Obama’s TSA Joke Falls Flat With ACLU: “Violations Of The Constitution Are No Joke”

[Bluebear]

The President didn’t have a lot of laugh lines in last night’s State of the Union address, and one line–designed to be light and amusing–has provoked the ACLU. When President Obama talked up investing in high-speed rail, he joked that one of the advantages would be “for some trips, it will be faster than flying – without the pat-down.”

Not much in the way of humor–it fell flat in the hall–but more than enough to get a reaction from the ACLU: not laughter, but outrage. As Sahil Kapur reports on Raw Story:

Moments after the president made the remark, the American Civil Liberties Union fired out a Tweet that read: “President Obama makes funny about TSA pat-downs, but the violations of the Constitution are NO JOKE!”

Kapur notes the tweet included a link to a “scathing report” on the ACLU website detailing complaints “from men, women and children who reported feeling humiliated by these searches, and, in some cases, comparing their psychological impact to sexual assaults.”

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/obamas-tsa-joke-falls-flat-with-aclu-violations-of-the-constitution-are-no-joke/

[CreekDog]

1. it wasn't insulting or derogatory

and just a one-off.

maybe he shouldn't joke about it, but, you know, it happens.

[grahamhgreen]

4. It was just creepy.

[villager]

2. why, to many on this site they're a laughing matter, when it comes to apologias

... for the powers that be.

[grahamhgreen]

3. It disturbed me too. They can have pat downs for trains just as easily.

[LisaL]

17. Yes, of course they can have pat downs for trains.

TSA stands for transportation security, not just airport security. Trains are transportation.
So what is the logic behind using it for planes and not trains? None as far as I can tell.

[WinkyDink]

25. Not easily! Many cars, many doors. Faster "take-off" times.

[grahamhgreen]

37. Yes, much more profit for the military/industrial/security terra-terrra-terra companies! (pic)

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_n1m4DRQUcEU/SwU2W66Q8mI/AAAAAAAAAR0/MPJnZbzp-8Y/s1600/Big+budget+security-CWG+2010.jpg

http://common-wealth-games-2010.blogspot.com/2009/11/big-budget-security-revamp-for-railway.html

[WinkyDink]

40. Oy. Coming soon to a train station, bus terminal, and mall near you.

And hey---maybe they'll come up with street-corner security forces.

I'm not kidding. There seems to be no bottom to the greed and totalitarian inclinations of Corporate-Security America.

[LibDemAlways]

5. I am hoping the ACLU gets on the stick and launches a court challenge

against this obvious violation of Constitutional rights. Obama's lame attempt at a joke making light of it shows how out of touch he is (no pun intended) with the ordinary traveler who is treated like a criminal every time he enters the airport.

[tblue37]

11. Like W looking under the desk for WMDs, as though he found it amusing

that he sent American troops to die for a lie, and to destroy a country and its people when he knew all along there were no WMDs.

I don't find the pat-downs and nude-o-scopes funny at all.

[bluerum]

18. Exactly. An out of touch attempt at humor.

[LisaL]

15. Exactly.

What is aclu waiting for? They said it's a violation of constitutional rights-go to court and prove it.
As for Obama, trains are also public transportation. What logic is he using as to why pat downs aren't necessary in order to get on the train but necessary in order to get on the plane is beyond my understanding.

[Zywiec]

6. ..the land of the free...home of the brave...n/t

[emulatorloo]

7. A TWEET!?!?

You've got to be kidding me.

[Skittles]

8. I agree

I cannot take tweets seriously; they are utterly ridiculous

[virgogal]

9. Has a sense of humor completely disappeared from the U.S? It was a

lighthearted comment.

No more,no less.

[sabrina 1]

12. No, it wasn't just a 'light-hearted comment' It was a sales pitch

for the aptly named Rapiscans who must be absolutely thrilled with their new front man. Bush was not able to get their machines into airports. Civil liberties groups fought successfully against them for six years.

I'm sure they will take good care of him for his assistance in tossing aside the concerns of civil liberties groups and helping Chertoff et al finally begin to see some profits from their machines.

[sabrina 1]

10. He is sounding more and more elitist every day.

That joke fell flat with a lot of people. But then, he isn't one to care much about civil liberties so I guess to him it is funny, especially since his daughters will never be exposed to the sexual assault other people's children are exposed to at the airport.

I firmly believe that true leaders should never, ever ask others to do what they themselves are not willing to do.

If the rest of the country has to be viewed naked by strangers at the airport, I want to see all politicians who support this, to have to do the same thing. There should be no exemptions.

Meantime, he's outdoing Bush when it comes to insulting those who gave them their jobs, but who don't have the privileges they have. Glad he finds the problems of the people so amusing. I wonder if he'll have a joke about people losing their homes for his next major speech.

[emulatorloo]

22. "I wonder if he'll have a joke about people losing their homes for his next major speech."

What a preposterous thing to say. Those kinds of statement do nothing for the credibility of your positions.

[sabrina 1]

27. Are you serious?

This is the man who joked about Drones that slaughter women and children. Now, he jokes about the loss of civil liberties. Joking about people losing their homes would be an improvement.

[emulatorloo]

28. Yes I am serious. But I am finding it harder to take you seriously as you double down.

Have a great night though :toast:

[sabrina 1]

29. I am having a great night.

I usually do, thanks for caring! :hi:

So, you think that slaughtering women and children, blowing babies to pieces forcing their families to have to collect their body parts to try to give them a decent burial, is a laughing matter. It's okay, the POTUS thinks so too.

Did you laugh when Bush crawled around the Oval Office looking for the WMDs he slaughtered over a million Iraqis for not to mention the loss of thousands of American troops? I remember outrage on DU over that.

I'm not worried who takes me seriously so long as my principles remain intact and do not change when the occupant of the WH has a 'D' after his name.

This country has been slammed by human rights organizations around the world for the cruelty of the killings of civilians resulting from drones, a cowardly and particularly destructive weapon that should, and hopefully will one day be banned.

I guess I expected more of Obama than I did of Bush. Silly me, thinking a Dem. would never rub the blood of innocents in their loved ones faces the way Bush did.

Unless of course you think Pakistani and Afghan babies' lives are a laughing matter. It's possible, most Americans do.

I was surprised and disgusted by his 'joke' about a deadly weapon that has caused outrage around the world. But nothing would surprise me now. So, as I said, will he be joking about people losing their homes next? Why not? If you can joke about the murder of innocents, you can joke about anything.

[totodeinhere]

13. Lighten up. It was just a bad joke. n/t

[LisaL]

16. A joke at our expense. I don't find that funny.

[woo me with science]

38. +1000000

It was disgusting. It shows how out of touch he is on this issue.

[Bluebear]

24. Yeah, lighten up, ACLU!

:silly:

[markpkessinger]

32. Like the "Predator Drone" joke from the WH Correspondents' Dinner?

I'm sorry, but I find his tendency to make light of really serious issues with utterly inappropriate uses of humor to be disturbing. It really makes me question whether he grasps the seriousness of the underlying issues.

[totodeinhere]

45. You and the others in this thread take this all too seriously. After all,

every man has a penis and every woman has a vagina. It's nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about. It's just the human body. I wish we could let loose of those antiquated Victorian ideas about the human body. If they want to pat me down I have no problem with it.

[markpkessinger]

46. The issue is not embarrassment

I frankly don't give a rat's ass who sees me naked. That's not the point. The security procedures, in my view, abrogate Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches. There have been, since 9/11/2001, exactly three attempts (all failed) to bring down an American airliner using explosives: (1) the shoe bomber, Richard Reid, (2) the London liquid bomb plot and (3) the Christmas 2009 underwear bomber. To suggest, based on three incidents in nine years, that it is reasonable to treat the entire flying public as potential criminals warranting invasive searches is patently absurd. For the President to make light of this is wholly inappropriate, in my view, just as it was wholly improper for him to use the issue of predator drone strikes as a basis of humor.

[vim876]

48. Are you a survivor of sexual assault?

No? Then shut up. This isn't about prudishness, it's about the right to decide what happens to your body.

[totodeinhere]

52. Are you suggesting that only survivors of sexual assault have a right to comment on this subject?

If that were the case, then we would probably have to erase almost all of the comments in this thread. And speaking of sexual assault, it is the prudish attitude that our society has about the human body and about sex that feeds into sexual assault and makes it more likely to happen.

[GeorgeGist]

47. You mean this one ...

[LostInAnomie]

14. Meh...

I don't care.

[Bluebear]

23. I'm sure you don't.

[saras]

19. Failed cruelty always gets called a 'bad joke'

by the bully and their supporters.

All we did was feel up your five-year-old's genitals in front of a bunch of strangers. Whassa matter, can't you take a joke?

[woo me with science]

39. Urine-soaked passenger! Ha ha ha ha ha!

Take out your prosthetic breast! Ha ha ha!

OOPS! We exposed your real breast! Ha ha ha!

Spread your legs while I check here! Ha ha ha!

We're putting your 12-year-old daughter through the nude scanner now! Ha ha ha!

:grr: :nuke:

No, it is NOT funny. It is an outrage.

[Warren DeMontague]

20. ***

[ridethemile]

21. Wish I could fly

on Air Force One or a private jet and not suffer the "security" that is no security. Maybe I could laugh about it then.

[WinkyDink]

26. Jesse Ventura will have the last laugh.

[TBF]

34. I hope he wins his law suit. nt

[AsahinaKimi]

30. The joke about the airplane without an engine

Was in very poor taste. No one made a sound.

[markpkessinger]

31. Reminded me of the failed "Predator Drones" joke from the WH Correspondents' Dinner last year

I agree with the ACLU -- whatever the President's views concerning the necessity of the new security procedures (I happen to think they make no one any safer), the underlying issues are serious, especially as regards the balance between civil liberties and "public safety," and should not be made light of.

This joke, taken together with the one from the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2009, where the President made a really lame attempt at humor concerning any potential boys who might have their sights set on the Obama daughters ("I have two words for you: Predator Drones"), I really have to wonder if he even recognizes the dangers of trampling on civil liberties.

In both cases, humor is really inappropriate. And his use of humor to deflect the significance of either the intrusive search machines/procedures and his unprecedented, extensive use of drone attacks is just, well, disturbing.

[Hubert Flottz]

33. I'll bet the Terra-ists really laughed as they thought of Spain and

the other places around the globe where rail passengers were murdered.

Meanwhile Bush and Cheney are laughing, because they got away with torture and murder and with terrorizing this country with their fake terror alerts in order to get what they wanted at the time.

The democrats had a chance to heal this country, but they were not up to the task. The people voted for "Change" but I've seen very little of it.

[Brickbat]

35. It was elitist and odd -- and why can't trains have some kind of pat-down as well?

[WinkyDink]

41. Would you submit to a pat-down EVERY DAY and NIGHT, as a commuter?

[Brickbat]

44. Absolutely not. I think the whole thing is a charade.

[vim876]

49. Why?

Theoretically: Because trains cannot just be taken wherever you want. They have to stay on tracks. If there's a target on a train line, all that has to be done is to move it. Planes...9/11.

Actually: People would literally revolt. Many people commute to school or work on the train every day, especially upper-middle and upper class businesspeople in the NE corridor (aka legislators' peers). Including, up until he needed VP-level security, Joe Biden. If there were pat downs on the DC-NY section of Amtrak, people in nice suits would be in the streets. And then they would have a much harder time making dissenters look like nut jobs.

[toddaa]

36. ACLU is a libertarian organization

Since when did DU care about what a libertarian thinks.

[Marr]

42. Keep trying.

I don't think there's enough room under that bus for the ACLU, but have fun pushing.

[WinkyDink]

43. Really?

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/American_Civil_Liberties_Union#Libertarian_Critics

http://libertarianintelligence.com/2009/01/how-libertarian-is-aclu.html

[toddaa]

51. Must I put a sarcasm tag on all of my posts?

My sense of humor does not translate well over the internet. It's even worse IRL. I'm just not very funny.

[vim876]

50. You do know ...

that civil libertarian is not the same thing as libertarian, right?

[saras]

53. BTW, how come the TSA can't take a joke?

Speaking of uptight bozos with no sense of humor...