Topic: Libertarianism
The Great Nipple-Ring Caper; Ron Paul Supporter Gets it Off His Chest Stalwart TSA agents defend American travelers from the peril of metallic boobery.by Random Outlier
(Libertarian)
Friday, March 28, 2008
Not that she could possibly care, but I probably wouldn't be much attracted to Mandi Hamlin. As a general rule my taste hardly ever runs to perforated bodies dangling with flea-market bric-a-brac.
Still, I think I'd prefer dinner with Mandi to any conversation at all with the Transportation Security Agency agents who identified her as a threat to those citizens of the Republic who just wanted to fly from Lubbock to Dallas last month.
That's all Mandi wanted too, and she would have made it without difficulty but for alert TSA security experts. She passed through the big metal detector without alarm, so thank Providence for the government lady on guard for hidden danger where ever it may lurk.
With her hand-held detector she scanned Ms. Hamlin carefully and, sure enough, discovered the terrorist potential. Three terrorist potentials, in fact. One embedded in each nipple along with a similarly armed navel.
The TSA lady this conferred with the senior TSA gentlemen who said, "they gotta go."
They had the decency to permit Mandy to take cover behind a screen where she removed one. The other wouldn't budge, so Officer Friendly handed her a pair of pliers.
A pair of pliers? Who can resist the vision of him reaching into a federally approved storage drawer labeled "Kit. Emergency. Anti-Terrorist. Tool, Pliers. Breast. Nipple. Ring. Removal. Authorized Personnel Only." Like Boy Scouts, the TSA is prepared.
Mandi claims she heard the gang of TSA fellas snickering as she cried while pliering out the stuck ring. Oh well, boys will be boys, even with acting with the full majesty of federal police agents.
The details get a little controversial beyond this. There is a list of federal instructions about what airport cops should do for, to, and with our body- pierced citizens. One of them is supposed to give the spangled one the choice of a pat down -- whch Mandi said she'd have accepted -- in lieu of semi-public hardware removal.
A suit has been filed, so we'll probably hear more about all this, but what frightens me is the news report that our well-trained (according to the TSA brass) agents neglected one-third of the threat.
Shorn of the left and right dingle-dangles, Mandi was permitted to board her flight.
But the crack agents missed the peril of her loaded and concealed belly button, and if that isn't cause for a congressional investigation I don't know what is.
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Dump cops, or maybe just dumb acts by usually okay cops who left home after a morning fight with wifey, make too easy a target, and we shouldn't overstate the case.
The good ones do stand between us and the kind of anarchy we don't want, and there are more adequate officers around than real Gestapo wannabes. I think.
But when the horror stories break in the press -- most of them probably don't -- it constitutes a signal that citizens need to maintain an ambiguous attitude about police.
They are sworn to be watchers after our welfare. We must resolve to watch the watchers, alert for the occasional uniformed cretin with one Rambo fantasy too many stuck in his holster.
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So what's Ron Paul got to do with all this?
As a physician he should have been brought in at the beginning, first to counsel Mandi that sticking jewelry holes in her bosom and wherever is a somewhat unnatural act and, while not proven to be particularly dangerous, is not in accord with advanced medical recommendations.
And then Dr. Paul, as a statesman, might have been consulted by the TSA Bureau of Body Piercing Deterrence. Whom, one supposes, he would have advised thusly:
"Are you clowns out of your gourds? Leave. Find real jobs."
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2008 Random Outlier, all rights reserved.
Published: Friday, March 28, 2008
Last modified: Friday, March 28, 2008
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While I also don't think Mandi did herself any favors by piercing her nipples, I definitely feel that her right s were violated and that the TSA agents were extremely unprofessional.
Hopefully, most of us can agree that the TSA does more to inconvenience us, shake us down, and aggravate us than it does to thwart terrorism. My own personal experiences with them have been quite unpleasant. I almost always get profiled and have to go through the special screening. In fact, in one instance, I had an agent say to me that he was going to have to pat me down, and would I be comfortable right there, or would I prefer to go somewhere more private? I exclaimed, "Well, I certainly hope you're not going to touch me in any way that would require privacy!"
One more very important point: I'll just come out and say that I'm a very white Anglo-Saxon caucasian male. And, yet, I'm always on the sidelines, getting frisked, watching people who barely speak English trot right on by. In fact, at one point, a British lady and I were going through the "special treatment" while we watched an entire tribe move right through us with hardly any notice by the agents. Fed up, I blurted out, "Oh, this makes sense! An American citizen born and raised here, and a citizen of our strongest ally, Britain, are being detained while people who fit at least a physical match to a terrorist profile are provided with a red carpet treatment?
What's the point in having the TSA if they are simply going to follow Political Correctness and harass young women about nipple rings, white males because they are white males, and old women because they aren't young men of Arabic descent?
First of all to the "author" of this piece ... what a jerk! Who cares what your attitudes, opinions, likes or dislikes are about a person does with their own body. The fact of the matter is, if in fact any of this even took place to start with, her body modifications were discretely concealed and not being openly flaunted. I have had body jewelry in place on numerous parts of my body for more than 15 years, fly coast-to-coast on a regular basis and have never, not once, been questioned about it nor have they ever "activated" an alarm cuz you see they are made either of the same surgical stainless and or titanium materials that 1,000's of knee, hip, & elbows are made of and countless numbers of orthopedic plates, screws, pins etc., etc., etc. I think your just bored and thought this would be an intriguing topic to blog about. Im suprised you didn't make her out to be some drugged out looking bimbo with a clear and obvious outline of a voluptuously filled thong undergarment showing above the waistband of her way too tight and way, way, way to low cut waistband. Pervert!
While this contains a bit of humor, I think it's obvious that the author's intention is to make a serious point....
Here is another violation of our civil liberties in the name of, uh... security?
I don't think he meant to offend anyone by saying that she's not his type. As he goes on to say, this is about how we've crossed the line, and all in the name of... security?
My sympathies to Mandi and anyone else who's been subjected to unreasonable searches.
Another Ron Paul supporter wrote about this, too - me! I write the Ron Paul Roundups, but I also blog about other things, as well. Check out what I had to say about this story:
I invented the first discriminating metal detector used by a major manufacturer to distinguish between differing metals. Hint, when going through the detector, go slow.
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2008 Random Outlier, all rights reserved.