I originally wrote this post in 2011 and chose not to publish it because it seemed too inflamatory. In light of the last 9 months I felt it really needed to be said, after all.
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Recently I was out for the day intending to write. Seeing the marquee at the theater near my usual hang out, I decided to take a break and watch a movie. Imagine my consternation when for the second time in as many months they asked to search me before I could enter the theater.
Admittedly I had a ripstop briefcase by Targus slung over my shoulder and I wear a pair of comfy leather shoes with a few rips and laces dangling untied. They and my The chain is one based in down-town LA and they just don’t get what’s it’s like up here. Their company policy treats everyone walking through the door as a sneaky movie pirate. Everyone that is except for women with purses. Now, I might feel an affinity for Airship pirates and even those free men of the bounding main, but intellectual property thief? Me? I’m a writer.
I found a way to distract the officious young man at the door and had a far more reasonable young lady check my ticket and saw my film. It was Hanna by the way and I recommend it. All the bones are their but it’s Oscar died on the cutting room floor. When the movie was over I still had that burning in my chest, not the one from angina, nor the one from religious conviction, the one from incipient rage that began the first time I got punished in Kindergarten for something someone else did, because I was taller, lighter skinned and male, therefore I must have done something.
This is the burn that was cooking I slid out of the screen-room and over to the concession stand to ask to see the manager. Now the manager and the guy who was giving me grief were both off the clock. The woman who was working was as officious and zealous to gard her gate and whitewash her employees as any good fascist must be. The government is always right, the company is the government and the customer is a movie pirating scum bag.
As she tried to use police escalation techniques to cow me, I got a bit giddy and finally I just let her have it. Just about the time her mantra reached the “we just do what we’re told–“, I interrupted and said, “that’s what the Nazis said.” That got her attention. On passover week I was comparing her to a NAZI member. Into the tiny gap I inserted an explanation, “We were just following orders, that’s what they said.”
“Are you calling me a NAZI?”

“Yes,” I said. We’d already dealt with the issue of Misandric Sexism — any policy which discriminates in favor of purses harms men who in the majority do not carry purses unless they belong to a significant other.
She went to get a card where I could call her “corporate office” though I doubt it was authentic. I can’t imagine they make their receiver of process so easy to locate. We traded a few parting shots and I left. But I left a bit more disappointed in America, in California, and in people. What does it take to make people realize that the same complacency and accusations of trouble-making 80 years ago, is what created such vacation spots as Bergen-Belsen and Employment Programs like the Auswiczim Free-Labor Agency.
Anyone ready for a train-ride? Before you say it, remember, it couldn’t happen in Germany 80 years ago either.