Elected officials voiced openly mocking rationales for ethnic profiling.

Evidence

The Louisiana congressman John Cooksey summarized such logic with startling candor: “If I see someone come in that’s got a diaper on his head, and a fan belt wrapped around that diaper on his head, that guy needs to be pulled over.” — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 314

Categorization

• CANDY: Cooksey’s diaper-and-fan-belt line is a striking, almost darkly comic sound bite that captures the casualness of 2001 debates.