Here we go again. We’ve all seen this movie before. (Soon playing in the comments section below with people attacking my take.) Passenger strongly feels that full-body scans are nothing but a freelance knock-off for Playboy. (Look around the terminal. How many of these people would you want to see naked?)
The TSA is in their painfully exaggerated formality mode. Passenger thinks some gray-haired, serious and hard-working-just-doing-my-job TSA women gets deviant pleasure from a 30-second-sterile-glove pawing of XX chromosomes buoyed up and within reach of a cussing mother. The daughter (the victim of a parent on the brink of self-destruction and who is seemingly deliberately graceless and foreign to just plain old we’re in-this-world-together common sense) has it reinforced that in no way do we give up personal freedom for the good and safety of the larger population. But I’m sure they have a happy, happy home life. Don’t you think? (A little restraint here, Gerry!)
Nobody got hurt. Nobody died. Nothing fell from the sky. The ozone layer didn’t even crackle.
So what if Andrea and her daughter were wearing a turban above olive-colored skin? Who among you would be attacking the TSA (and me) for applying the rules as they stand?
I’m thinking the TSA is pretty much on autopilot. There’s nothing they haven’t seen before; there’s nothing they’re not trained to deal with. They have to treat everyone the same. They have to be color blind, gender blind and language deaf. (Please write your congressional rep. and not me.) Nobody’s tickling a prostate. When a commotion erupts, local law enforcement steps in and the airport keeps running. Will that be chicken, beef or fish?
Profiling? Is that another name for racism? (Please don’t respond to me on that. However you feel you’re not going to sway anyone.) Believe what you want. We’re all victims of our education. We’re all travelers. Good old Mark Twain wrote “travel was fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.” Was he right or wrong?
The 12-months-minus-a-day probation? Maybe she’s a repeat offender or has some other kind of record. (We don’t know.) Maybe she used her favorite TSA profanity in the courtroom. Maybe the judge had hunger pains. (Studies show lighter sentencing after courts breaks for lunch.)
If you got a better plan go build it. Sell it to the TSA, FAA or any airport authority you can. We all wish you nothing but blue skies and fortunes a plenty. (We’re all reasonable, right?) But till you do, maybe TSA is doing the best they can. Trying to read terrorism must be like trying to read the wind.
I’m thinking a lot of dissatisfied passengers are self-made.