Storming the Bastille

When everyone is somebody, then no one's anybody.

--"The Gondoliers"

I hate elitism.

Except, of course, on those rare occasions when I happen to be a member of the elite.  As I believed myself to be, a couple of years ago, when Alaska Airlines first invited me to apply for "Pre-Check" status with TSA.  After a brief background check by the appropriate authorities, during which they apparently overlooked a couple of unexcused absences in junior high school, I was notified of my new status.

I had met the enemy, and he was me.  I was elite.  And, hypocritical liberal that I am, I loved it.

For two years, every time I flew anywhere I was reminded of my elite status.  The riff-raff stood in long, serpentine lines, waiting to go through security.  I walked up to the Pre-Check line -- but there was virtually no line, just a bored TSA attendant waiting for me -- showed my boarding pass and driver's license, put my carry-on bag on the conveyer, and walked through an old-fashioned metal detector.  At a time when the poor sucker waiting in the normal line had moved four feet forward, I had already settled into a bar and ordered a beer.

That was it!  No shoe removal.  No displaying of my under-three-ounce liquid containers.  No emptying of pockets and embarrassing unbuckling of belt.  No display of my x-rayed body to a crew of giggling, lascivious, flight attendants.  (Well, that last sentence was based only on suspicion, not observation.)

But this October, things changed.  I walked to the Pre-Check line and discovered -- horrors! -- a line.  A long line.  Full of passengers whom I can only, in all charity, describe as "riff-raff."  Sub-noble.  Un-elite.  And yet, all believing themselves my equal in the airline aristocracy.  At Thanksgiving, it was even worse.  The Pre-Check lines were longer than the regular lines.  What was going on?

As a story in today's New York Times relates, TSA has opened the floodgates.  No longer are only specially selected members of airlines' mileage programs permitted to apply.  TSA has set a goal of shoving 25 percent of the traveling public into Pre-Check status by the end of the year, a goal that the Times says has already been met.  The "unintended consequence" -- unintended but hardly unpredictable -- being a longer line at the sole Pre-Check check-in point than at the many "normal" check-ins.

As one flyer complained, “If we’re all going to be ‘special,’ we need more security lines devoted to our specialness.”

All I can say is that I enjoyed my two years of specialness.  If I had been the pauper in The Prince and the Pauper, the prince would never have pushed his way back into the palace.  But, like so much that is good in life -- well, enjoyable if not "good" -- my flirtation with elitism has come to an end.  As the Grand Inquisitor points out in the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, once we're all noble, no one's noble. 

At least I still get to keep my shoes on as I wend my way through security.