• Published:June 4th, 2008
• Comments:No Comment
• Category:News Comments

Recently, a 30-year old man was detained at London’s Heathrow airport, apparently for wearing a t-shirt featuring a robot from the Transformers film holding a large gun. (Also- the fellow’s profession? IT Consultant. Anyone shocked? No? Very good, then, moving along…)

Mr Jayakody said the first guard started joking with him about the Transformers character depicted on his French Connection T-shirt.

‘”Then he explains that since Megatron is holding a gun, I’m not allowed to fly,’ he said.

‘It’s a 40ft tall cartoon robot with a gun as an arm. There is no way this shirt is offensive in any way, and what I’m going to use the shirt to pretend I have a gun?

He was cooperative with the supervisor and took off the the ‘offensive’ T-shirt, replacing it with another shirt in his carry on luggage.

A spokesman for Heathrow operator BAA said: ‘If a T-shirt had a rude word or a bomb on it, for example, a passenger may be asked to remove it.

Well, to be fair, the film was quite a critical bomb, so it sort of fits, but we’ll leave that aside for the moment.

Now- one would think that the commenters on this story would leap upon it like a pack of rabid steampunk watch-wearing BoingBoing readers, full of indignant rage, shocked to the core that an airport security person had overstepped their bounds, for the first time in the history of anything, anywhere. But no! Instead, we get some editorializing about the gentleman’s sartorial choices-

I m more interested in why a 30 year old man is wearing a transformer t-shirt to begin with?

I can’t believe he made it past the fashion police.

If I were the cop, I would pull him aside and let him in on the secret of push ups and sit ups in the morning…

A 30 year old wearing a “Transformers” t-shirt? I reckon that’s offensive enough to prevent someone boarding. Grow up man, act your age.

And being from French Connection doesn’t make it any more acceptable.

Ermm… the bloke is 30. He’s wearing a t-shirt on a business trip. It depicts a child’s toy.

There is a problem here, and it has nothing to do with airport security….

He’s a grown man wearing a ‘Transformers’ Tee Shirt!

One wonders which cartoon character he has on his duvet and pyjamas.

Mr. Jaykody may not even know that, himself-

He keeps saying Megatron when it is Optimus Prime. Does he even know what shirt he is wearing?

Now, before we go- can we get just one Godwin? For the road?

Pity he caved in so easily to the Nazi Stormtroopers.

Ahhh… thank you.