Policia de Catalunya

Occasionally, Peggy Noonan is off the mark. But today she is right on about our country's collective psyche, and she's described it to perfection with delicious wit.
Her essay is called, "Special Assistant for Reality." By necessity rather than choice, she acknowledges, the president lives in a bubble. He has no idea what Americans are thinking and feeling because, well, he's so bubbled.
The solution? Read on. Her imagined dialogue hits the bulls eye.
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What a president should ideally have, and what I think we all agree Mr. Obama badly needs, is an assistant whose sole job it is to explain and interpret the American people to him. Presidents already have special assistants for domestic policy, for congressional relations and national security. Why not a special assistant for reality? Someone to translate the views of the people, and explain how they think. An advocate for the average, a representative for the normal, to the extent America does normal.
If Mr. Obama had a special assistant for reality this week, this is how their dialogue might have gone over the anti-TSA uprising.
President: This thing is all ginned up, isn't it? Right-wing websites fanned it. Then the mainstream media jumped in to display their phony populist street cred. Right?
Special Assistant for Reality: No, Mr. President, it was more spontaneous. Websites can't fan fires that aren't there. This is like the town hall uprisings of summer 2009. In the past month, citizens took videos at airports the same way town hall protesters made videos there, and put them on YouTube. The more pictures of pat-downs people saw, the more they opposed them.
President: What's the essence of the opposition?
SAR: Sir, Americans don't like it when strangers touch their private parts. Especially when the strangers are in government uniforms and say they're here to help.
President: Is it that we didn't roll it out right? We made a mistake in not telling people in advance we were changing the procedure.
SAR: Um, no, Mr. President. If you'd told them in advance, they would have rebelled sooner.
President: We should have pointed out not everyone goes through the new machines, and only a minority get patted down.
SAR: Mr. President, if you'd told people, "Hello, there's only 1 chance in 3 you'll be molested at the airport today" most people wouldn't think, "Oh good, I like those odds."
President: But the polls are with me. People support the screenings.
SAR: At the moment, according to some. But most Americans don't fly frequently, and the protocols are new. As time passes, support will go steadily down.
President: I've noted with sensitivity that I'm aware all this is a real inconvenience.
SAR: It's not an inconvenience, it's a humiliation. In the new machine, and in the pat-downs, citizens are told to spread their feet and put their hands in the air. It's an attitude of submission�the same one the cops make the perps assume on "America's Most Wanted." Then, while you stand there in public in the attitude of submission, strangers touch intimate areas of your body. It's a violation of privacy. It leaves people feeling reduced. It's like society has decided you're a meat sack and not a soul. Humans have a natural, untaught understanding of the apartness of their bodies, and they don't like it when their space is violated. They recoil, and protest.
President: But you can have the pat-downs done in private.
SAR: Mr. President, you don't know this, but when you ask for that, a lot of TSA people get pretty passive-aggressive. They get Bureaucratic Dead Face and start barking, "I need a supervisor! Private pat-down!" And everyone looks, and the line slows down, and you start to feel like you're putting everyone out. You wait and wait, and finally they get another TSA person, and they take you into the little room and it's embarrassing, and you start to realize you're going to miss your plane. It's then that you realize: all this is how they discourage private pat-downs.
President: I've wondered if this general feeling of discomfort might be related to a certain Puritan strain within American thinking�a kind of horror at the body that, melded with, say, old Catholic teaching, not to be pejorative, might make for a pretty combustible cultural cocktail. This heightened consciousness of the body might suggest an element of physical shame we hadn't taken into account.
SAR: Mr. President, the rebellion isn't shame-based, it's John Wayne-based.
President: I don't follow.
SAR: John Wayne removes his boots and hat and puts his six-shooter on the belt, he gets through the scanner, and now he's standing there and sees what's being done to other people. A TSA guy is walking toward him, snapping his rubber gloves. Guy gets up close to Wayne, starts feeling his waist and hips. Wayne says, "Touch the jewels, Pilgrim, and I'll knock you into tomorrow."
President: John Wayne is dead.
SAR: No, he's not. You've got to understand that. Everyone's got an Inner Duke, even grandma.
President: What should I do?
SAR: Back off. Say you spent a day watching YouTube. You're not giving in to pressure, you're conceding to common sense. "Free men and women have a right not to be trifled with. We'll find a better way."
President: If I don't?
SAR: Well, every businessman in America already thinks you've been grabbing his gonads. You'll continue that general symbolism.
President: Janet Napolitano won't like it. Drudge is always after her. He'll get all "Big Sis Bows Now." She might quit.
SAR: Oh God, yes. A twofer!
President: I'd look like I got rolled.
SAR: Then look strong. Fire her. She's been a disaster from day one. Now she's the face of the debacle.
President: Won't they think I'm weak?
SAR: No. They'll think you returned to Earth. They'll think ground control broke through to Major Tom. They'll think you took a step outside the bubble.

Labels: Barack Obama, Fondling, Groping, Janet Napolitano, Naked People Machines, Peggy Noonan, Privacy, Reality, Tsa

Last Monday I was furiously compiling a list of TSA horror stories, as catalogued by the Washington Post in the comment section to this post. And I came across this anonymous comment:
"to all of you who think GateRape is neither an invasion of your privacy nor an unwarranted usurpation of your 4th amendment rights, may I remind you of Ben Franklin's quote 'They who would trade liberty for security soon have none and deserve neither.'
I don't know what the solution is but sexual assault (virtual or physical) on children while their parents are forced to watch is not the answer.
I'll be driving and enjoying the scenery out the car window."
Posted by: FedUp389 | November 15, 2010 12:41 PM"Gate rape," I thought to myself. Why, that just sums it up perfectly.

Pickled tink, I wrote a post and called it, "Gate Rape: the Saga Continues." (Am I obsessed? Yes. And I will be for the foreseeable future. I get really hot and bothered when the Constitution is suspended on our own soil.)
When that nice Iowa Hawk man -- go read his clever TSA version of "Come Fly With Me" -- kindly linked to my "comply and fly away" post, I thanked him and told him to feel free to appropriate "gate rape."
Because it's the message, not the messenger, that's important here. It is gate rape. Let's not kid ourselves. Ah, but I better stop now, before I launch into a diatribe about our 4th amendment rights and begin frothing at the mouth.
In any event, it appears "gate rape" took off from there.
So, as Paul Harvey would say, "that's the rest of the story."
And "FedUp389," whoever you are? You da' bomb.

Labels: Body Scans, Fedup389, Gate Rape, Naked People Machines, Strip Searches, Tsa, Washington Post, Who Coined Gate Rape?

The federal government, through the TSA, believes safety is more important than . . . well, anything. Hence, the "groin checks" we are now forced to endure in order to fly. That, or get virtually naked and subject ourselves to an intimate visual inspection, and radiation.
My new-found hero, John Tyner, stood up to them. "You touch my junk and I'll have you arrested," he told the would-be genital groper. And he got most of it on tape.

The TSA groper, who sounds eerily like Dexter (or, for us older folk, Carlton the doorman), took it all in stride for the most part. (Click here for new CNN video and you can hear Dexter yourself).
Some of the other agents, though, were not amused. It's not a molestation, one female agent can be heard arguing. "It's an administrative search."
In the end, American Airlines refunded his ticket. And the TSA threatened him with a $10,000.00 fine and a civil lawsuit if he left the airport. He took the gamble and got the hell out of Dodge. Note to John: I'll contribute to your legal fees.
You can read his blog post about it here.
Ah, safety. It is of such paramount importance that we must give up our rights and essential liberty.
But why stop in the air! What about Greyhound buses? Shopping malls? Football games? Street festivals? Block parties?
Speaking of safety, child abuse is a major problem in our country today. Now we have the ability to keep children safer: by installing a government-monitored camera in every kitchen in the country. That would curb a lot of abuse.

Then there's the issue of domestic violence. It's epidemic. Why not install cameras in the bedroom, too? Think how much safer women will be.
We could keep college women safer by stopping bulimia with cameras in every college bathroom.
What's that, you say? That allowing the government to watch us while we're naked, having sex, or putting on our clothes is just . . . wrong?
Oh, calm yourselves. We're already letting the government see us naked and feel our genitals and breasts. Might as well give them a few more jollies with a little sex.

After all, if we're willing to undergo searches of our bodies in the name of "safety" so quickly -- and the sheep-like masses clearly are -- what aren't we willing to do?
James Madison said, "The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home."
He also said, "If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."
A more modern-day statement, no less profound, comes from an unnamed teenager in Juarez, Mexico. Although he was speaking of drug lords rather than tyrannical government, he makes my point just the same.
"We prefer to die in one year standing up than living all our lives on our knees."

Labels: Breasts, Fines, Fondling, Genitals, Groping, John Tyner, Liberty, Naked People Machines, Privacy, Radiation, San Diego Man Ejected From Airport, Tsa, Whole Body Scanners