The Color of Complacency

This week, the Bush administration decided to lower the terror alert level to “yellow” from “orange.” “Orange” had been the status since the Sept. 11 anniversary saw a flurry of intelligence activity. Prior to the anniversary, the level had not been changed from its initial “yellow” status.

Let me be among the first to call for a collective sigh of relief. Now that we’re back to “yellow,” we can finally stop all that exhausting “orange” level vigilance that has been so burdensome for the past two weeks.

Of all the security reforms enacted after Sept. 11, this color coded threat scale is by far the most idiotic. Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge unveiled the system back in March to better inform the public at large of terror risks. The scale—which indicates risk on a spectrum of green, blue, yellow, orange, and red—aside from being quickly disregarded by 99.9 percent of this country, contains no useful information concerning how to behave under particular alerts. Even the law enforcement community is perplexed.

Nonetheless, in the spirit of creating meaningless classification systems for the purpose of convincing voters the administration has been doing something (besides trying to invade Iraq, of course), I would like to propose that the Bushies create a color coded system for indicating the status of a) the economy, b) corporate scandals, c) social security and d) public education. With any luck, by 2004 voters won’t see anything but red.

—BENJAMIN J. TOFF