The passengers most certainly deserve part of the responsibility of missing their flights (assuming anybody but the one person did miss their flight, the only reports are what she said the airline told her, not confirmed by the airline). It was not totally out of their control to prevent this from happening. If they wanted to stand in the little pen listening to the airline paging them over and over again to board and did nothing about it that was their choice. It would not have been mine.

If they choose to arrive at security with only five or ten minutes to the start of boarding, that was their choice, it would not have been mine.

It is quite possible there was no outrage because only one person was affected by the delay because she showed up way too late.

Yes the TSA detected something in the candy that set off the alarm, and had to investigate it. Maybe it was legitimate, maybe it was not (there are some candy ingredients like ammonium chloride in licorice that could be mistaken for things the scanners are looking for), but that's not the point.

I'm not blaming the passengers. I'm saying they could have done things differently and quite possibly made their flights instead of just sitting there doing nothing. There were lots of things that could have been done differently to get the people on the 12:35 flight, by the TSA, by the airline, and by the passengers. They all share in the responsibility of those missing the flights.