- the Premiere Think-Tank of UC Santa Barbara

The whole John Tyner versus the TSA thing has gone to such viral lengths that media of every kind has done its two bits in reporting and perpetuating the story. The story goes that John Tyner, an ‘engineer’ from San Diego was subjected to some security measures before going aboard his flight to go hunting with his father-in-law. When he approached the electronic imaging scanner, he was given the opportunity to opt out of the screen test, which he does. He is told that he will be subjected to a pat down. He scoffed at the notion and told the TSA agent that “”If you touch my junk, I’ll have you arrested.” This forces the TSA agent to get their supervisor in which he is eventually forced to leave the San Diego. Somehow, Tyner found a reason to have his cell phone’s video camera on the entire time to record and detail every aspect of the event, leading to Tyner’s new found glory as a martyr of the TSA ‘authoritarian disrespect of the Constitutional right of privacy.’

Initially, when this story first broke out, I honestly believed that the good will and the intelligence of the American public would eventually turn on Tyner but as the days went by and the story continues to be picked up by media outlets that this story will simply refuse to go away so I am forced to write my view of the story. The truth of the matter is that John Tyner acted like a petulant child in the whole event. His behavior and reaction matches a lot of similar behaviors found in freshman football players that I have coached this year, especially those that lack adequateness social skills and body modest.

The first piece of the Tyner incident is his desire to get the public and the media’s attention. Why would anyone approach the TSA checkpoint with a video camera already recording if they did not already intend for this situation to get ugly and recorded? He makes the convenient excuse of saying that “I am recording this just in case this situation got ugly so I can protect myself.” However, that is already an admission of guilt. It is the equivalent of someone using a video camera and then going out to harass a dog. If the dog gets angry and bites the person, then all of a sudden, the dog kicker is ‘protected’. However, the fact is that Tyner had a deliberate intention of creating this situation. He also places the entire event on his ‘blog’ which was rarely read and even followed until following the TSA event, making the whole incident more suspect.

I made a previous reference comparing Tyner’s body shyness with freshmen high school football players earlier and the similarities are daunting. Unlike older high school players or men in gym facilities walking around in the nude, when freshman players are forced to change in front of their peers for the first time, it sets up for hilarious interactions. Some would change in the bathroom stalls to some not even changing after practice until they got home despite being sticky and smelly. Others would hide in their perspective corners and others will change as soon as possible. Others have developed the maturity to just go about their business. However, regardless of their actions, there is a sense of nervousness and confusion that is not found in a men’s locker room in a gym facility. Tyner’s immediate reaction of someone looking at this ‘junk’ through an electronic scanner is equivalent of those freshmen. Notice that men in the men’s locker room just go about their business. Even if they had seen another penis or what not, they go about their own business because they are mature enough to not think about it as anything unusual. This makes me believe that Tyner might have never set himself in a gym facility before and had to shower in a facility with other men.

Also, people do not realize that there is a choice that is made. It is not so that you HAVE to get scanned or body patted down. There is always a third choice: stay home and don’t fly. Like with any child, you can always present choice A or choice B. For instance, you say to a child, “Would you want chicken or pork for dinner?” Instead, the child goes, “I want pizza.” What would you do? You say, “No, there is only chicken or pork. Which one you want? You don’t want either? Then you don’t have to eat.” It is as simple as that. There is always a choice that can be made. If you are uncomfortable with the choices presented, you can always take the last choice, which is to not made a decision and go home. There are a hundred ways for John Tyner to reach Minnesota. He wanted the most convenient and quickest way there. If you value your privacy over the safety of the collective group of fliers, then you can always keep your privacy in the car that you can drive there. There is always a choice and its obvious he was a child that wanted that invisible option C, even though he had an option A and B.

The media has sadly forgotten the only true victim in all of this: the TSA agent. Do you think that someone out there really wants to ‘touch your junk’? If you do, then you think too highly of yourself. Like you, he is probably there against his will to do something that he didn’t sign up for when he first got hired for this job. His original job was probably to just use a metal detector. Not ‘touch the junk’ of everyone that walks into scanner. But Tyner just had to make his job much more difficult than it is. And it is even more unbelievable that critics claim that homosexuals and sexual deviants are purposely signing up to become TSA agents on the light of possibility touching your junk. Let’s put this in a hypothetical situation: there are over 5 million homosexuals in the United States. As if they have no other skills, occupations or interest, all they are interested in doing with their careers are the less than one million TSA agents in the United States. Talk about self absorbed. Read some of the interviews with TSA agents and you will understand that they aren’t happy about this either.

In essence, this John Tyner-TSA incident was uncalled for and made into a bigger deal than it really was. Tyner had choices he could made. He had even done research to see if the airport had the electronic scanners. John Tyner tried to kick a dog with a video camera recording and now the nation blames the dog instead of John Tyner. Remember, flying is a privilege, not a right. You are paying a company to do something for you. Not the government so leave your anti-government slogans at home.

A popular driving point in this midterm election season has been focused on the idea of erasing the deficit. Candidates of both parties have stressed ‘fiscal responsibility’ on their road to their respective office. Critics, such as Rand Paul, claim that the problem of the reckless spending that has created the $13 trillion deficit in the government will be a heavy burden for the future generations and that by creating a large deficit, the countries that do offer credit for the United States, will ‘own’ the United States. Others even call it ‘Unamerican’ in ceding American influence to other countries. But it should be recognized that it is American to have debit.

In fact, those that made the argument that it is unamerican to have debit are totally out of touch with mainstream America and they neither understand Obama nor the average American family. The idea that deficit spending is Unamerican is just ludicrous as much as it is nonsensical. The average American household carries almost $16,000 in credit card debt. This excludes debt to mortgage, student loans, and other types of borrowed vales. Cardholders carry an average of 3.5 credit cards. The total revolving debt in the United States is $838 billion. These statistics show a full picture of a credit card culture that is fully immersed in the American weaving. Even the mystical “Black Am” card, the Centurion-class American Express credit card has been made an essential item of need for up-and-coming movers in the hip-hop industry. To have a credit card is as American as apple pie in this day and age.

With the economy in a recession, it has also been shown painfully clear in a majority of middle-class and lower-class families are forced to use deficit spending as well. These stories occur throughout the United States: the breadwinner has been either laid off or fired and the family is forced to survive through using credit cards. While the axiom of “Never pay off a credit card with another credit card” still rings true, it is a way of life for those without a reliable flow of income. These are often the families that have nothing. This is where the politicians have become so out-of-touch with regular everyday people. If you knew that the only way to put food on the plate of your family is to continue to destroy your credit and use your credit cards to buy food at Albertson’s or Safeway, would you do it? Of course you would. If they didn’t, your family would suffer. It is the same ideology in government spending. The government is essentially your parent or breadwinner, it has to keep running so that you, their children or their responsibility, will have food on your plate.

If anything, the fact the government is spending more now is a sign that the optimism that once founded this country is, by and large, still shining brightly. As any gambling-addiction fiend and they will tell you, the reason you gamble is the inherent hope that you will come out on top in the end of the situation. Even if a gambler is down to his last dollar, he will throw it all into the pot for the chance to stab at the millions. With this same logic, Obama should be considered the most patriotic man in the United States. He obviously believes that the United States can come back and pay back the trillions that are loaned. Due to his middle-class background, he understands that sometimes, you have to spend if you want to see the end of the road. He knows that America will bounce back and he is right, America will bounce back because that is what the United States does. Bounce back.

In my life, I can put my work experience in three different categories: progressive, paying the bills, and absolute bullshit. Looking at the jobs that I currently have, I am happy that both jobs that I have are currently progressive. Progressive as in the sense that it is not progressive for the country but progressive for my career. I’m extremely happy that I am doing work for Diablo Custom Publishing and I am also happy with the personal training job. It’s rare for one to find an entry level position in the fitness industry that pays well, offer matching 401k and maintain a cast of management that actively roots for and propels your career in their company.

However, despite my apathy against the ‘paying the bills’ jobs, the true grievances I have are against absolute bullshit jobs. It’s not so much that these jobs had so much potential but the mere fact that they wasted the time and dodged the law is where it truly, as Peter Griffin says, grinds my gears. And the problem isn’t just contained the small town in Santa Barbara anymore. They seem to be rampantly spreading across America as companies around the world are finding new ways to manipulate the unemployed workforce into their free workforce.

Both of my internship opportunities with HardMagic Publishing and Blue Chair Productions were both filled with potential to be amazing jobs but the mismanagement of the owners quickly poisoned the relationship. While I am still thankful for the opportunities that I had with Blue Chair Productions, I have grown increasing bitter about the whole situation since then.

The owner and producer, Sabrina Oertle, was going through cash problems for the company and felt that a major project she was working on had the potential to solve them. Instead of being up front with the three interns, she decided to ‘hire’ all three interns on to the production company, which is fine. However, when the main project started rolling, it began to create deep repercussions. The internship had already taken 3 months and all three interns, including myself, had ran out of money. When we came up to ask about the money, she merely delayed it with a simple, “It’s coming” or “Check is in the mail” but the truth is, it never came. Even after 3 film commitments, none of us ever got the money. We eventually took her to small claims court and we each individually sued her and won. She actually has several cases against her in the small claims court and she lost each of them but she never paid.

Matt Hackney and HardMagic Publishing is just one short step over Blue Chair Production. If there was ever a company that was a “company in name only”, it existed in HardMagic or MOVFitness or any of name that Hackney created for the flavor of the month. He’s belief system was so out of wack and out of tune with conventional wisdom that I don’t even know where to start. He believed that the rules were set there by elitist and felt he was put on earth to change it up. He began by hiring a series of interns and having them ‘ghostwrite’ his book for his ‘publishing company’. This is a clear violation of the conventions of plagiarism. It is one thing to have someone transcribe what you are saying but to have an intern to write a book for you and to put your name on it is slap in the face of the writing industry.

Things eventually got out of hand when I went to him, telling him I was free and he ‘hired’ me to write an interview/article for American Dance magazine. Both me and the fitness professional combined and wrote an article but he felt that it wasn’t good enough and that it needed work so he rewrote the article with incomplete sentences and possibly the worst grammar and sentence structure I have ever seen, even from a 5^th grader. And like the previous job, it is labeled under ‘unpaid intern’, which comes to the main point of this entry: where is the government’s regulation and oversight of such companies?

It’s obvious that companies throughout the United States are doing it but where is the line between slave labor, scam and a legitimate mutually beneficial relationship? Obviously, HardMagic and Blue Chair are the slave labor category but I have had very beneficial internships. If it was not for the Pacific Coast Business Times, odds are that I would not have gotten the DCP internship nor would I have gotten interviews with a number of different companies. Scam companies, such as HardMagic and Blue Chair deserves to be monitored and punished according without companies such as the Business Times penalized for the idiotic actions of others.

President Barack Obama’s campaign for the United States presidency was built upon the foundation of a decisive break against the previous regime, evoking the slogan “Change” to propel himself to the highest seat in the country. With the emerging threats from the Internet and the digital world, Obama is clearly taking notes from former President George Bush’s policies, infamously known as the ‘Bush Doctrine’, in his efforts to rewrite the defense of the United States in the 21^st Century.

In a 2008 interview with vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, Charlie Gibson explained the Bush Doctrine’s policies to the bewildered candidate. Unilateralism and spreading democracies were important but second only to the core principle: proactive strikes against all threats, especially terrorism. While Obama inherited Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the threat of cyberterrorism has quickly emerged and is solely the responsibility of Obama.

Forbes’s March issue focused on two different aspects of the current fight against cyberterrorism: an international task force that cuts off funds for extremist terrorist groups in pro-Islamic countries and a feature on the United States training an entire generation of teen prodigies to be hackers, offering college degrees and special schools for the best of the best. The international finance collective tracks funds that are transferred from organizations with terrorist affiliations. The hacking camps are developed across the United States, training students to creatively find weaknesses within the American infrastructure, despite the potential of these students turning against the very system that trained them. With the amount of information on the Internet and its accessibility, the United States have clearly taken a proactive leadership stance as the defender of free world’s data.

Given the importance of the Internet, Obama will clearly need to take a further step than his predecessor in defending American information on the Internet. Bush believed in proactive approach in stopping terrorism in foreign lands, but how will he deal with a threat that clearly has no physical form? There are no missiles or tanks to invade with. It’s no longer a problem where throwing money at the target can produce viable results.  Other countries such as China has already begun such programs.  Paller discovered a Chinese graduate student that won several hacking tournaments only to be caught breaking into the Pentagon’s database. To confront the next gen terrorists, Obama will need to embrace the science geeks and programmers to protect American interest.

After all, the present and the future of the United States is already on-line.

Wilson Trang is one of the founding members of Heroine Studio.

Wilson Trang first emerged in the entertainment business through the now-defunct Santa Barbara independent film production company, Blue Chair Productions. After several months into his internship, Trang rose into the position of Production Coordinator for the development of local charity music video, I Wish Everyday Was Christmas. The company broke up after the production of the music video, shifting Trang’s interest from film to music. He served on the production crew of Associated Student as light master and crew for local events in the UCSB concert venue, The Hub.

Wilson’s first major project was Iron and Blood with fellow Heroine Studio writer Ellie Sciaky for the 3^rd Annual STAGE competition. Trang re-teamed with Sciaky to sweep SpaceDog Entertainment’ Choose your Own Creator competition, developing the story and writing the first issue before the development company fell apart under bankruptcy. The first issue was originally suppose to be written by Wilson Trang, drawn by comic book artist Karl Altstaetter and published and distributed by Top Cow Productions, titled The Tales of the Proximity Effect. Trang next lead the University of California, Santa Barbara, based Heroine Studio into the 2008 Creative Writing Championship, placing second to a fellow UCSB team in the team competition.

He followed up this up with a stint as the writing and editing intern for the Pacific Coast Business Times, a business journal that serves the tri-counties in California’s Central Coast. He wrote several articles, including the front page feature on the status of comic books and self publishing within the tri-county, especially following the recession and Diamond Distribution’s policy changes. He also wrote a feature on the decline of surf shops through the central coast as well as the rise of wellness facilities throughout the Thousand Oaks area.

He is currently serving as the writing and baseball intern for Diablo Customs Publishing, writing, fact checking and editing for two of their publications, Giants and Athletics.