TSA: It’s Just A Kiss Away

Comments 13 comments

20 Nov

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nemo has definitely lost his fear of flying, replaced now by an even greater fear of boarding.  Recent revelations that the Transportation Safety Administration, without any advance notice or discussion, now requires prospective passengers to either:

  1. Pose for a random porno website, or
  2. Permit a same-sex TSA officer to get to third base

have definitely cooled his ardor for air travel, although it has suggested new possibilities elsewhere:

“I don’t want to play ‘Opt-Out Passenger and the Burly TSA Agent’ tonight.  I’ve got a headache.”

If you ever wondered when the government would lose perspective completely and just go balls-out bonkers, this is probably it.  That guy with the detonating diapers has, with this one development, become the single most  godawful thing to happen since 9/11, eclipsing the housing market crash, Lehman Brothers, Lloyd Blankfein’s bonus, and even the Glen Beck rally.  He’s ruined everything.

Think about it — one loon in ignitable undershorts and the whole fucking country has to turn its head and cough anytime we want to fly from New York to Boston.  This is going to do more for Amtrak than the federal government has been able to do in thirty years.

But that’s not the worst part.  We like to look to the future here.  Why would we believe for one second that if there’s a terrorist willing to blow his dick off  in the name of jihad, there isn’t another one in the wings willing to stuff a sausage casing of C4 up his ass.  Hell, they’ll never find that one.   If he “opts out” and submits to a patdown, groping his groin isn’t going to do anything but give him one last thrill before his shit hits the fanjet.

See where we’re headed?

For one thing, imagine the delight of lawyers, who can now employ the “TSA  defense” when a pervert gropes someone.  “He only used the back of his hand, your honor.”

Then there’s the “almost 80% of the people we surveyed said they didn’t object.”  Sure — as long as it’s happening to someone else. Let a mother or father see some leering G8 testing the perkiness of their teenage daughter’s pom-poms, or calling over their co-workers to check out her body scan, and they might express a different opinion, possibly nonverbally.

Okay, Janet?  I understand that you worry a lot about another deranged loser with a set of kabooming knickers,  and I can imagine the hell those meetings must be like (“What are we doing about exploding underwear!  Nothing?  Nothing?”), but this stuff has to stop.  There’s just no point.  If they really want to hide it, they can, and there’s just not squadoosh we can do about it.

I assume that you all think that if you don’t do something, then, if it happens again, they’ll have your guts for garters.  But come on — tell your boys to man up.  Stop trying to cover your asses by grabbing ours.  If we let you get away with this, what’s next?  Mandatory preflight high colonics?  Ob-gyn inspections for all female fliers?  Should I stop giving you ideas?

When all this preflight screening started a long time ago, people complained about the invasion of privacy.  They never dreamed it would come down to actually invading their privates.  I don’t think they’ll stand for it.  If they do — then, hell, they deserve it.

  • CfE

    The real danger of this commentary, beyond the cracked ribs resulting from
    hyperventilating pysteria, is the road map to sinister hiding places for fissile
    jelly. You, nemo, are just the kind of person that makes the TSA’s job harder.
    As surely as journalists tell the truth, there is a deprived singleority out there
    who will find a private body canal to secret a clump of jam powerful enough to destroy
    Ogallalla. But wait. As I earnestly re-read my comment, I find two flaws in
    my argument. No terrorists have a sense of humor (we can prove this with
    th single question: What is funny about changing yourself into fleshy groats?),
    and journalists ***

    • nemo paradise

      Would you really miss Ogallalla? And what’s your problem with dishonest journalists? Are the politicians to have no competition?

    • Lucius Junius Brutus

      What is “Pysteria”? That’s not a “fat finger” mistake; the letter “p” is on the wrong side of the board.

      • nemo paradise

        According to one Tom Kloza, who manages to be funny about oil prices (!), “pysteria” is the “fear one has after drinking a 60 ounce c-store soft drink and then recognizing that the next rest stop is 65 miles down the turnpike.”

        No, I don’t where where CfE comes up with these things. I was just getting over “knute” when he hit us with “groat,” a word I last heard on Blackadder.

  • c.w. Krantz

    “They never dreamed it would come down to actually invading their privates. I don’t think they’ll stand for it.”
    No we won’t stand for it. We’ll be bent over, after all, it is what Americans have become.

  • jfkdljlfkdsfdsf

    Because I’m sure TSA workers are signing up for the job so they can molest people.

    Jesus Christ. I’m sorry someone told you that your body is disgusting and you believed them so now whenever someone touches you with THE BACK OF THEIR HAND you cower and call it sexual assault. I’m sorry you genuinely believe that the body scans are graphic enough to make out the details of the human physique. Take a look at those scanners, it looks like predator is looking at you. Your body in that picture is nothing but shapeless blobs of red and purple. I’d rather an underpaid workers pat me with the back of their hand or walk through some detail-less scan than say, “Well, there’s no point in even trying anymore, if someone wants to blow up a plane they will.”

    • nemo paradise

      Your name indicates some identity confusion, which may help explain your thinking. I have no idea how you came to these conclusions based on what I wrote, but I think a doctor could help you, if you you agree to stay on your meds. By the way, the only person who ever told me my body was disgusting was a girl from Colorado that I dated in college, and I was covered in chocolate syrup at the time. I don’t think I have ever cowered, although I have been sexually assaulted — by the girl from Colorado. (She changed her mind.)

      • nemo paradise

        Oh, and yes — thank you for the Christ compliment; I’ve never been called that before. But actually, I’m not Jesus. Or so my wife and kids tell me.

    • Bluto

      Hey Alphabet Soup (can I call you Al?)

      I agree with your take as it pertains to over-reaction to these techniques. But I’d like to add to your last line, ‘… if someone wants to blow up a plane …’ and they can’t, then they’ll blow-up something else. When they hit a mall near you, will you expect a scanner there when they rebuild?

  • Bluto

    Nemo,

    Sure the searches are ineffective against terrorism. Pretty much all TSA methods always have been. No these searches wouldn’t have stopped the underwear bomber. He’d have done something else.

    However, if anyone is being served an injustice, it’s the TSA agent tucked away in a room viewing transparent images of old men and ladies, children and the likes of my out of shape 43-year-old arse.

    Next time I’m going through wiggling my hips and chanting Helicopter, Helicopter, Helicopter! No one is loosing liberty over this. The scanner speeds things up if anything. It’s ludicrous to think that a green and white image that sort of glimpses your skin covered by an opaque rendering of whatever clothing you wear is an affront to ones ‘right to fly’ is idiotic at best (not that this is your position).

    ‘The Club’ lead to carjacking. Fool-proof airport security will lead to, well who knows? Mall bombs maybe? Which of course will lead to scanners at all mall entrances. What a circle-jerk this is.

    Ya know, the real issue is that the American public seems more ready to experience random radiation treatments than to get behind simple profiling. The Britches Bomber bought a one-way ticket to Chicago in December from somewhere in the Middle-East and wasn’t carrying on so much as a wind breaker let alone a winter jacket. Where was the intelligence on that one? Why wasn’t this guy taken aside long before he boarded?

    If you ask me, we really need a few apparent holes in our security techniques to lure in fuckeads like this dude so as to weed them out one by one.

    • MoT

      The BVD bomber was escorted through security! Hell..!!! Nobody wants to talk about how the guy was “helped” all the way through and even video taped on board while everything transpired. So where is the tape? I would assume in this day where YouTubeism is rife that those clips would have been up in a heartbeat unless the guy doing the taping was part of the project. Wheels withing wheels but everything else afterward is more sauce for the goose.

  • Bluto

    Did I forget to mention that you guys are lame?

    • Burt Kozloff

      Yes, you did. Thanks for correcting the omission.