This is my tax dollars at work- the TSA creating a blog to put a friendlier face to the incompetence people experience on a daily basis in airports around the country. Unfortunately, the “friendlier face” just reeks of government bureaucracy and provides little insight or hope for travelers frustrated with air travel.

I actually tried watching one of the videos about why they screen children and old people, but honestly, I couldn’t finish watching the whole thing. Reading from a piece of paper on the desk? Come on… if you’re going to do a video, use a teleprompter or keep your answer short enough to memorize. The whole thing has the production quality of a Christmas play done by 3rd graders. If you’re going to read that’s fine, but do a podcast (audio only) or better yet, just post text. The advantage of doing a text post is clear- when you state facts to back up your claims you can link to supportive material.

Perhaps the best part though, is where they admit how TSA has mostly enraged and pissed off the American public:

Some have been downright mean and cranky but that’s okay too. For most people, this is the first chance to reach out directly to TSA and tell us about your experiences and we very much want to hear from you.

Frankly we’ve been overwhelmed with the number of response we’ve received, more than 700 comments at last count, and comments are still pouring in. Several of you have suggested a format change to go from a laundry list of: shoes, cranky officers, idiotic rules, you guys sure try hard…, stream of consciousness diatribes to a more logical way of collecting and hopefully shedding light on many of the things that passengers want to know.

The sad part is that in the land of free speech, the TSA feels the need to approve comments before they are made public- effectively censoring the comments by people who are the most upset/frustrated by the inconsistencies, lack of respect shown to travelers and idotic rules of the TSA. Perhaps if the TSA spent more time actually training their agents to treat people with respect and actually improving security they wouldn’t feel the need to create a blog to put a friendly face on a bureaucracy gone horribly wrong.