Dear TSA:
I am, like, so really upset about the possible new rules you are imposing. I saw something about how you are planning to, like, do some sort of x-ray thingies that will allow you to see my body. I know you have said that the company you have hired to do this (hello? Why are we outsourcing? But I digress) "has mitigated that privacy concern by blurring body images and having technicians viewing the images in a different location from the screening equipment." Quote here
So I’m supposed to be less concerned because someone is looking at my thighs at a remote location? Are you freakin’ kidding me?
I’m 52 years old. I was born at the hospital at the United States Naval Academy -- it doesn’t exist any more, because they tore it down to make room for the visitor’s center. That’s okay by me. If you tour the visitor’s center, you will see a replica of the tiny room in which my Dad studied for four long years before graduating at the top of his class and deploying to North Korea thankfully deploying to the Mediterraean. (Thank you, Dad, for writing that paper that got you sent to the Mediterranean -- had you not written it, I never would have been born.)
But I digress.
The last time I looked, people like my Dad went into the service of this country to preserve those liberties our country stood for -- you know, "stuff" like free speech, freedom from random searches and seizures, due process . . . Boring intransigent stuff, maybe, but there you have it.
And the last time I looked, my Dad signed up to enter the Naval Academy during World War II. He was, at it turned out, too young . . . the war ended before he could serve. But he signed up when he was 15, and went to Princeton for a year, waiting for his appointment, just the same.
His Dad, you see, had left a cushy time at Columbia University (where he was an All American on the football team) to sign up for duty during World War I. He flew planes over France (without benefit of parachutes or radar) . . . no one made him do this.
And so, TSA, you want me, the daughter and granddaughter of these patriots, to have myself "scanned" before boarding a plane to fly somewhere here in the United States?
No, thank you.
It is my understanding that the whole point of 9-11 was to wreck our country’s confidence. It was to drive us into economic chaos (!) and to make citizens of this country so fearful that they would venture nowhere.
I remember an on-line message board that existed shortly after 9-11. It was a message board of photos of people with signs saying: I am not afraid.
I am not afraid.
I will not be afraid. I will not let them win. And as for images of my thighs: no way.