Check please!

Greetings gentle reader,

For my compulsory posting tonight, I wanted to make a comment on the airport screening process controversy.  I hear that there is a move amongst some parties to encourage passengers to "opt-out," either of the revealing body scan or the full-body pat down.  (Incidentally, I'm actually not sure if one can legally opt out.)  I don't really have a serious, studied argument for one side or the other, so I'm not going to share anything more than two gut reactions to the whole thing.

First, I can't imagine that many people will actually want to make themselves spend more time in the airport when they could spend that time getting to their destination.  Nor would they want their young children to spend that time.  Nor would they want, one might hope, for all the other people that just want to be passengers to spend that time on the day before Thanksgiving.  Either way, I'm pretty sure that the hubbub there's been already in the news has been enough to call attention to the objections that people have, and the technology will be changed for the better (apparently, it's already developed and in use in Europe).  Maybe even the national and flight security infrastructure will adapt!  Maybe we'll all just get along.  But until then, and certainly through the damn holiday, people can put up with either 1) the same body search to which they've been potentially subject for several years now (I've had one!), or 2) a picture that is perhaps unflattering but also the best technology we have in a US airport to see if you got something on you that you shouldn't.  Or maybe it's that sketchy grandma character with the aisle seat...

My second point is merely the observation that, to the outside observer, it would seem we Americans love to be the voyeurs, but not so much the voy...ees?  I don't think that's really true on the individual level (more so than for any other earthling, anyway).  But it's funny how much sex and violence "we" can consume on the screen, but then deliver such shock and horror about the subtly displayed outline of our own naked body--this display being a trade-off that could help prevent more of the real-life violence that we witnessed not 10 year ago.

I suppose it's free speech either way, and I suppose that's why the terrorists hate us. And I suppose that the next time I pay hundreds of dollars to fly someplace, I'll be happy to get my whole money's worth.