I am of course referring to the following quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin: “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”. You may be more familiar with its bastardized form where “Essential Liberty” is replaced with “anything in any way inconvenient”, which is commonly bandied around the Internet. It is especially common among those who anthropomorphize data, describing them as having the will to be free. But I digress.
The program Cutsies here is clearly in reference to the program Clear, as seen at
www.flyclear.com
. For a $128 annual fee and unique personally identifying information (iris scan AND fingerprint) they will let you cut ahead in the security line. This bothers me for several reasons:
This company has no compelling reason NOT to turn over this information to the federal government.
All you get is cutsies. Frankly, I`d rather have known terrorists skip the line and go straight to screening — Then I won`t be standing next to them in line. And shouldn`t they need screening the most?
The federal government is implicitly saying that, by paying this fee ($28 of which is a TSA vetting fee) they are okay with you skipping the security line. They`re endorsing a classed, separate and unequal society.
There`s more to it than that, but frankly I`m a comic strip artist, not a political commentator, so I`ll let you draw your own conclusions.
In terms of the comic, I`m really impressed with how the crowd in the first panel turned out. coloring has always been my big problem, and I really think I`ve been making large strides in that lately. I`m getting better with hair highlights, too, see panels two and three. Plus, I`ve tried the hair going over the shoulder. You may see some character model changes soon, but I have to sketch more first.