Apparently a woman has been convicted for a non-crime.
Let me get this straight: We’ve a global “War on Terror” going on, recent bombings in London, and Bali previous to that, as well as Spain, this is largely a war with Islamic Jihadists, and the TSA is wasting time patting down 62-year-old grandmothers from Wisconsin?
I’d be upset, every female I know would be upset, and I can’t blame the lady for giving the largely uneducated TSA screener what-for. The qualifications for screening positions aren’t exactly difficult, after all. You don’t even need a bloody high school diploma: a year’s work experience will suffice…now that gives me confidence in our airport security. And it’s not like they’re going to attract the best and brightest on $23,000 to $35,000 a year with absolutely no advancement opportunity. Therefore, of course, you get second-rate screeners.
What’s worse, you and I are paying for the wonderful experience of being treated like bloody criminals when we’re simply trying to travel for business or pleasure. I usually get “randomly searched” about every third time through, and it’s damned obnoxious. Other than being young, I don’t exactly fit the profile: I’m a US Citizen who’s never even had a passport and books his tickets months in advance most of the time. Yes, I fly a lot, and just by nature of exposure that’ll up the liklihood that I get searched over a given time span, but still. The story isn’t this woman’s audacity to want to be treated like a human being (how dare she!), it’s that the TSA is wasting resources screening old ladies.
I hate being searched, but as Jane Galt Guest Blogger Contributor A says, profile me. Young to middle-aged men, travelling alone, who don’t check bags. Even setting aside origin concerns as most of TSA’s flunkies aren’t going to be able to tell an Arab from an Indian from a sufficiently tan South American or Spaniard, just devote your limited resources to searching folks more likely to be terrorists: young men. And stop wasting your time feeling up old ladies.
Yup, the Jihadists will likely learn ways around this, but until you’re willing to either deploy those damn backscatter X-ray machines all the prudes are worried about and makes every passenger go through them, it’s best that they actually use their resources for something potentially useful. Or cede power back over to private screening agencies, but I don’t see that as likely.
In a related but tangential note to airline passengers: If some asshole threatens you with a box cutter or other small blade, use your forearm to deflect the knife hand and put the thumb from your other hand as far into his eye as you can push it. Then grab his neck and rip his damn eye out. It only takes a few pounds of force to do this, and he’ll be in immense pain.
