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Gay travel: South Carolina in an uproar over advertising campaign

by Jeffrey White on Jul 15, 2008

South Carolina is outraged over an advertisement campaign by Amro Worldwide, a UK specialist in gay and lesbian travel, which labeled the Palmetto State “so gay” in a series of posters throughout the London Underground.

Looking to boost its profile among the UK’s gay and lesbian community, Amro devised its ‘so gay’ campaign nearly a year ago and reached out to various U.S. tourism boards last October to see if they would participate.

Shortly thereafter, Atlanta, Boston, Las Vegas, New Orleans and Washington, D.C. confirmed their participation. Last November, South Carolina jumped on board.

The campaign debuted at Underground stations in Leicester Square and Covent Garden during London’s recent Gay Pride Week celebrations. For South Carolina, the posters touted the state’s gay beaches and Civil War-era plantations.

Apparently, it seems that South Carolina tourism officials didn’t really understand what they was agreeing to. At first, top officials said the campaign sent a positive message to gay travelers. But as outrage increased, they now say they knew nothing about the campaign and are disavowing participation, according to MSNBC.com, refusing to pay the campaign’s promoter, Out Now, the $5,000 fee for the posters.

The low ranking official in the state’s department of parks, recreation and tourism department who got the state involved with the campaign in the first place has resigned.

Oran Smith, the president of a South Carolina conservative activist group, tells MSNBC.com: “I think with today’s economy, we have to be really smart with our tourism dollars, and South Carolina’s market, very clearly, is the family-friendly market. So if we want to spend our dollars in a way that’s wise, we need to go after our market, and our market is families.”

Amro Worldwide wants to know what all the fuss is about. The view among many in the gay and lesbian community is that being ‘so gay’ is not the putdown it perhaps once was, but rather a positive thing, the company says.

Just don’t expect Main Street South Carolinians to agree. One Charleston resident who spoke to MSNBC.com says, “We’re so gay? Nah. Wrong state. Go to California.”

It’s worth noting that the other U.S. destinations involved in the campaign are not complaining.

Dispatches from around the world

Tim Harford debunks the oil speculation myth

by Aaron Hotfelder on Jul 14, 2008

Over at Slate, Tim Hardford, the “Undercover Economist” and a favorite economist of mine*, tells people to stop blaming speculators for high oil prices. It’s an often-repeated myth that oil speculators– investors who bet on whether the price of oil will rise or fall– are responsible to a large extent for the increase in oil prices.

Some of the major airlines even spammed their customers last week, asking them to raise a stink to their elected representatives about these greedy, America-hating speculators.

Harford contends that some speculators– the profitable ones– actually help stabilize the price of oil. For this he calls them “veritable philanthropists.” He writes: “When they think oil is going to become more expensive, they buy and hoard oil, or they buy oil futures, encouraging others to buy and hoard. This raises oil prices when they are relatively cheap and lowers them when they are relatively expensive.”

So it’s the bad speculators we need to worry about then? Not so fast. “True, when speculators make mistakes, that is destabilizing. But in the case of oil prices, it’s hard to see that speculators are playing much of a role. For one thing, inventories don’t seem to be rising. If the inventory data are correct, consumers were burning all that $135 oil.”

So maybe it’s our fault for using so much oil. But how satisfying is it to blame ourselves?

[*Yes, I have a favorite economist– actually several. They’re like my baseball players.]

Commenters attack snarky TSA blogger

by Aaron Hotfelder on Jul 10, 2008

The TSA blog: I read it so you don’t have to.

Yesterday I highlighted some fun bits from the Q&A over at the TSA blog about the new ID requirements for flying. As promised, here are some entertaining and insightful posts from the comments following that exchange.

One commenter wonders whether the “No Fly List” isn’t more trouble than it’s worth: “What kind of threat do they pose if they have already been screened for weapons? They going to punch a hole in the plane?”
Chris (the TSA blogger) writes in the comments that his original snark was merely an attempt “to bring some levity to a long drawn-out discussion of a serious matter while providing some insight into why we think ID is important.” Another commenter responds: “Christopher, while I understand your intent, you did not succed at either of your goals. Address the hard queston with some real answers, let Leno and Letterman handle the comedy.”

Questions to ponder next time you’re waiting to hand over your ID at the airport:

“Why is a guy who says he lost his ID less dangerous than a guy who says he prefers not to show his ID?”
“I show up a the airport and say I forgot my ID, because I have memory loss. You ask me questions I can´t answer because I have memory loss. Can I fly?”
“Let´s say I turn up at an airport and say I forgot my ID, and that my name is John Smith. There are probably a few thousand John Smiths. How will you ‘establish my identity’?”

Finally, here’s a lengthy but incisive comment from one Trollkiller.

“If the TSA lawyers are so cock sure of the legality of this new policy then that means they have done the research on it. The information I am asking for should be on hand and easily retrievable.

All I am asking for is the TSA lawyers to show their work. Believe it or not, I would much rather be proven wrong than to think that an agency of MY government is knowingly perpetrating an illegal act on 2,000,000 people a day.

I have repeatedly stated my argument clearly, citing the section of the law that I believe disallows the forced ID check to be used as a criterion for granting access to a sterile area.

You are pretending that I am just sitting on the web with my tin foil hat screaming “it’s wrong, just wrong, it’s a conspiracy man, they are out to get us….” That is just silly, we all know it is the tin foil underwear that protects us.

All silliness aside, Christopher, I have done all the work for the TSA lawyers. They don’t have to guess at what I am asking…

The definitions in Title 49 Part 1540 § 1540.5 limit screening to a search and inspection FOR weapons, explosives, and incendiaries as THE condition for granting access to a sterile area.

Adding a forced ID check as a criterion for granting access to a sterile area is not permitted as it falls outside the search and inspection FOR weapons, explosives, and incendiaries.

I am going by the section of law that YOU cited as justification for the TSA’s illegal act. You can not keep part of the law and discard the part you don’t like.”

Well said! This is, in case you couldn’t already tell, the best comment thread ever. Sorry, Gadling faithful.

Snarky TSA blogger answers all your stupid questions about the new ID requirement

by Aaron Hotfelder on Jul 9, 2008

Grant reported a couple weeks ago on the TSA’s new ID requirement for airline passengers. In case you missed it, last week the snark-tastic security whiz named Christopher over at the TSA’s Evolution of Security blog (sort of) answered your questions about the new rule. Here are some highlights from the Q&A:

Q: So it only took 48 hours before the first reported instance of a question about political affiliation being required [to verify identitiy after a passenger forget his ID]. I’ll make two predictions: 1) The TSA employees who did this will never be reprimanded in any serious manner; the worst thing they will face will be some additional “training”.

A. Nostranonymous, I think Kip [Hawley, TSA’s head honcho] was pretty clear when he wrote, “It’s unequivocally not our policy to use political, religious, or other sensitive personal topics as identity validation. If it happened, it was wrong and will not be repeated.”

The person that did this made a mistake and has been corrected. Hope you never make a mistake at your job.

[The person has been corrected? If that’s not accountability, what is? Also, “hope you never make a mistake at your job”? What the hell kind of a statement is that? If an employee in any other job responded in such a flippant way to a customer complaint, you can be sure he’d be “corrected” by his boss real quick.]

Q: If requiring ID is truly instrumental in keeping the flying public safe, why did it take the TSA until June of 2008 to institute that policy?

A: Good question. We’ve been increasing layers of security for years and now that TSA officers check documents at every airport in the country, we’ve effectively moved the issue and are trying to address this threat.

[Wait, what? What does that mean?]

Q: ONCE AGAIN, I CHALLENGE THE TSA TO PROVE THE TWO SECTIONS OF 1540 THAT THEY CITE (§ 1540.107 & § 1540.105 (a)(2) ) GIVE THEM ANY AUTHORITY OR RIGHT TO DEMAND AN ID AS A CONDITION OF ACCESS TO A STERILE AREA .

A. MY VOICE IS GETTING TIRED FROM SCREAMING. Our attorneys interpret ATSA as saying we can do this, we think it’s important so we’re doing this. I’m not an Internet-based attorney but I probably could play one on TV.

[Oh, your attorneys said it was ok? I’m sure it’s fine then.]

The voluminous comments, as you might expect, are even more entertaining. More on that later.

Update: Dept. of Homeland Security weighs forcing passengers to wear stun gun bracelets on airplanes

by Jeffrey White on Jul 7, 2008

Back in March, Gadling blogged about a firearm training system, Lamperd, which had patented a bracelet that worked like a stun gun when activated.

At the time, Lamperd was lobbying the Transportation Security Administration to make it mandatory for all airline passengers to wear one, with the thinking that it was the best way to thwart a terrorist.

Well, here’s an update.

The Department of Homeland Security, ever the shepherds watching over their flocks, appears to be seriously weighing making this bracelet mandatory and has sent a letter to Lamperd encouraging the company to draft a formal proposal for integrating its bracelet into flight security.

That’s right. Your tax dollars are funding the R&D arm of DHS, which wants to develop technology that acts essentially as a GPS attached to your wrist, allowing the government to track pretty much everywhere you go once you check in for your flight, and giving the flight crew the ability to waylay you if you get out of hand.

O.K., that might be overstating it: Officials say the bracelet would only be activated in the event of a terrorist attack. But still….

Here is a promotional video for the bracelet that piqued DHS’s interest.

The Washington Times today quotes a letter from DHS’s Paul S. Ruwaldt, of the Science and Technology Directorate, in which he writes to Lamperd saying, “To make it clear, we are interested in…the immobilizing security bracelet and look forward to receiving a written proposal.”

The Times says the letter was written on Federal Aviation Administration letterhead.

The Times goes on to detail what the bracelet could do. It would:

Eliminate the need to carry a boarding pass
Contain personal data about you, including your travel history
Monitor the whereabouts of both you and your luggage after check-in
Employ Electro-Musclar Disruption technology that could immobilize a passenger for nearly 10 minutes

Now, with all the idiotic things passengers have been doing on planes of late, I could maybe get behind employing some kind of bracelet stun gun.

But seriously, I consider all this with some foreboding. I mean, slipping a bracelet on a little kid that could deliver a shock powerful enough to make an electronic dog fence zap seem like a pinprick is a scary thought. What if a flight attendant accidently activates one of them?

What do you think? Would mandatory bracelets like these make air travel safer, or is this just another way for the government to look over our shoulders?