UP IN THE AIR, DOWN IN MY PANTS

I’ve been to second base with hundreds of strangers this year:  TSA workers from all over the country. I’m an airport slut:  been patted down, felt up, groped, and manhandled without one bit of romance.  But I’m optimistic, and ready for the next steps:  ball cradling, probing, and underwear searching.  This shit's getting hot.

And people are worried about government getting their hands on their healthcare?  

Well, we are at a far more perilous threshold:  our government is about to tamper with our privates, thanks to some punk who put a bomb in his pants.  It’s embarrassing not getting your panties to blow up the right way.  Thank goodness he failed, but a guy who can’t explode his own undies looks very bad, and sexy, to gang members in prison.  Just sayin’.

I’m gonna cop to it:  I hated the shoe bomber, and now I hate the undie-bomber.  And I’m sure I’ll hate the next knucklehead – the toupee bomber, the root canal bomber, the underarm bomber – whatever.  Because post 9/11, for every action  there’s a new detraction.  Do I put my undies in the same bin as my computer?  Or do they go right on the belt with my shoes?

Already we can see the future, and eventually the outline of your fellow passengers’ buttocks.  Yes, here comes a new age of awkward:  machines that see through our clothes and contraptions that sniff our threadbare boxer shorts.  My dog Honey does this to strangers, and it is embarrassing.

We’re all forced to submit to new stringent screening.  But submit to the same TSA workers at Dulles I watched high-five each other after making lewd comments about a woman’s breasts?  Hey, I know it’s a monotonous job, but c’mon guys…eyes, down.

Despite our best technology and billions spent to smell, see, and feel up the enemy, we the citizens of Troy continue to pull the Trojan horse past our own gates by ignoring the memos and mismanaging the lists.  If screening at airports is the front line, then what the hell is the front office doing? 

We paid for the dot connectors.  The anti-stovepipers.  The inter-agency communicators.  And threat-leveler, assessing, whatchamacallits.  So where are they?

Since we’ve spent almost a decade showing the world what kind of offense we have, could we please play some intelligent defense?  And leave our underwear out of it.