Last Weekend, a 10-Second Airport Delay Went Viral

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Today the Washington Post brings us the perfect tale of modern viral hysteria. Apparently Ashley Brandt had a problem with her DC driver’s license at the Phoenix airport, and social media went wild after her boyfriend tweeted about it. Here is the entire story:

According to Brandt, an agent with the Transportation Security Administration took a look at her D.C. license and began to shake her head. “I don’t know if we can accept these,” Brandt recalled the agent saying. “Do you have a U.S. passport?’

Brandt was dumbfounded, and quickly grew a little scared….Brandt says the agent yelled out to a supervisor, working in adjacent security line. Are D.C. licenses valid identification?

Brandt says she could hear the response, “Yeah, we accept those.”

And that was it. A TSA agent was unsure about something, and then cleared it up in a few seconds. And the twitterverse went crazy.

I get it: we all hate TSA, and TSA agents sometimes do dumb things. And social media encourages mob reactions based on 140-character rants. But honestly, folks. Chill. Not every minor inconvenience in the world deserves to go viral.

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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