Story Archive

Security Theater, Puppet Style

A TSA agent at Missouri’s St. Louis International Airport said it was a gun. No, said Phyllis May, “it’s a prop for my monkey.” The thing was two inches long; it belonged to a monkey puppet. That didn’t stop the TSA agent. “If I held it up to your neck,” May says the agent told her, “you wouldn’t know if it was real or not.” “I said, really? You’re kidding me, right? And she said no, it looks like a gun.” May sells monkey puppets as part of her small business; she says the monkey involved is named “Rooster Monkburn” — a play on Rooster Cogburn, John Wayne’s character in the original True Grit. (AC/KING Seattle) ...The TSA agent was just doing her job: disarming John Wayne and the American spirit.