Homeland Security Hoaxes?

Here's another homeland security outrage that sounds like it could (and certainly should) be a hoax: According to this local news report, an Ohio high school principal called in the Secret Service to question a student for wearing a shirt announcing "George Bush, not my president." (In case you hadn't heard, police are denying the 2600 account of an amateur photographer who said the Secret Service hassled him and called him a "raghead collaborator." Uniformed denial doesn't necessarily make the story false, of course, but it sounded fishy from the beginning.)

This new story doesn't only sound too bad to be true; it actually reads like a parody. But it's from a local news broadcast, which often really are *that* bad. Link via Lane McFadden.

Comments

[michele]

"Because this issue is so sensitive, even we don't know the students name."

Is anyone else getting a vision of Ted Baxter reading this on the evening news?

(I think I just dated myself with that reference.)

[Sarah eg.]

Michele, heck, I was born in '81 and I've seen every MTM episode at least three times. My 10-year-old brother's favourite TV shows are Dexter's Lab, I Love Lucy, and The Honeymooners. Thank God for cable television.

Those "George Bush Is Not My President" or "Jed Bartlett is MY president" t-shirts and bumperstickers always remind me of a 12 year old trying to disown their parents.
Love 'em or hate 'em, they're your parents (or your government leaders) and you might as well learn how to deal with them until you get the chance to move out (or vote them out).

[Brad]

Is it just me, or is the whole thing just seeming more and more like a bizarrely bad dream? Is this really happening??!?

[George Paine]

The 2600 account may be true. A friend of a friend got detained by the federal authorities for taking photographs (he's a location scout for commercials, he was taking pictures of security cameras) of the Federal Building in New York City. Two officers in uniforms marked "Federal Police" came outside and escourted him into the basement of the Federal Building. They interrogated him for several hours, at which point the FBI was called. He was denied a phone call.

The FBI interrogated him for several hours and then called the US Marshall Service to escourt him to jail pending a preliminary hearing. All this time he was told "You're not under arrest so you get no phone call or attorney." A kindly FBI agent took pity on him, he called his production company, who sent a rep over.

The rep knew one of the FBI agents and so they let him go!