when it counts

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Sep 21, 2007

News item: An MIT undergraduate walks into Boston's Logan airport, wearing a device made to look like a homemade bomb She says it's art. Police are not impressed; she's facing criminal charges. The officer in charge, unimpressed, replies: "She's lucky to be in a cell as opposed to the morgue."

News item: The Catholic bishop of Ibiza, Spain, has forcefully protested an exhibition that features images of the late Pope John Paul II and other religious figures engaging in unnatural acts. The exhibitors say it's art. Unlike the police in Boston, authorities in Ibiza decline to intervene.

You and I could agree that the student in Boston wanted to make people think she had a bomb, and the exhibitors in Ibiza wanted to outrage Catholics. But in one case political leaders accept the transparent excuse, and another they don't. Why?

Because modern Western democracies are serious about airport security.