Honolulu Lite
Honolulu Lite
Duct tape isn't going
to save the world
Don't get me wrong. I'm a huge fan of duct tape. I just don't believe that by using duct tape and a few sheets of heavy plastic I can turn my house into a Level Four Biohazard Containment Facility.I think it's wrong to tell people that duct tape is an essential part of any home anti-terrorist arsenal. But that's what Tom Ridge, head of the Department of Homeland Security, did last week after the country was put on Orange Alert. On the color-coded official national terror alert thingy, Orange denotes "high alert," just one step south from red, which means a terror threat is "imminent."
The trouble is, the whole alert system isn't set up to actually protect anyone from anything. It's set up to make it look like the government has some idea where and when terrorists will strike, when it really doesn't. That's not a criticism. There's no way Ridge or his buddies in the CIA or FBI can know when some religious knucklehead already living in the United States is going to strap on some dynamite and walk into a Six Flags Over Armageddon.
But the Bush administration feels like it needs to let people know it's on top of things. So it came up with the color codes and the duct-tape deal. If my boyhood "war" experience serves, we'll be wearing secret decoder rings before too long.
If the country is attacked again, along with a lot of dead people there's going to be a lot of ticked-off people who are going to complain that the government didn't do anything to protect us. Which is part of the reason for the whole terror color-code program. If an attack occurs, Ridge wants to be able to say, "Hey, we knew something was gonna happen. We did our best. So cool it on the lawsuits."
THE ALERT SYSTEM hasn't worked because nobody knows what they are supposed to do during a Code Yellow or Code Red or Code Chartreuse. Everyone is suffering from alert fatigue. I mean, you can only spy on your garbage collectors and paper boy for so long before you lose interest. TV stations are running "News Alert!" segments all day that really are just regular old news. If there really was something important to report, they'd have to create "REALLY IMPORTANT NEWS ALERT!" logos.
When we went to Orange Alert, Ridge figured he'd better give out suggestions as to what people could do to protect themselves. That's when he suggested loading up on duct tape. And people did. On the East Coast, duct tape flew out of stores. One guy completely sealed his house in plastic and duct tape. After that, he wasn't in danger of anthrax or poison gas, but suffocation.
Ridge realized he'd gone too far and told people to quit trying to seal their houses shut.
If you really want to ease your mind about the terrorist threat, here's what you do: Take a strip of duct tape; stick it over the on/off button on your TV remote. Go to bed.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com