No.
Really?
Who’d have thunk that a college employee could get suspended, just for sending “a threatening letter containing white powder that prompted the evacuation of a campus building?”
Those folks at the University of North Alabama must be pretty narrow minded to take such a thing so seriously.
Or could it be, just perhaps, that it’s a reflection of the times in which we live? No, surely that’s not what’s going on. Surely this is not an example of the need for people to wake up to the reality of life post 9-11, that there is no place for insensitive threats to public safety.
In major airports there are big signs that warn people not to joke about having a bomb or about being a terrorist.
Why?
Because some of us are still too dense to get it, to understand that the world has turned and some things just are not funny any more.
Charges haven’t been filed yet in the Alabama case, but it has been turned over to state prosecutors and the postal inspectors are involved. That is as it should be.
Whether it’s a threat sent in the mail, or someone making a bomb threat by phone, these are serious actions, and anyone who takes them proves by their own actions that they need to learn a lesson — at the very least they need to learn what it costs to turn out safety officials, evacuate buildings, shut down business. They need to foot the bill, too.
Some things just are not funny, anymore. To be honest, they never were.
— Chuck Smith