The New U.S. Passport: ‘It Is Like Being Given A Coloring Book That Your Brother Already Colored In’

Reviews of the new U.S. passport are rolling in and we can all agree on one thing: It’s really, really patriotic. Should we expect anything less from a document called “American Icon”? “The short, 28-page version of the passport comes with 13 inspirational quotes, including six from United States presidents and one from a Mohawk Thanksgiving speech,” writes Neil MacFarquhar in the New York Times. “The pages, done in a pink-grey-blue palate, are rife with portraits of Americana ranging from a clipper ship to Mount Rushmore to a long-horn cattle drive.”

Can’t forget “the rather large head of a bald eagle” either, which seems to be the centerpiece of a design that caused one new passport owner to remark about its creator, “Don’t you want to kill this guy right now?”

To be fair, MacFarquhar did track down at least one person who likes the new design. “It’s very patriotic,” Cynthia Yacur of Folsom, Calif., told him. “Cool pictures. An eagle. A bison. Nice. Every page is different. I like it.”

My passport doesn’t expire for almost five years, so I won’t get to experience the joy of the eagle and bison for a while. But I will be keeping my eye on how the new passport is received, particularly the implementation of the embedded RFID chip. As we’ve noted, some privacy experts are worried about the possibility of surreptitious access to travelers’ personal information.

Somewhere, as Gizmodo puts it, George Orwell is crying.

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