‘Cupcake Lady’ Sick Of Talking About Cupcakes, But More Sick Of TSA’s Ridiculous Security Theater

By | January 15, 2012
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It turns out that Rebecca, the TSA Cupcake Lady is, of all things, a Media Studies Professor.  In a letter to The Consumerist, she makes an excellent point that we’ve been trying to make, probably less eloquently. After refuting the TSA claims

Cupcake

that the cupcake was a gel or mostly icing, she says

Anyway, the TSA’s response misses a much bigger point: the story went viral because people across the nation are so incredibly tired of the TSA’s security theater. If the TSA were reformed to focus on security—WITHOUT taking naked pictures of us, dousing us with radiation, confiscating medicine, mishandling medical devices, and throwing away our water bottles and nail clippers and so on—well, then the public might have its confidence in the TSA restored.

At the moment, though I do love the deliciousness of cupcakes, I am really, truly sick of talking about cupcakes and the TSA. It’s unreal, actually, that the TSA restarted the media cycle with a blog post three weeks after the fact—and one that was not apologetic, but actually defended their agents’ right to be inconsistent! They are their own worst enemy.

But as I’ve said right along, this story is really not about the cupcake. It’s about the TSA overstepping its bounds. If this silly incident about a trivial cupcake can prompt a much broader, more serious conversation about the importance of protecting our civil liberties, then to me, it’s worth it.

Please give Rebecca a rooftop to shout from or a soapbox to stand on. Hell, make her head of the TSA.  None of these arbitrary confiscations make us safer, they just dehumanize us, criminalize us, and take away the freedoms and dignities that are our rights as citizens of the United States.

 

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