Jaunted

Tags: Airport Security / TSA / Television Travel / Homeland Security USA / → All Tags

TSA To Get Reality Show Treatment

If your reputation is already in tatters, you can't destroy it by going on a reality TV show! The TSA, it seems, will make its tube debut at 8 pm on January 6, 2009, when ABC presents "Homeland Security USA," a reality-slash-documentary series that will focus mostly on border issues.

Though the show will follow multiple branches of the Department of Homeland Security, the TSA gets into the mix early, says ABC:

The premiere episode, “This is Your Car on Drugs,” takes viewers inside some of the busiest international entry points to the US. At Los Angeles International Airport, a voluptuous 20-year-old woman arrives from Switzerland with no working papers but a suitcase full of titillating surprises!

Air travel blog the Middle Seat Terminal wonders if the show will be more of a propaganda machine for the government than a critical look at a sometimes dysfunctional agency, but we're withholding judgment for now. If our obsession with Amazing Race has taught us anything, it's that even the outsized efforts of a life coaching, well-coifed, down-to-earth Kiwi can't, uh, put lipstick on a pig.

Related Stories:
· Homeland Security Reality Show: "Heartening" or Propaganda? [WSJ]
· On 7th Birthday, TSA Attempts To Explain Its Reason For Being [Jaunted]

[Photo: Stephen Witherden]