Immaculate Consumption

Let's face it, it's a plastic world. Pay cash nowadays and you're liable to arouse the suspicions of Homeland Security. Credit cards used to be about convenience, now they're about identity. It's how the powers that be keep track of us. But few of us realize what a tenuous hold we have on our identity. A well-known actress of my acquaintance last week applied for an ID card in New York, where she now lives. She needed it because she was to fly to California for a TV job and you need a photo ID to get on a plane, but both her California driver's license and passport had recently expired. She went to DMV armed with the license and passport, birth certificate, marriage license, and the social security card she'd had since she was kid. They wouldn't give her the ID because, they said, the social security card wasn't valid. Huh? The supervisor even recognized her from television, but hey, that didn't mean she is who she is for some reason. In fact, how do any of us know we really are who we are?