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Security on planes

Nov 23, 2010 | 12:24 PM

There are approximately 500,000 people in airplanes, in the air right this, or any other moment.

As of this minute, a half million people at least, have gone through a security check, mostly without much to say about it.

There is one jerk, however, who shouted that a pat down is sexual assault. The media jumped on the story. Both are stupid and you can’t fix stupid.

It is easy to mislead people, simply by using word that isn’t quite the right one. A man claims his six-year-old son was patted down and traumatized. The boy was screaming for his father but the father was helpless.

The proof of this is that while the little boy walked down the ramp to enter the plane, he was crying. When the stewardess asked the father why he was upset, he yelled out the story. She told him he was over reacting.

From reading his rant, I agree with her.

There really isn’t a whole lot of need to pat down a six-year-old, true, and other travelers said that the pat down in question really was aggressive. Most six-year-olds can be holy terrors but not Holy Terrorists. However, what if he was carrying a weapon for his father? Criminals do use children to commit crimes, because the child can’t be arrested and charged. It happens often enough here in Saskatchewan.

It was not likely that the boy had gun in his pants, but why should security people take a chance when it is your safety and their job involved. Apparently, there was some question to make the security people check the boy. Couldn’t be the father was aggressive and the boy was upset to begin with could it? I think that is likely. What if he had been quiet and sensible? He wouldn’t have made the 6 p.m. news and what kind of loss would that be?

How many children are crying when they walk down the ramp to board the plane? Is it trauma?

If the father was not trying to get attention, or act like a jerk because he was one, the words ‘scared’ or ‘upset’ would be a heck of a lot more appropriate.

He could have calmed his child. Security people were unlikely to lock him up or shoot him or whatever froze him to the spot and kept him from taking care of his child quietly. I certainly would have comforted one of my children. Wouldn’t you? Asking them to let him comfort the boy while the pat down was conducted is not unreasonable. However, calm and reasonable don’t get your name in the papers or on television.

One young man is sure that security checks are unconstitutional. He has appeared on television news and has a web site with no fewer than 17,500 supporters! “Pat downs are sexual assaults! Scanners are pornography because someone is looking at the screen,” he claims. Are security personnel perverts who are delighted to be paid for catching a five second view of a naked body? I don’t know about you, but my body isn’t what it used to be – which was pretty darn good when I was younger. However, my aging body and yours, are more apt to make the ‘perverted’ security checker cut the scan time down to one second and less, if he thought he could get away with it. I am reminded of the cartoon in which the husband asks his wife, “Are your knees swollen or are you going braless again?”

This idiot has worked on some photos with his computer to show that, if you blur the picture well enough, hidden objects can’t be seen by the computer operator. On his computer, yes, but I think the chances of adjusting the scanner at the airport, so your contraband doesn’t show, are not good. Not good at all.

If a government says it is going to be, it is going to be. Grow up, shut up and get on with it. Besides, it may be your only chance to be a porn star.

Why harass some poor security checker, who is probably only earning minimum wage and who is trying to feed the family, not gawk at your um, your ‘Never minds’.

Unless, of course, you want to get your picture in the paper.

P.S. That is not why my picture is in this media outlet.