State Department: We're Sorry about the Whole Sari Thing

Last weekend, Meera Shankar, India's Ambassador to the United States, went to Jackson-Evers International Airport in Mississippi to catch a plane back to Washington, DC. She had just finished a speaking engagement at Mississippi State University. According to witnesses, the ambassador attracted the attention of TSA workers because she was wearing a sari. Since Jackson-Evers doesn't yet have one of those carcinogenic scanners, she was selected to be felt up by a TSA staffer.

In public.

Because you know terrorists haven't yet figured out that white Americans are suspicious of people who look different, so they wear their funny furrin clothes for protection.

And female Indian terrorists who occupy high-level diplomatic posts are such a problem.

And humiliating people makes everything so much better.

After an initial defense of public groping by the TSA, the State Department has apologized.

Here is a link to the Jackson Clarion-Ledger's initial reporting on the story. The comments thread is quite something. Or was. Many of the more colorful ones have been deleted.

Personal favorite: "This Country was fine until other Countries started coming here" [sic]

Somehow I doubt the guy who wrote that was Indian--you know, the other kind?