Kids! We're now past three months into the year and like most things that have twelve of something this marks the end of the first quarter of 2014. A quarter into a new year and yet there are still little hiccups that we just can't seem to look past and for that I'm looking at you TSA agents of LAX!
Look, I'm sure it's no picnic to be a TSA agent at a major airport in this day and age. Any time you have to deal with a large percentage of American public you're definitely going to have to handle a few whack jobs. I can remember taking a flight a couple years ago and standing behind a disheveled looking man in full fatigues with a hard metal case as his only luggage and thinking to myself 'worst terrorist ever.' It's never easy to look at a stranger and tell them to take off their shoes as you wave your magic wand all over them and oh by the way, if it beeps, I have to touch you.
On the flip side, however, it's no picnic to have to fly. You have to stand in line after line just to reserve the right to sit in a metal tube for four hours while you either have to A) listen to a baby express their inability to understand why their ears are popping, B) sit next to the sleeping guy that just forsake everything he knew about personal space, or C) get the old lady that's pinpointed you for her entire life story--and she's old--really old. Flying gets progressively better as you reach the legal drinking age but they don't take cash so come prepared.
It's all a big headache and like most big headaches the situation exacerbates itself the more and more you behave like a dick. San Francisco 49ers pass rusher extraordinaire Aldon Smith was detained yesterday at LAX when he decided to go ahead and behave like a dick. One of those little hiccups we still can't get away with after the first quarter of 2014? Yeah, we still can't flip out in an airport and carry on about how we have a bomb. Who knew?
Aldon has had his problems in the past and it's landed him in trouble with the law and in rehab as well but as soon as you start combining the words 'bomb' and 'airplane' now the FBI has to get involved and well, dammit, you're just a big ol' bag of dumb, aren't you? Didn't Ben Stiller teach you anything?
Look, Aldon, I know it's no fun to have some minimum wage employee tell you to take off your shoes and belt like you're being processed for some sort of harvest and you have to remove all your unnatural goods like some weird husk and wouldn't you know it you just got picked for 'additional screening.'
I get it. I feel the same way as you. 'Additional screening' is the 2014 politically correct way of saying 'we don't trust this large black man about to get into a metal tube with a lot of other (white) people.' As a large black man that would irk me too. However, I'm not a large black man, and standing behind that weird, creepy guy wearing the fatigues with the funny suitcase pretty much cleared me of any wrong-doing because the law of averages states what's the odds of TWO potential terrorists standing right beside each other in line at the airport...and 9/11 hasn't taught us anything!
You can't say bomb in an airport...unless you mean it. Everybody knows that. It comes right after, "Don't run with scissors" and it's right before, "Don't go swimming until thirty minutes after eating." And that last one is a bad example because that's a myth. No one has ever been in the ocean, about to plummet into the abyss, and thought to themselves, "Why did I have to have that last chili dog?!" Nope. It's always "Why did I get drunk and drift out into the rip current?!" And that, kids, is a lesson for another day.
It would be simple for the 49ers just to release Smith and move on with their lives but the NFL is a complicated beast and Smith is a proven commodity--a proven commodity that's especially valuable in today's NFL. He can rush the quarterback and can do it very well and that's hard to just wash your hands clean of even despite his misfortunes. But he's already been a nuisance with his past transgressions and he's already been to rehab--so what's next?
Maybe Aldon Smith did just have a really bad day and some jerky TSA agent pushed him to his breaking point. And maybe Aldon Smith has some deeper rooted issues that need to be worked out by professionals. I don't know anything about that but I do understand the NFL from a business standpoint and if I was a high ranking member of the the 49ers organization I would start shopping Aldon Smith immediately. There are plenty of teams that forsake normal human rationale for the ability to play football. Sell him now before that ceiling drops even lower.
Hell, see what New York will pay up for him. The Jets embrace crazy like it falls out of the sky.
It's hard just to 'give up' on somebody but after you've stuck your neck out multiple times and have had the axe come down each and every time I think you're perfectly within the statue of limitations to distance yourself from that person.
Godspeed, Aldon Smith.
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