Explaining airport security to Kristi Noem and Shoeless Joe Jackson

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IF THE SHOE FITS, YOU CAN LEAVE IT ON ... Now that the Transportation Security Administration has ended the requirement that travelers must remove their shoes during security screenings at U.S. airports, our nation's senior citizens have lost yet another privilege of growing older.

You see, even before this latest stunning ruling, folks over 75 were not required to take off their shoes for a TSA screening.

The thinking here is that folks over 75 are so old that they're simply unable to pull off a terrorist attack on an airplane. Talk about age discrimination in the extreme.

But there's another aspect to this, too.

TSA agents who want to score points with senior citizens, even if they are 90, will routinely tell them to take off their shoes, thereby flattering the hell out of them.

Wow, they'd think to themselves, I must look much younger than I am.

Doing that in reverse, however, can be fatal.

Hell hath no fury as a 65-year-old being regarded as a 75-year-old.

Kristi Noem, the former governor of South Dakota and our current Secretary of Homeland Security, showed up at Ronald Reagan National Airport in the nation's capital to trumpet the new rule.

"We're so excited," Noem said as nasty press photographers aimed their cameras at Noem's $50,000 Rolex dwarfing her left wrist.

"We can make this experience for those individuals traveling through airports in the United States much more hospitable, more efficient for them, more timely, and they can get to their destinations and spend much more time with their loved ones."

Actually Madame Secretary, while I acknowledge that you are younger than I am, smarter than I am and probably have more shoes than I do, this change of an onerous and odorous requirement will not actually allow people to spend "much more time" with their loved ones. Or even any more time with their loved ones.

I know you are not the Transportation Secretary, so let me explain to you how airports work.