Don't Touch My Junk !

November 19, 2010

Don’t Touch My Junk

Charles Krauthammer

The junk man’s revolt marks the point at which a docile public declares that it will tolerate only so much idiocy.



Ah, the airport, where modern folk heroes are made. The airport, where that inspired flight attendant did what everyone who’s ever been in the spam-in-a-can crush of a flying aluminum tube — where we collectively pretend that a clutch of peanuts is a meal and a seat cushion is a “flotation device” — has always dreamed of doing: pull the lever, blow the door, explode the chute, grab a beer, slide to the tarmac, and walk through the gates to the sanity that lies beyond. Not since Rick and Louis disappeared into the Casablanca fog headed for the Free French garrison in Brazzaville has a stroll on the tarmac thrilled so many.

Who cares that the crazed steward got arrested, pleaded guilty to sundry charges, and probably was a rude, unpleasant S.O.B to begin with? Bonnie and Clyde were psychopaths, yet what child of the ’60s did not fall in love with Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty?

And now three months later, the newest airport hero arrives. His genius was not innovation in getting out, but deconstructing the entire process of getting in. John Tyner, cleverly armed with an iPhone to give YouTube immortality to the encounter, took exception to the TSA guard about to give him the benefit of Homeland Security’s newest brainstorm — the upgraded, full-palm, up-the-groin, all-body pat-down. In a stroke, the young man ascended to myth, or at least the next edition of Bartlett’s, warning the agent not to “touch my junk.”

Not quite the 18th-century elegance of “Don’t Tread on Me,” but the age of Twitter has a different cadence from the age of the musket. What the modern battle cry lacks in archaic charm, it makes up for in full-body syllabic punch.

Don’t touch my junk is the anthem of the modern man, the Tea Party patriot, the late-life libertarian, the midterm-election voter. Don’t touch my junk, Obamacare — get out of my doctor’s examining room; I’m wearing a paper-thin gown slit down the back. Don’t touch my junk, Google — Street View is cool, but get off my street. Don’t touch my junk, you airport-security goon — my package belongs to no one but me, and do you really think I’m a Nigerian nut job preparing for my 72-virgin orgy by blowing my johnson to kingdom come?

In Up in the Air, that ironic take on the cramped freneticism of airport life, George Clooney explains why he always follows Asians in the security line:

“They pack light, travel efficiently, and they got a thing for slip-on shoes, God love ’em.”

“That’s racist!”

“I’m like my mother. I stereotype. It’s faster.”

That riff is a crowd-pleaser because everyone knows that the entire apparatus of the security line is a national homage to political correctness. Nowhere do more people meekly acquiesce to more useless inconvenience and needless indignity for less purpose. Wizened seniors strain to untie their shoes; beltless salesmen struggle comically to hold up their pants; three-year-olds scream while being searched insanely for explosives, when everyone — everyone — knows that none of these people is a threat.

We pretend that we go through this nonsense as a small price paid to assure the safety of air travel. Rubbish. This has nothing to do with safety — 95 percent of these inspections, searches, shoe removals, and pat-downs are ridiculously unnecessary. The only reason we continue to do this is that people are too cowed to even question the absurd taboo against profiling — when the profile of the airline attacker is narrow, concrete, uniquely definable, and universally known. So instead of seeking out terrorists, we seek out tubes of gel in stroller pouches.

The junk man’s revolt marks the point at which a docile public declares that it will tolerate only so much idiocy. Metal detector? Back-of-the-hand pat? Okay. We will swallow hard and pretend airline attackers are randomly distributed in the population.

But now you insist on a full-body scan, a fairly accurate representation of my naked image to be viewed by a total stranger? Or alternatively, the full-body pat-down, which, as the junk man correctly noted, would be sexual assault if performed by anyone else?

This time you have gone too far, Big Bro’. The sleeping giant awakes. Take my shoes, remove my belt, waste my time, and try my patience. But don’t touch my junk.

— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2010 the Washington Post Writers Group.


Don’t Shoot the Groper
November 19, 2010

By Mark Krikorian

Krauthammer’s “Don’t Touch My Junk” column is outstanding and I think he’s right that Americans’ tolerance for indignity to avoid the unthinkable prospect of profiling is exhausted. But I’m afraid some people are directing their anger at the wrong target. Ron Paul, for instance, has introduced legislation to remove TSA employees’ immunity from prosecution and arrest them for assault. Kick the Bureaucrat is a game conservatives love to play, and sometimes it’s justified, but this time it isn’t. The problem is the policy that the White House and its minions have instructed their subordinates in the civil service to carry out. And it’s not just the Obama folks; Bush insisted on this non-profiling approach, and Republicans ran Congress for four years after 9/11 and supinely permitted it.

I just heard Ann Coulter make this very point today, at David Horowitz’s shindig in Palm Beach (hey, a third-stringer like me can’t sneak onto the NR cruise, but this is a pretty good alternative!). Anyway, Ann said that the TSA people are actually big fans of hers, but they’ve been told to follow certain procedures, so what are they supposed to do? (She also suggested that everyone being groped should make “sex noises,” like in the “I’ll have what she’s having” scene in When Harry Met Sally.) Ironically, Ann’s fan base in TSA is likely due to the Democrats’ insistence that the function not be outsourced to private firms; this has meant that the TSA screeners are overwhelmingly Americans, often former military — almost the only Americans working at the big airports I’ve been to.

We see the same “kick the bureaucrat” thing in immigration — whether it’s overwhelmed Border Patrol agents or inspectors, or visa officers and USCIS adjudicators told to ignore fraud, it’s the hapless schmo carrying out the ridiculous policies of his superiors who gets blamed. The fish rots from the head down, and that’s where our ire, and our policy changes, have to be focused.