rejectomorph | Funny, but Maybe Not So Funny

While cruising around my lurk list (which consists mostly of infrequently-updated journals not on my friends list, plus

brad, who I monitor for signs of insanity which might indicate upcoming LJ upheaval of some sort) I found a post by

dustyfedora which contains a link to this article in an Atlanta weekly. The article is by a guy who was questioned by the FBI after being reported to them by someone in a coffee shop who didn't approve of his choice of reading material! The reading material in question was a computer printout of this article in a Florida weekly. It contains a splendid rant about the odious Rupert Murdoch. That reading this particular piece of writing to oneself in a public place should lead to the reader being questioned by agents of the Federal Government is one of those things I find both distressing and absurdly comical. In Britain, making a frivolous report to the police can lead to being charged with something called wasting police time. Maybe we need something of that sort here. Of course, it's possible that the government has become so enamored of paranoid thinking that there is nobody in the FBI with the wit to realize when their time is being wasted, and the law would languish for want of use. I get the feeling that we're going to end up with the world's silliest police state.