Stadium Security Stupidity

Went to the Rangers game tonight (last night?). It was good, because the Rangers pwned the Twins, but the main thing at hand is the utter stupidity of stadium security.

Now, if any of you have ever heard Lewis Black speak on airport security, especially his stand-up on his album The End of the Universe, you will find some common threads. Obviously, it will entail the stupidity of the policies, the outlandish ideas that formed them, and the complete incongruities within.
This is not news to anyone who has been reading me for any length of time, but that is not a problem as far as I can see.

Among the things we brought to the stadium was a couple of six-bottle capacity coolers with soft shells, one of which had a plastic liner, the other of which once had one but no longer does. Each one was filled with six plastic bottles, one filled with Coca Cola, the other filled with Dr Pepper.

Slight digression: Dr Pepper is not spelled with the period after the "Dr" part. It once was, but is no longer.

Stadium Security, in their overzealous yet wholly ineffective quest to give reasonable people headaches, searches all bags on the way in. Not people, just bags. I could have walked in with a loose BDU jacket with a .45 in a shoulder holster without question. Now, I walked into the area, compliantly opened all bags, and was promptly informed that they were going to confiscate the liner to the cooler. I bluntly stated, "I don't understand," and she said I could keep the cooler and drinks, but that she had to take the liner. Apparently it might be used to hit people with, she says.

I reminded her that I could just as easily bludgeon somebody with a foul ball, and she seemed amused and unsurprised, but still hijacked the liner of my cooler. Obviously, I knew how stupid the situation was, and that escalating over a cooler liner was idiotic. So I dumped the ice and drinks into what was at this point essentially a canvas sack with a zipper. Standing there, dumping ice and drinks into a sack to get rid of a plastic liner that might be used at a weapon, while wearing a belt that could be used to strangle, a pair of boots that would be far better as bludgeons than a lightweight plastic liner, a knife clipped visibly to my righthand slash pocket, going into a stadium where wooden bats are featured.

In fact, today (tomorrow, at the time, the 8th of July, 2006) they will be giving 8,000 fans Michael Young Commemorative Bats as they enter. Meanwhile, they will be hijacking the liners of soft-shelled coolers, selling alcoholic beverages, and providing people with numerous ways they could (but won't) hurt each other. Meanwhile, a bomb-strapped terrorist, a concealed knife, a hidden pistol, or a grenade down the pants of a malicious ticket holder would skate right past the gates.

Does this mean I want tighter security? Not at all. All I ask is that they start trying to make some kind of sense. In particular, stop pretending cooler liners are weapons but giving people sticks intended for hitting on the way in. This is idiocy. Instead, stop taking away cooler liners, and quit being idiotic.