An eduClaytion special report

The guy had my attention when he told Uncle Sam not to touch his “junk.”  As soon as the John Tyner video went viral Monday, I knew I better get educated because the questions would be coming since I’m supposed to know my stuff.  About government and politics, that is, not junk touching. 

Airport screening has become the dominant issue lately since the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) changed course to allow for aggressive pat downs in addition to the infamous body scanners.  The government groping is already being compared to sexual molestation while scanners have been criticized for providing nude images of passengers and possibly dosing folks with harmful radiation.

Since I’ve already been asked about these happenings a few times, I thought I might quickly lay out what’s happening, what should be happening, and what the Constitution says about it all.

Background

Since the attacks of 9/11, the U.S. government has gradually increased security measures to react to recent plots.  Someone mentioned liquid explosives so we got rid of water bottles.  After the shoe bomber, we had to take off our shoes.  Then it was laptops, then belts, and on it went. 

Then last Christmas some jerk put explosives in his underwear, so now we have to check underwear even though terrorists are always onto the next thing.  The new thing is no doubt going to be explosives hidden in body cavities that won’t be detected by body scanners or feel-ups, but that’s for another day.

The Government’s Plan

Initially, I think the government wanted to invite all of us over for dinner and drinks to seduce us out of our clothes.  Bill Clinton probably would’ve been tapped as the Coaxing Czar.  Unfortunately, not even the Obama administration could afford lobster and cheescake for the 100 million or so air travelers in America each year, so onto plan B.

There are two main types of body scanners going right now.  These machines reveal what’s going on between clothing and skin.  Any foreign objects are visible.  Of course, your private regions are also visible.  This is the part that gets some people angry.  I say some because a CBS News poll shows that only 15% of Americans disapprove of full-body scanners at security checkpoints. 

The images are supposed to be transmitted to a TSA screener in a private viewing area.  That’s the key to eliminating the uncomfortable and personal connection by the way.  According to the TSA, faces are blurred and images can not be saved.  Well, except for those 35,000 images that were saved from 2008, but that’s all been fixed I’m sure.

The Controversy

Under the new guidelines, you must undergo the full-body pat down if you opt out of the scanner.  This experience is being reported more and more as the days roll by with next week’s Thanksgiving travel rush expected to reveal many more accounts.  You’re basically getting a very hands on experience under all clothing complete with more cupping than you’d find in a magic act.  The basic move seems to be sliding but I’ve also heard reports of squeezing and possibly twisting.  Cigarettes are not provided afterwards.

One of my students who I’ll call “Cory” recently got the personal treatment.  He didn’t really have a great time but was able to board a plane.  Those who refuse the pat down are criminally liable because once you start through security you must complete some type of search.  Even if you choose to leave the airport you still must be checked.  If you refuse that check (as John Tyner did) you can be prosecuted.  This law exists to prevent terrorists from testing the system.

There’s lots of issues popping up.  What about children?  Isn’t it child porn to use the scanners?  What about patting them down?  According to a solid USA Today article, “the TSA said Tuesday that children age 12 and under would not have to undergo the more intensive pat-downs…” 

Another issue involves rape or trauma victims unable to cope with such measures.  What about people with religious beliefs opposed to the lack of modesty?  And do we really need to do this to pilots everytime they drive us somewhere?  I mean they’re already at the helm and could probably just drive us into an ocean.    

Now What?

Lawsuits are already out there.  Just wait until some members of Congress get violated.  Eventually, a judge somewhere will strike down the searches and the appeals process will land these procedures in the Supreme Court.  By then, Obama will have made it through at least one holiday cycle hopefully terrorist attack free.  On that, I’m rooting harder for the man than anything else.

In the meantime, what about some options?  “Cory” wondered if he could choose a female inspector for his special search.  “Cory” is funny, but it makes me envision a security menu where we can pick and choose. 

“Yeah, I’ll take the back scatter machine and female attendant #6.  And could you take a look at this spot on my naval?” 

My View

I’m not happy about the government taking away our 4th Amendment rights which protect us from unlawful search and seizure, but I do understand some precautions.  Personally, I’m fine with the body scanners but keep your hand out of my pants dude. 

I don’t ask very much from the government, but I do want it to keep me safe.  If these measures are effective then great, but are they?  I’m not so sure, and if the TSA starts giving prostate exams at check points we need to pack it in.  Wait, that didn’t come out right.

All I know is that when I do finally get on my plane there’s a reason they always move me to that emergency seat on the wing.  I’ll be watching everybody, and I will take out the first leery-eyed fool who reaches for his junk.

This idea infested my brain after reading one of the funniest headlines ever from my new favorite blogger Girl On The Contrary.  The piece is called That Time The Guy Sitting Next To Me On A Plane Took His Pants Off.  I dare you not to read after a title like that.  The short version comes down to insulin, but that isn’t nearly as interesting.

The problem started with 3" neckties

In a related story, blogger Greg Lindsay recently wrote about Jim Lynch, the man who is just tired of airport security.  His solution?  Take off his pants instead of emptying pockets and so on.  Said Lynch:

 “I got a good laugh from airport security about it—she said she had never seen that before. But it’s not like she told me I wasn’t allowed to take my pants off.”

More power to ya, but I’m not sure I want to see middle America standing pantsless in airports across the country.  Sure, the x-ray machines will pretty much strip you down anyway, but this trend would alter the trauma of airport security in ways I’m not ready to deal with.

Jim Lynch is not an old man, but traditionally it’s been those seniors who are most likely to drop their drawers out of nowhere.  In my experience, these older men just like to show off their battle scars from one surgery or another.  Oftentimes they don’t care who is around and discretion apparently takes too much effort.  I’ve actually seen an elderly man drop his pants to show off a scar to a woman he just met!  Fun times. 

Times weren’t so fun for one elderly man in Chicago last month when the 93-year-old fired shots at paramedics making a well-being check.  According to the story, the man failed to answer after his medical-alarm bracelet went off.  The medics gained entry by removing the air conditioner.  The resident mistook the responders for burglars and fired shots at them!  Fortunately no one was injured as the bullets hit the wall.  The story doesn’t say if the man was wearing pants or not.

If these folks aren’t dropping trou, they are going to the other extreme.  It seems the older you get the higher you must pull your pants up.  I’ve seen seniors on mall escalators who don’t even wear shirts anymore.  They just hoist their waist line over their shoulders with 1930s suspender-pulley engineering.  Maybe that’s why they drop their pants so suddenly.  They may just be choking on their belt.

Well, our crazy world has come full circle these days as young people who are afraid of old people are now just as eager to drop their pants.  I mean, not in the, oh nevermind.  We didn’t need Larry Platt to break down the pants on the ground epidemic.

I’m probably not gonna shock anyone by bringing politicians into an article about people who can’t keep their pants on, but a New York State Senator has actually turned saggy pants into a political issue.  In a story I am not making up, Senator Eric Adams said, ”If we raise our pants we raise our image.”  It’s time to reevaluate the necessity of politicians when they are putting time and money into campaigns such as “Stop The Sag.”  You want to fix the economic crisis?  Fire all these useless paid officials with nothing better to do than stare at low hanging pants!

I hope the writer of this article was trying to be funny when he wrote that, “One young man, with his pants very low, thought the whole idea was kind of silly.”  Seriously.  The article also includes this gem.

The Court's Sag-O-Meter

“Well I think it’s a good idea, because I don’t think it looks good, wearing their pants,” Brooklyn resident Charles West said. “I mean, how they gonna run if they have to run?”

Wow, he has a good point there.  There’s nothing more frustrating than when I have to run but realize I can’t because, gosh darnit, I’ve got jeans tied around my calves like I was dressed by a cowboy with a leather lasso (Insert another sleazy politician joke here).

The point of this site is to find meaning in the absurd.  I’ve got to admit this one is pretty tough.  I do find irony in the fact that older folks who complain about the low-hanging belt lines on teenagers can be so quick to lose their leggings for a good surgery story.  Maybe there’s a marketing campaign for belt companies here.  “No matter how you where them, we’ve got a belt for you.”  Most of all, I’m going to just blame Girl On The Contrary for setting my brain off.

Let’s recap.  Whether you have diabetes, need to get through security, want to show off an 8″ scar, or think you look cool just stop it.  Keep your pants on.  That goes double for you politicians who need to all go away.  Leave the rest of us alone so we can sit in front of our computers in our underwear in peace.

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What do you think about people taking their pants off?  Wait, that didn’t sound right.  Follow me on Twitter @eduClaytion or click here to receive posts via email.

The signers spent the summer of ’87 drafting the Constitution in sweaty Philadelphia.  At that draft, the Patriots took an unlikely quarterback in the 6th round who would, oh wait, that was Tom Brady.  Wrong drafting.  Anyway, I should probably leave all the facts to someone who actually teaches history, so why don’t you click on over to a wonderful breakdown on what one writer has called The Great American Secret.

Love the land you live in Americans.  And remember how it all got started. 

Debrahlee Lorenzana: Fired for being her

The first of the business bombshells burst onto the scene this June when Debrahlee Lorenzana lost her job at Citibank for being too hot to handle. Apparently none of her coworkers or supervisors could focus on their work because her appearance was too distracting. I’m assuming these are male co-workers. I can’t speak for the lesbian community because, for those of you who can’t see me, I’m not a lesbian. Or a woman.

I can, however, speak for the male community, and boys you have no leg to stand on. It’s like the time I sat next to the homecoming queen all semester in college algebra. I can tell you a whole lot more about the red tint of her hair than quadratic equations or whatever else those math weirdos do. Anyway, no one listened to me when I explained that I couldn’t focus on polynomials while sitting next to a less than standard form.

Oh yeah, and then there’s the part where you can’t shun someone because they are too pretty. So if Ms. Lorenzana was doing anything wrong then by all means fire her up, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. According to the Village Voice, the fired femme fatale said her bosses “…ordered her to stop wearing turtlenecks. She was also forbidden to wear pencil skirts, three-inch heels, or fitted business suits.”

If you make turtlenecks and fitted business suits too seductive then more power to ya. I mean, when I started college I had to wear a sweater under my turtlenecks just to fill them out.

Donald: Probably not behind this firing

So as a result of all this hotness hoopla, Ms. Lorenzana was stripped of her, wait, what? Oh, stripped of her duties and then fired. If I understand the basic legal argument here it’s that men in her workplace can’t focus on their job without wanting to have intercourse (the sexual kind) with her. According to her friend Tanisha Ritter:

“Men are kind of drawn to her. I’ve seen men turn into complete idiots around her. But it’s not her fault that they act this way, and it shouldn’t be her problem.”

No word on whether or not men also turn into idiots around Ms. Ritter, but I’ve seen plenty of men turn into complete idiots with no women around. Anyway, back to the issue because if I don’t stop thinking about this banker I’ll never get any work done.

Did you know this wave of women being dismissed for good looks is an international trend? Last summer, Amitjo Kajla was fired from a prison in England for being too pretty. She raised charges of harassment last summer. I’m sure it came as a shock when imprisoned men verbally harassed a 22-year-old woman. Haven’t they seen Silence Of The Lambs?

Ines Sainz: If you like that sort of thing

The reason all this came up this week is because of the incident between some New York Jets football players and Ines Sainz, the supermodel reporter for TV Azteca, a media outlet from Mexico that Rosie O’Donnell will never work for. Okay, okay, that’s not entirely fair. Rosie (motto: men never turn into complete idiots around me) will never work anywhere ever again.

In case you missed this story, some Jets players made remarks and catcalls at Ms. Sainz at the Jets complex last week. She Tweeted something about being embarassed then went on to interview QB Mark Sanchez (who was a gentleman). Some other folks in the area decided to elevate the incident and allegations were made. Sainz has said she would not have charged harassment, but she also doesn’t want to get run over by the Women In Sports Media bloc charging hard after these players.

Helen Thomas: Why she REALLY got fired?

Yahoo’s Shutdown Corner included some good info including a comparison to the criticism against ESPN reporter Erin Andrews when she was secretly videotaped through a hotel room peephole. Doug Farrar of that blog says, “…like many of the public takes on Sainz after the incident, there’s an alarming undercurrent of ‘she was asking for it.’” Washington Redskins tailback Clinton Portis chimed in with a basic “what do you expect?” attitude. If women are going to stroll around 53 naked guys, he asked, aren’t these things likely to happen? Portis has since apologized.

What do we say about male reporters in female locker rooms? I know what you’re thinking. Men looking at naked female athletes is different. Fine. I think the real reason men don’t do well in women’s locker rooms is because the networks know they would never get anything done. For crying out loud, we’ve already established that men can’t even work next to a beautiful woman in a turtleneck at a bank! How in the world would they ever get through an interview next to the showers?

So what do you think? Is this harassment or discrimination or neither? Should these ladies just find a new line of work? I’ve been trying to figure this out all week but these articles just have so many pictures. Kidding! Ha ha ha, see how a humor writer jests? Please forward all hate mail to Washington Redskins, care of Clinton Portis. Or just send it to my college algebra teacher.

Harassment, discrimination, or a big waste of space?  You tell me.

If you prefer real journalists with actual facts regarding this story, check out Dan Steinberg from The Washington Post.

Image by Presidio of Monterey: DLIFLC & USAG via Flickr

Can you believe nine Septembers have now come and gone since the towers fell that fall? I’m not going to wax nostalgic this time around. I did that on last year’s anniversary and the 10th anniversary next year is sure to stir up more powerful emotions. This year, I just want to consider a simple question that has been thrown around in recent years.

Each year, more and more young adults with no hard memories of that day observe the commemorations with second-hand emotions. We recall the tragedy of the attacks with heavy speeches and somber silence. The day feels different, weightier. Most of us go on with our day with that knowledge in the backs of our minds that something terrible happened on this date.

The question I am considering now is the idea of making September 11th a national holiday. The date is already called Patriot Day, a discretionary day of remembrance. A joint resolution by the House of Representatives in October 2001 called for the special recognition. President Bush signed the resolution into law later that year. Flags are flown at half-staff. A moment of silence is observed. President Obama continued the tradition of symbolically-timed silence last year before giving a speech at the Pentagon.

Still, there are some would like to see 9/11 declared a full federal holiday in which everything is shut down by the government. States and local areas would follow suit and nobody would end up working as our nation would hit the pause button for the entire calendar square. Does that sound like something you would want? I’m not so sure.

From a practical standpoint, we already have Labor Day right around this time of year. From a historical standpoint, we don’t usually go out of our way to make full federal holidays out of national disasters. For a long time, December 7th meant one thing to all Americans: The attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan in 1941. Many people don’t even recognize that anniversary anymore, but this nation never mandated a day of official recognition, and that terrible event is as close as the U.S. has ever come to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

So what do you think? Should 9/11 be a federally recognized national holiday? Do we want to remember in that way?

Related Articles

• What is Patriot Day? (socyberty.com)