Is the gold star new? I may be wrong, but I think it’s been around.
Here’s a REAL ID compliant license from 2010:
No, but they’ve been covering the issue of Real ID/national ID for nearly 2 decades. I’m going to assume that at least one of the many stories they linked to and discussed had details about the gold star.
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No. TSA doesn’t require it for people under 18. But, as my daughter was travelling with someone who wasn’t her parent, it was recommended to have a notarized permission to travel as well as a state issued photo ID or certified birth certificate. ID cards are smaller and less of a catastrophic thing to lose.
Tl;DR It was easier on my mom to have one to go through TSA checkpoints with a child that wasn’t hers.
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…you will need a REAL ID or a passport to fly within the United States or enter federal buildings. (https://www.mass.gov/guides/massachusetts-identification-id-requirements)
Wait, what? Services like Social Security and Passports are housed in federal buildings. What about Post Offices and courthouses?
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I am still disappointed that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab failed plot didn’t spawn a similar removal policy.
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but i think they kind of backtracked on that? my wife happened to get a realID before the feds got upset and in the end IIRC the DMV just sent a letter saying something like “can you send us a 2nd bill showing your address” or something like that. there may even have been nothing to do, i can’t remember.
I’m not disputing that BB or other media have covered REAL ID. Please forgive me for not being specific about the gold star in my comment—I was assuming that the context of the thread (especially the headline) made being explicit about that unnecessary, but clearly I was wrong. Out of curiosity, I did go through all the BB posts about REAL ID that I could find, and found nothing gold star related. However, I cannot be sure if my search was exhaustive.
In my opinion, Xeni’s post is written in such a way that it makes the gold star aspect sound like it is new. The headline "US to require air travelers to show ‘gold star’ at airport in order to fly’ is the type of headline that I believe tends to be used when announcing something new. Also, her post does not mention that many licenses have already had the star for a decade, which is a detail one wouldn’t include if one believed this was new information, or if one were trying to make it seem like new information.
I’m not saying that she intentionally omitted that fact, or that she intentionally tried to make it seem like new information. I am saying that it comes across, to me, as an article with the trappings of “presenting new information” (when no new information is presented), and I find that odd. I cannot say for certain whether the past posts about REAL ID also mention the gold star (I don’t think they do, as stated above), but if any do, I feel that makes the “here’s new information” manner in which this most recent post was written even more odd.
I don’t think I’m the only one getting the “here’s new information” impression from that post: writing “It’s a new aspect of the same issue” appears to me like Xeni’s post gave you that impression too.
What I’m trying to say is that the apparent representation of the gold star detail as new (while not being new) is odd, and worthy of discussion. Perhaps it was unjust to call out Xeni for waiting until now to focus on the gold star: she may not have known about the gold star until now. If that is the case, then that is surprising, and also worthy of discussion.
I may be wrong, but it seems to me that one of two things has happened: either journalists are only now becoming aware of the gold star as problematic, or they’ve been aware but waited years to make a big deal about it. I feel that the reasons for either possibility happening would be interesting to learn about, and worthy of discussion. In my second post in this thread, I just assumed it was the latter scenario, and that was probably a mistake; it’s not clear if that is what happened. And there may be other possibilities that I’m not imagining—I would love to hear alternatives, if you have any in mind.
Anyway, it seems like I should just restrict my comments to be about what is written in posts, and give up trying to discuss how posts are written. I think questions of how something is written are intriguing, and I like to believe (though it’s probably a fantasy) that including such discussion in the comments encourages BB’s writers to maintain high standards. But now I’m beginning to suspect that there’s no point or interest in such analysis, and that it will just derail the thread. Oh well. 
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interesting, yeah i really only ever fly out of two airports and both do the shoes off thing. the only time you can skip it is if you have TSA pre-check (or i assume whatever the frequent traveller thing is called)
i just printed out some online bills… i mean what’s the difference, in the PDF form they look the same as the ones they mail to you.
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Soon you will need a REAL ID card in order to get into the building where you get your REAL ID card. Catch 22!
The federal courthouse and main Post Office where I live have had security scanners at their entrances for years. The other Post Offices don’t have anything. Maybe those locations are considered to be sacrificial pawns in the “GWOT”.
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No.
As far as I can gather it’s pretty much just the US that does the whole no shoes thing. If you beep you might be asked to take of your shoes, but otherwise nope.
In case you haven’t noticed, the US is a crazy place.
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“Thank you, citizen, for updating your facial recognition map in our database” is no doubt in very small print somewhere on a gov website that you may or may not be given a URL to.
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I think the gold star angle fits in with a narrative of the U.S. president making anti-Semitic comments this week, the justice department sending anti-Semitic emails this week, etc etc.
Maybe it isn’t fair - the gold stars aren’t new, and are used to mark desirables who may get on planes, rather than undesirables who must get on trains - but it does highlight the very problematic road this country is determined to go down.
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Land of the Free, Home of the Brave*
* Not valid in all locations. Some restrictions may apply.
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Thank you for your comment. Yes, I understand how it relates to recent events, and I do think it is important to, as you say, “highlight the problematic road this country is determined to go down.” I also don’t think it is unfair to complain about the gold star: it’s in poor taste, even if it’s not perfectly analogous to what happened under the Third Reich. My concern about the gold stars not being new, I’ve decided, is off-topic. It’s not worth using any more energy explicating why it’s worth discussing the journalistic act to present them as new when they’re not (an act that could be simply a benign mistake or intentionally disingenuous [but still ultimately benign in an “ends justify the means” kind of way]), so I’m dropping it. If people do not see that as an interesting topic, I can’t make them. Anyway, I appreciate you engaging with me about it!
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Shh, keep pointing things like that out and you’ll be put on The List! 
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On a recent flight with my kids the agent asked their names and ages and then he asked my son who I was.
“Uh, nobody”.
We’ll have to go over that before the next flight.
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(Had to look that one up)
Don’t give them any Great Ideas on additional enforcement.
