Lots of chatter these days about the new x-ray machines that the TSA is using at airports. They claim the images are so detailed that one can tell whether or not a man is circumcised.
If this is embarrassing, one can "opt out." However, this means that a TSA employee will be required to physically "pat down" the traveler.
So, which is worse? Letting some stranger see your private parts or letting him feel them?
Personally, it doesn’t bother me to let somebody else see under my clothes. What bothers me is radiation from an x-ray machine! A physicist here at the University of California stated that for these machines to be able to get the kind of images we’re seeing, the radiation has to be at least 20 times the amount the government is saying they are emitting.
When you go to the dentist and get your teeth x-rayed, why do they put a lead blanket over your body? Why does the dental hygienist leave the room before each “shot” from the x-ray machine?
Frequent fliers, flight attendants and pilots would be subject to several doses of radiation each week. This cannot be good. Even if the U.S. Government says it’s okay.
We cannot simply trust the government on this. Asbestos comes to mind. Everybody thought this material was safe until it was too late. Why do shipbuilders in Hampton Roads have 7 times the national rate of mesothelioma? Did you know that Kent even had asbestos in its cigarette filters from 1952 to 1956?
Speaking of cigarettes, how long did our government allow profit-making companies to put various poisons in a product that was inhaled by millions of our citizens? (The still allow them to do so! The tobacco companies just cannot advertise and have to put warning labels on each pack of cigarettes now.)
I will not be x-rayed at the airport. I will opt out. I will gladly strip off my clothes if somebody really wants to make sure I’m not a security threat. Or I will gladly have a female TSA employee grope me. (As the old joke goes, I’d only give her 20 minutes to stop!) But, I will not let somebody else radiate my body when there is absolutely no benefit to me.
We had some clown try to light his shoes on fire, so we now have to take off our shoes. We had some idiot try to ignite a fluid, so now we cannot take a bottle of water through security and have to segregate small amounts of shampoo and conditioner in a plastic bag. We had another goofball try to blow up his own underwear, so now we have the new x-ray machines.
Why don’t we take a bold, proactive approach and pinpoint the real problem? Specifically I’m talking about young, Muslim, Middle-Eastern males who have a radical religious agenda.
If it were middle-aged, white guys with brown eyes who were blowing up airplanes, I would not in the least be offended whenever the security guys needed to really check me out. I would understand.
Juan Williams was recently fired from his job at NPR because he said that when he saw a young Muslim-looking guy on an airplane, it made him nervous.
Well, Juan, I’m with you! So is every other non-Muslim person in this country! They are the threat. Our security teams should be profiling passengers and targeting the potential bad guys this way.
I have an idea! Maybe we can get the airport security personnel in Arizona to start screening fliers this way! If they did that, I would definitely move back to the Valley of the Sun!
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