Being funny can misfire

Today President Obama and Vice President Biden were in Tampa, Florida. The president, in a move that is almost a tradition, is going to travel to several states to bring the plans he talked about in his State of the Union last Wednesday to the citizens. The idea is to try to convince them so that the plans can be implemented. In Tampa, he announced that the federal government was going to award $8 billion in stimulus money for the construction of high-speed rail projects, one of which was planned for Florida. So far so good. The United States is far behind several countries in high-speed trains and such a project would benefit the country in several ways: as a way to move large numbers of people fast and comfortably and at the same time reducing the air pollution and as a way of creating jobs during the construction of such projects. Obama could have explained that in those terms and I am sure everyone would have understood. But trying to make his speech a little funny, something he does not do too well, he remarked that one of the benefits of high-speed rail was that passengers wouldn’t have to go through a security check that demanded they take off their shoes! Some people might have taken that remark as an attempt to be funny, some might have taken it more seriously wondering if rail security was going to be much less rigorous that airport security and therefore risking the possibility of a terrorist attack. One has only to think about the Madrid train bombings of 2004. Also, a bombing device going off in a high-speed train traveling at around 200mph could be pretty disastrous.