Laff Riot

The new airport security regime has a friend in ABC. The TV network threatened this week to ax a planned episode of the Drew Carey Show. In it, the show's two resident idiots—who also happen to be Drew's best friends—take jobs as airport checkers, and find that they fit right in. In a request almost as hilarious as the show itself, the network asked that at least one security worker be portrayed as "competent," reported the Los Angeles Times. Drew Carey's producers ultimately complied, and a revised version will be broadcast next month.

The Times quotes a "network source" as saying that it would be irresponsible to portray all the security workers as incompetent. It might, after all, reflect poorly on the nation's planned 30,000-strong federal shoe sniffing force. Never mind that this is a show which, at its most serious, has featured a 300-pound woman in clown make-up wearing vibrating underwear.

ABC was surely paranoid that advertisers would pull another Politically Incorrect and yank advertisements from the time slot. They might be right. If so, we're doomed. With daily reports of airport evacuations prompted by such threats as thrown-away scissors and fake grenades, humor is one of few things that might keep flyers sane (especially in light of the fact that there exists a person on U.S. soil stupid or cruel enough to bring a fake grenade to an airport checkpoint these days).

So get the laughter out at home on the couch, because anyone who's waited 30 minutes in line to be felt up by an airport guard with fast hands and a magic wand knows that on the ground, there's not much to joke about.