As the Washington Redskins football team are mired in another disappointing season, fans have directed their anger toward team management, most notably owner, and 2005 Greater Washington DC Jewish Sports Hall of Fame inductee, Daniel Snyder. The team, apparently fearing fans toting signs critical of Snyder, has banned fans from bringing any kind of signs into the team’s FedEx Field (although the team claims that the brand-new policy — which no other NFL team has — was put in place to protect fans from being poked in the head or having the view blocked by the signs).
Washington City Paper writer Dave McKenna was telling the story of one fan trying to get in to Monday night’s Redskins game against the Philadelphia Eagles when he wrote this last week:
Tales of scuffles with security over signs and t-shirts blasting the owner abound. The only first-person account I got was from a friend who called me from FedExField just after being searched at the gate like he was boarding an El Al flight.
He asked the frisker, “Are you looking for anti-Snyder paraphernalia?”
“As a matter of fact, I am,” the guard told him.
A couple days later, McKenna printed the response he got from El Al account manager Ron Glickman:
“Enjoyed reading your comments about the security checks at FedExField, but I must assure you, the checks that one would go through for an El Al flight are a lot less hands on as your article suggests. All of our checks are first to screen the passengers and provide them with a sterile environment as they check in and on the aircraft. If anyone is ever searched, it is always a last resort and we rarely do a body search. In fact, I don’t think that we have done any in the past year in the entire United States.”
So yes, El Al say the security check to get into a Redskins game is more invasive than it is to board an El Al flight…
(This did get us to wondering what would happen if El Al took over security at FedEx Field. You’d get to the gate and they’d ask: "So, did you write your sign yourself? Did anyone help you to write your sign? When did you write your sign? Has it been with you since you wrote it?…)
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