A female passenger on an American airline found an Ivy League European economist, flying from Philadelphia to Syracuse, scribbling some “strange language” that looked like Arabic.
Doubting that it was a secret terrorist code, the lady complained to the officials, against the Italian economist Guido Menzio. The man was later offloaded and upon questioned by the security agents, he said that, he was working on a paper he was to present.
Responding to the issue, Airline officials said that, the passengers suspicion should be taken seriously in these days, but many victims of profiling - and there have been several such cases in the US recently - say the process is arbitrary and unreasonable.
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On the other side, Menzio spoke to the media saying that, he was treated with respect throughout the incident, but remains baffled and frustrated by a "broken system that does not collect information efficiently" - a quick check could have told the security officials that he was a distinguished Ivy League economist with a tenured associate professorship at the University of Pennsylvania as well as stints at Princeton and Stanford's Hoover Institution.
He added that he was troubled by the ignorance of his fellow passenger, as well as "a security protocol that is too rigid - in the sense that once the whistle is blown everything stops without checks - and relies on the input of people who may be completely clueless."
The woman perhaps too embarrassed for getting the terrorist equation wrong, had left the flight and took another.
But, Menzio did not leave the issue there. “What might prevent an epidemic of paranoia? It is hard not to recognize in this incident, the ethos of (Donald) Trump's voting base,” he added.
The Post itself took a light view of the episode. "In this true parable of 2016 I see another worrisome lesson, albeit one also possibly relevant to Trump's appeal: That in America today, the only thing more terrifying than foreigners is-...math," the blogger who reported the incident said of a constituency that the punk rock band Green Day ridiculed in a song they titled "American Idiot."
By Phani Ch
