Hi, Greg--

This is the same stupid philosophy that allows private corporations to engage in "randomly" drug testing people that the management doesn't like over and over and over. It's repulsive but not illegal, until the employee, or in this case the passenger, can prove harassment.

Unhappily, if enough small airlines go under, the larger ones will be able to behave this way with impunity, or until there's a class action suit against them.

The FAA doesn't screen for books? No, really? The Philadelphia police didn't even file an incident report? Damn straight, they didn't!! Those are government agencies. The day a federal agency screens reading materials or the police arrest somebody for what he reads is the day the next big First Amendment case slouches toward the Supreme Court to be born. Or if not, we can pucker up in preparation to kiss America goodbye.

Somebody should issue the airline employees the Post-Modern Art Out-of-Touch-with-Reality Award, consisting of copies (1 each) of Magritte's "La trahison des images, 1929", a drawing of a pipe with the notation "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe") underneath it. The point? To remind one and all that the picture is not the object. Personally, I would like to give them their next six or seven meals, carefully selected from beautifully composed pictures of exquisitely prepared food lovingly clipped from the finest culinary magazines. They would soon understand that a picture is no substitute for the real thing.

I can only assume that they believed that the Harry Potter book was objectionable because it would provide instructions to the ticketholder for casting a spell over the plane once it was airborne.

Honestly! What's next? I'd like to see them keep a middle-aged man with an issue of American Handgunner off a plane!

Regards--
Mary Anne