them before they can act, or to make them not want to do that.

It would appear that Heene spent the last few months reflecting on his past mistakes as well as thinking up ways to make the world better (it would also appear, judging from the Bear Scratch’s amazing commercial, that he spent that entire time chugging coffee). Heene must have been sitting back, trying to find a way to make the country not hate him, when he saw a bear scratching its back on a tree. Heene, like any great innovator, then thought, “Why not me?”

The commercial for the Bear Scratch has it all; a great jingle, a greater tagline (“If you itch like a son of a twitch”), and lengthy shots of Heene enjoying a good scratch. But it also has something interesting for eagle-eyed viewers. If you watch closely, you can find out why the Heene’s reality show never panned out. No, it’s the oft-given reason that they deceived the entire nation in an attempt to become famous and ended up costing taxpayers a ton of money. That’s too obvious. The real reason comes at the end of the ad when Heene, after getting his scratch on, yells to his off-screen wife that he “doesn’t need her anymore.”

If their entire relationship was based around back scratching, that wouldn’t have been too interesting a show.

(h/t MSNBC this morning)

Thank God for the 24 hour news-cycle, without which we would never be able to dig into every public interest story until we hit scandal gold. Like the case of James Sikes, the man behind the wheel of the out-of-control Prius from Monday, and who it is now being reported may not have been as innocent as he seemed when his car’s accelerator jammed, speeding up to 94 mph before being guided to a stop by the California Highway Patrol.

Fox’s original report of the crash:



Today’s America’s HQ segment:



So the car had had seven months left of car payments that Sikes wouldn’t have to pay if it turns out there was a malfunction? And the police report of the incident, “The California Highway Patrol has repeatedly said it has no reason to suspect a hoax,” bears a resemblance to what the Colorado state law enforcement said about the Heene family during the Balloon Boy affair:

Sheriff Jim Alderden said Friday his investigators believe there was no hoax, but investigators will seek a new interview with the family after the CNN broadcast to clarify the statement.
Alderden said investigators, trained to look at body language and verbal communication for signs of deception, were at the Heene home during the whole ordeal and believe they were telling the truth.

Will this be another case of the media actually uncovering a truth that police would have overlooked?

WATCH THE BALL DROP LIVE IN TIMES SQUARE

Griffin and Cooper, whose New Year’s Eve pairing on CNN has become an annual tradition, were doing their usual jokey banter, discussing various moments of infamy from the past year, and particularly the saga of Balloon Boy (how hard is it gonna be for that kid to get a date in a few years, eh?). Cooper and Griffin were at their post in Times Square discussing Balloon Boy Perè, Richard Heene, and then the little one himself, Falcon Heene. Here’s how it went:

COOPER: Falcon Heene.
GRIFFIN: Fal — Fuckin? Falcon? How do you say it?
COOPER: (shaking head, eyes downcast) You’re terrible. Really terrible.

And that was it! F-bomb on CNN live, New Year’s Eve. No biggie. Welcome to 2010. Or is there more to it? It should be noted that Griffin was famously unprintable before — last year she shot down a heckler by saying, again on live TV, “I don’t go to your job and knock the dicks out of your mouth.” This year, she promised to forfeit her salary if she said anything naughty. So maybe it’s only naughty if Anderson Cooper acts shocked. Or maybe it’s 2010 and EVERYTHING’S DIFFERENT. Or maybe we’re just used to the F-bomb on live TV by now. Or maybe we should all just lighten up, it’s a new Yecade, after all. Watch below:

Update: The clip was not edited for broadcast on the West Coast, perhaps in support of the “open to interpretation” argument (as opposed to the “we know it when we hear it” argument). But either way, looks like Kathy’s gonna take home her salary — well earned, we say.
Update to the Update: Griffin joked on air about the New York Times calling to confirm that she swore, which she said she did not, and which Anderson Cooper, too, swore up and down did not happen. The NYT’s Brian Stelter said on Twitter that he did not actually, call, but she did actually swear. He listened three times.

> Update on Friday night: CNN has a comment about the incident: “CNN regrets that profanity was used during our New Years Eve coverage.” As for whether Griffin will forfeit her salary, like she had said, “We do not discuss contractual issues.” -SK

This article has been edited since publication to add the word “Yecade.” We really think it’ll catch on.

Luckily, there’s a graph for that. The good folks at GOOD have put together an infographic that visually represents the degree to which “print, television, radio, and internet reporting” paid attention to the big stories of the year. Larger graph after the jump: 

In many respects, the graphic is a heartening one. As much as it sometimes feels like fluff and soundbites dominated the news cycle, GOOD’s diagram is a portrait of a year that largely focused on hard, substantive policy and politics. With the exception of Michael Jackson‘s death, all of the big boxes focus on things we should be focused on: the economic crisis, the health care debate, terrorism policy, evaluating Obama’s first year.

Then again, the fluff still has a meaningful presence. Did Balloon Boy really get half the coverage of the Iraq war, which will have cost almost $700 billion in total by the end of the year, according to the LA Times? And have Tiger Woods‘ affairs and their fallout really gotten as much airtime as everything that has happened in Russia all year?

It would be interesting if someone made a similar graph for the blogosphere: would blogs be more or less diffuse in what they cover? To what extent they pick up on big, worthy stories that the mainstream media missed? Would Taylor Swift/Kanye West take up an Afghanistan-sized chunk of attention?

GOOD has a clickable, zoomable Flash version of the graphic that’s well worth a news junkie’s time.

(via GOOD)

“Having lived through the Awful Aughts — which began with news organizations vowing to get serious after 9/11 and ended with Jon and Kate, Octomom and Balloon Boy — do you feel better served by the news establishment? The easy answer, of course, is YOU MUST BE KIDDING.”

– Howie Kurtz looks back on a decade in media in today’s Washington Post.

If the media were a politician who had to answer the question every incumbent party dreads “are you better off now than you were eight years ago?” they would be in for a sweeping defeat. And in fact, the media, or the media as we knew it at the beginning of this decade has suffered a sweeping defeat — will we even have newspapers in ten years? Doubtful.

Of course, as in politics, there is the argument to be made that you get the media (or the politician) you deserve, so should we be doing better? Perhaps in the form of an online payment? We may not have a choice. The Times is reporting that as soon as the next few weeks some news organizations will be taking “the plunge.” Meaning among other things that the era of free content may be a thing of the Aughts.

Since mid-October, you have probably been wondering: Balloon Boy’s parents Richard and Mayumi Heene, what ever happened to them? Are they rich and famous yet? Answer: no.

Well, in fact, their sentencing is today, and they could wind up the exact opposite of rich and famous: fined $46,000, and in jail.

Take it away, Associated Press:

Richard and Mayumi Heene are scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday after pleading guilty to charges that they carried out the stunt in October to promote a reality TV show. The husband faces up to 90 days and jail, and the wife faces up to 60 days …

… The Heenes also face possible restitution for search and rescue costs. It wasn’t immediately known if District Judge Stephen Schapanski would take up the issue at Wednesday’s hearing.

The Larimer County District Attorney’s Office estimates total costs at $46,000, according to [Richard Heene's attorney David] Lane.

One heartening finding, via the Denver Post: ”The Larimer County Sheriff’s Office said Monday it appears the Heenes acted alone in the publicity stunt and that no media outlets conspired or made promises.”

So: Richard Heene — who called the media about his son’s ‘disappearance’ before he called 911 — hijacked the news cycle and spent tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars out of his own ambition and pluck.

Bon voyage, 2009!

Update: Yup: 30 days in jail for Richard Heene, 20 days in jail for Mayume Heene, restitutions TBD. (via LA Times)

(image via the Houston Chronicle)

Unlike Balloon Boy (which was technically fake extreme reality, I suppose) — all signs point to the Salahis wanting to be caught. After their escapade to the White House, with cameras in tow no less, they posted pictures of themselves with high level politicos on their Facebook — though the White House was actually responsible for making available the money shot (as it were). Now the couple is shopping their story around to the highest bidder (maybe). This is not a couple that appears to be terribly caught off guard by the hoopla surrounding their presidential partying.

Whether it works out in their favor remains to be seen — we all know how Balloon Boy ended up. The Secret Service interviewed the couple (for free we assume) over the weekend and says they still may press charges. Ed Rollins, appearing on CNN’s State of the Union yesterday (video below), is understandably quie angry about the whole thing and thinks the couple should be charged for trespassing. He went so far as to suggest an entirely new reality show premise for them: “These people want a reality TV show, give them one. It’s called ‘Dealing With the Federal Prosecution System of the District of Columbia.’”

Former White House press secretary Dana Perino, appearing on “Fox News Sunday With Chris Wallace” thinks that with the White House holiday season about to kick into full swing, this is just the tip of the iceberg: “What will be a concern for, I think, the social office going forward is they have their busiest season coming up. It’s the holiday season. They’ll have a lot of people coming through.” Or not. It’s entirely possible the Salahi’s have ruined Christmas for everyone. Just imagine the sort of background checks future guests are going to be required to undergo.

And with “as many as 1,000 reality participants on television at any given moment” one has to assume this is just the beginning of some sort of weird trend that will probably result in the President livestreaming events from an undisclosed location because no one will ever be allowed into the White House ever again.

But as Joy Behar noted in her introduction, “When the Obama administration declared war on Fox News, I don’t think he had Shepard Smith in mind.”

“I mean when the White House is talking about you all the time you know you’ve got something going on,” said Smith.

He also talked about the misconception that Fox News isn’t giving the viewers “news.” His evidence? Tuesday night. “They’re coming for the news,” he said. “I mean, I think that people have, through all of this talk, people have come and sampled us and they’ve said, ‘They are giving us the news. When they say it’s opinion, it might be right-wing opinion. But when they say it’s the news, it’s the news.’”

And, as you can imagine, he had a great description of why the “Balloon Boy” got huge coverage: “There’s a balloon floating. The cops say there’s a kid in it. It’s running all across Colorado. We didn’t have anything else going on. I mean, might as well follow the balloon.”

Here’s The View clip (via J$):

Further proof: 68% say they paid close attention the Balloon Boy story.

Additionally, the majority of people thought too much attention has been paid to both Michael Jackson’s death, and the Obama’s personal life. So apparently most of the country would actually prefer to be watching PBS Newshour but has yet to fully confront the addiction and can’t quite get off Fox, et. al.

Fortunately, Mediaite has come up with some costume suggestions for you. Pulled straight from the headlines, these are guaranteed to be hits:

For obvious reasons, the current president of the United States is likely to be a popular Halloween costume this year. But beyond form-fitting Hart Schaffner Marx suits, the challenge remains: How is a trick-or-treater supposed to pull off the look?

Fortunately, cable pundit/voice of reason Glenn Beck is on the case. A well-executed Obama according to Glenn Beck’s imagination should wear a Che Guevara t-shirt, a Hitler mustache, and a Soviet-style ushanka, preferably bearing a red hammer-and-sickle. Gasoline can for torching the Average American optional.

Barack Obama, According to Keith Olbermann’s Imagination

Cable pundit/voice of reason Keith Olbermann, on the other hand, might have slightly different ideas about what constitutes a good Obama costume. Olbermann’s Obama should have billowy, flowing wings, a resplendent halo, and, if budget allows, a heavenly host of sanctified Cabinet appointees carrying blazing swords and playing gleaming trumpets, singing the praise of the anointed one, and also mentioning offhandedly that Bush kind of sucked.

Summer of Death

Year-by-year, the Grim Reaper is always a popular Halloween costume, particularly among people who don’t have any costume ideas when they go to Party City on October 30th and kind of just phone it in. But coming off the Summer of Death, the costume has a special resonance this year. A (sexy) black hood, (sexy) black robe, and (sexy) blood-dripping scythe are of course mandatory, but how to work in the contemporary angle? It would probably be in poor taste to carry photos of Michael Jackson, Ted Kennedy, Farrah Fawcett, Walter Cronkite, etc. A safer bet might be to carry around copies of expired mags Gourmet, Trump, Vibe, Nickelodeon Magazine, etc.

Levi Johnston

Last year’s Levi costume would have been an awkward suit and a hockey stick, but this year it’s much different — now that he’s an aspiring male model. Sarah Palin‘s former-almost-son-in-law is promising to reveal “huge” things about the former VP candidate, but the big news is his upcoming spread in Playgirl. For this popular costume, just wear briefs and bask in your 15 minutes of fame (briefs optional).

Next Page: Great newsy group costumes, and a twist on the Andre Agassi look

Here are the clips from Countdown and The Rachel Maddow Show:

We contacted MSNBC about both segments, and they declined to comment.

Those morning show appearances have been weighing on me. While I’m disappointed in Olbermann and Maddow, two people who do 99% excellent work, they are not alone here. We all sat by and watched that 6 year-old become violently ill on The Today Show and Good Morning America. We know for a fact, now, that the child’s father was making him lie, and it’s likely what made Falcon sick that morning. The problem is, we all pretty much knew it at the time, too.

Falcon Heene did a courageous thing by telling the truth on national television, and his reward was to be ignored. Wolf Blitzer fumbled the follow-up, and the authorities dithered, still believing Richard Heene‘s lies. While our own Dan Abrams theorizes that the Sheriff’s ignorance may have been strategic, that would have been a strategy that didn’t benefit the child. Falcon Heene went to sleep that night knowing that he wasn’t believed.

Falcon’s confession could not have been clearer, yet for some reason, the media continued to treat the idea of a hoax as an open question, a 50/50 shot. The following morning, Richard Heene went on TV and fed his son a lie for him to agree to, after who knows what kind of coercion. Why did these interviewers not press Heene on the details of a story that clearly did not add up? Why didn’t they call him out? Most importantly, why did they continue these interviews while the child was in obvious physical distress? The fact that his parents didn’t have the decency to do this is little excuse when you consider their part in Falcon’s situation.

Next: Further media wrongdoing on GMA and Today