Tighter airport security procedures provide Americans looking for another reason to be angry with a new target. A few of the nation’s airports now have full-body scan ma-chines. Passengers who set off alarms may be asked to go through them before boarding. Some are told to do so on a random basis.
It is a voluntary process, but those who refuse must submit to a rigorous pat-down.
Enter the angry. They want to do neither and loudly claim their rights are being abused.
The angry are wrong, as usual. A body scan takes but a few seconds. It exposes a person to about as much radiation as they would get in two minutes of flight — assuming they are allowed to fly. It will detect a weapon or explosives that aren’t picked up by the magnetic screening every passenger first receives as they enter a boarding area.
Pat-downs are a different matter. They take about four minutes to complete rather than the few seconds required for an electronic body scan. The examinations are thorough, so examiners put their hands where most people don’t want to be touched by strangers. They must do so, of course, to make certain that knives, etc., are not concealed.
That said, the airport employees who perform those duties are all business. Women pat down women; men pat down men. They wear stone faces and are elaborately uninterested in the passengers before them.
And passengers with no need to be angry accept the procedure with stoic patience. If asked, most would say they are willing to endure an examination by either method because doing so makes them feel safer. They are, in a word, reasonable.
The unreasonable, those determined to throw a hissy fit rather than follow the security rules, should be encouraged to travel by bus.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
