filed under America
bad police work is worse than none at all
8AM ON
15/07/2008
BY
Beth Comery
This is British comedian Russell Brand. In May he flew into New York City for an appearance on the ‘David Letterman Show’ to promote a movie. An arrest record (”youthful folly”) from his teens popped up and he was pulled aside, questioned and forced to return to London, missing the show. Everyone feel safer now?
Now comes news that the terrorist watch list has topped the 1,000,000-name mark. If there are indeed that many evil-doers who mean us harm, they must be a pretty ineffective lot. Maybe they are all stuck in meetings arguing about parking spaces and the smell in the refrigerator.
Mr. Brand was finally allowed into the country. In this charming Letterman appearance he describes his idiotic interlude with the Immigration Service, including the fact that an utterly suspicious “Gambian gentleman” had also been questioned and allowed in. Video after the break…
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQlvqWW3tGc]
July 15th, 2008 at 10:26 am
So they didn’t learn anything after the whole Cat Stevens fiasco?
I appreciate the attempt to keep us safe but agree it appears to go awry more often than not. A million names is a lot–and perhaps the lists’ originators should take into account that (gasp) there might actually be two people with THE SAME NAME somewhere in the world. My 88-year-old grandmother was detained for questioning for having a not-uncommon Irish name that turned up on the no-fly list. Grams’ bag of knitting and paperback novel sure must have looked threatening!
July 15th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
It is probably good to have a highly unusual name if you haven’t got any criminal tendencies and don’t make enemies easily.
July 17th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
[...] It does not get any better than that folks — what was it, ‘adorable’ night? (At least RB got past immigration this time.) But for about the first 12 minutes of the show the signal was kaput! Cox customers saw [...]