Britney Spears in Times of Terror
by Daniel Jaeger

THE MUSIC SEEMED to be slightly more soothing than usual but maybe that was just my imagination. “No that’s a machine gun,” I joked to the old man who had noticed my guitar case and asked if I would be playing. The music stopped when the flight attendant in front of me turned around. “OK. That’s it. Come with me,” she snapped. I felt like I was caught cheating in junior high school and started to apologize for having made an inappropriate comment. First I thought she wanted to see if there was really a machine gun in my bag but apparently she wasn’t worried about that.
On my way out of the plane I wondered if she was so strict because she was wearing a bun or if she was wearing a bun because she was so strict. I found out later that flight attendants with long hair have to wear a bun for safety reasons. The old man and his wife looked at me compassionately as I was escorted from the plane. However they felt about my joke, they sure thought I didn’t deserve this.
The flight attendant handed me over to a more important looking man with badges on his shoulders who told me to wait in the gangway right outside the plane and asked me for my boarding pass. He took it and walked out of sight back in the lobby.While I was anxiously waiting with my guitar bag in my right hand and my little backpack in the left, I tried to imagine what would happen next. They would probably take me under arrest and start an investigation about former and possible future terrorist activities.
Expecting my hand luggage to be searched, I thought about the latest issue of a German humor magazine called titanic that I had almost taken with me and that consisted entirely of jokes about terrorism. Happy that I had decided to leave it at home, I thought about how certain things can be perfectly appropriate in a particular magazine but not on a plane, especially not on a United Airlines flight. It somewhat made sense. For some reason I still expected them to check if my guitar was actually a machine gun but they seemed to have enough confidence in the security checks to believe it wasn’t necessary.
I thought about how I could get a hold of Peter who was supposed to pick me up in Seattle at the airport and tell him that I got kicked off the plane and I don’t know when I would be there and that he probably could keep my car. Looking at the other passengers through the door I could see all kinds of expressions from disregard to: Why did this guy get kicked off the plane? Is he trouble? I’m sure the pure fact that I got on the plane again after being taken off made people more uncomfortable than my remark about the machine gun.
The man came back again five minutes later and looked at me more seriously than the most serious German ever did, something I never had thought possible, and advised me in a very serious voice that this kind of joke was very inappropriate especially these days and that I should apologize to the old man that I was talking to. I told him that I had already done that and that the old man in my opinion didn’t seem offended nor had any of the other passengers complained to the flight attendant. He made me do it again anyway; I hadn’t expected anything different.
When I walked back, the old man apologized for having started this brief conversation of ours that ended so unhappily for me. I said no, no, I’m the one who is sorry, it was a bad joke really, but he insisted that no, no, it was only a joke, and his wife smiled at me very compassionately again.
Five weeks later I was watching TV and by zapping through I realized I had the choice between watching the news that the government just reintroduced military trials for foreign terrorist suspects or Britney Spears on MTV. I thought about the incident on the plane again and it appeared to me that, considering how many people prefer watching her over noticing the ongoing undermining of our civil rights, she is a far greater danger to democracy or to freedom than my jokes on a plane. I bet she doesn’t even have to pass security check at the airport. I also thought that she wouldn’t be appropriately dressed in Afghanistan even now that the Taliban don’t rule anymore. Not that I don’t like Britney, I’ve never met her personally and if I had the chance to be in her position I wouldn’t think twice about it. But at that particular moment I looked at her as a media-made distraction from reality.
The next day I discovered a map on the Internet showing how to get across Manhattan without being spotted by surveillance cameras. It’s not easy. Suddenly it all made sense. Big Brother is making himself comfortable in a brave new world. We’re almost there.
Anyway, now that I’m here I think I should after all take advantage of the remaining freedom that this country grants me. Tomorrow I’ll buy me a machine gun.
[Photo credit: Jackie Ramirez]
[Note: This story was first published in the Seattle Weekly where it won their yearly writing contest for non-fiction.]
