The new uptight airline security procedures aren't just affecting the insignificant, tweeting rabble—now even VIPs like Joan Rivers are being inconvenienced. Rivers, 76, was ejected from a Continental Airlines flight bound to Newark from Costa Rica on Sunday because her passport reads: Joan Rosenberg AKA Joan Rivers. (Rosenberg was her late husband's last name, or so she says.) Rivers was cast out by a "nasty and cruel" gate agent because the passport raised a red flag, and she was all alone with no ATM card and just $100 in her purse. Finally back in NYC Monday after spending a night in San Jose, Rivers described her ordeal to the Daily News:
If I were going to make up an alias, I wouldn't pick Rosenberg. I'd pick Jolie or Pitt. Do terrorists wear Manolo Blahniks? I can tell you Donna Karan does not make anything that hides a bomb... I tried the tears; they didn't work. I tried reasoning. I couldn't bribe because I didn't have any money. I said 'I'm going to have a heart attack over this,' so the woman called the paramedics.
Fortunately for Rivers, a friendly porter took pity on her and found a friend to drive her 6-1/2 hours to the main airport in Costa Rica's capital of San Jose, for a flight leaving Monday morning.
