Somehow, the story about the Texas woman suing the Transportation Security Agency for being forced to remove her nipple rings with a pair of pliers at airport security seems like a story that should not passed unremarked here at Protein Wisdom.
Although I share the overwhelming consensus opinion that the TSA seems to have gone overboard in this case, I will briefly play Devil’s Advocate, just for the sake of adding value.
The TSA, being a government bureacracy, will generally create the incentive of “better safe than sorry,” particularly given that the agency was created in response to the 9/11 attacks.  Thus, some examination was probably necessary to insure that the flight was not being infiltrated by a fembot. Weere such a device to unleash a hail of bullets on a passenger airline, innocent travelers could have been sucked out of the plane like Auric Goldfinger.
That being said, once the TSA ascertained this was a more simple case of self-mutilation, the agency could have let the woman pass as though she had a pair of misplaced earrings.
Comment by Pablo on 3/28 @ 10:36 am #
There’s a rule now that says you if you’re carrying liquids, gels or aerosols, they must be in 3 oz or smaller containers, and they must all fit into a 1 qt ziplock bag, which is intended to limit the total quantity of such items. One such bag per traveler.
I recently saw a woman with one small (3 oz or less) bottle of hand lotion. That was the only item she had that fell into the liquid/gel/aerosol category. She was not allowed to bring it through the security checkpoint, because it wasn’t in a ziplock bag. If she’d had a bag, she could have tossed that one bottle in and passed right through. But outside of a bag? Security threat.
Comment by Log Cabin on 3/28 @ 10:44 am #
Sure they went overboard by making her take the damn thing off. But come on; the next time someone sneaks a garrotte wire in their nipple ring (or prince albert, or labial ring, etc.) and kills a pilot with it, all the professional blamers are going to be screaming for blood.
And isn’t there a sign or a disclaimer somewhere that you should not wear this stuff while going through the detector?
Sorry, no sympathy here for this chick.
Comment by Jim in KC on 3/28 @ 10:44 am #
Security theater.
Want to improve security on airplanes? Issue frangible ammo to all CCW holders when they board.
Comment by dicentra on 3/28 @ 10:50 am #
The fembot episodes were the best ones on $6m Man, IMO. Scary because they were so relentless I tell ya. And because the face would come off, showing all those circuits and wires where a face should be. Nothing creepier.
Comment by The Lost Dog on 3/28 @ 11:01 am #
I think they just wanted to see her tits.
Comment by Bill D. Cat on 3/28 @ 11:03 am #
Someone’s gotta ask ……. what if she had ….you know …..junk …down there ….?
Comment by N. O'Brain on 3/28 @ 11:04 am #
Erm, can I help?
Comment by maggie katzen on 3/28 @ 11:07 am #
pablo, I had some lotion in my purse when I went to see RTO off and they gave me a bag for it and let me keep it. I was’t even flying
Comment by sashal on 3/28 @ 11:10 am #
so?
Comment by Jeff G. on 3/28 @ 11:15 am #
I think Craig C already posted on this. So now it’s been, like, SUPER remarked here at PW.
Comment by Pablo on 3/28 @ 11:18 am #
maggie, they let you through security when you weren’t flying? Perhaps we also have a consistency problem.
Comment by Karl on 3/28 @ 11:20 am #
Jeff, you are of course completely correct. I even read it myself last night, so that’s a total lapse on my part. However, CraigC didn’t offer a defense, so there’s at least a nugget of newness there.
I could just lay off. There’s too much me as it is.
Comment by Karl on 3/28 @ 11:22 am #
For some reason, the too much me link didn’t register.
Comment by Karl on 3/28 @ 11:22 am #
Third time’s a charm.
Comment by happyfeet on 3/28 @ 11:23 am #
Jeweled nipples are supposed to be provocative though really. If you start circumscribing teh provocative than what’s the point really I think.
Also there can always be more Karl I think. Or at least not less.
Comment by alppuccino on 3/28 @ 11:32 am #
I thought nipple piercings were the barbed-wire that keep strange men from sucking on them while on line at the bank.
I mean really, why did God make nipples anyway.
The defense rests Your Honor.
Comment by SarahW on 3/28 @ 11:46 am #
Ha, Karl got through your flimsy breast-jewelry security measures.
Comment by Techie on 3/28 @ 11:49 am #
Earrings, I can understand. Anything beyond that is really a cry for help.
Pingback by Neocon News » What do the Death Star and Nipple Rings have in common? on 3/28 @ 11:54 am #
[...] hilarity from: protein wisdom | Hot Air | The Thunder Run | Related PostsAmazing! Second female soldier since WW2 to receive [...]
Comment by SarahW on 3/28 @ 11:57 am #
So those of you with banking to do, look out for Karl.
My mother had some eccentric ideas about the mutilation required for pierced ears. Worse, I unconsciously internalized and adopted her prejudice, and have both intact ears and a smug opinon of their superior intactness. And screw earrings that hurt like a sonofabitch.
Comment by Big Dan on 3/28 @ 12:24 pm #
Perhaps she was outfitted like Janet Jackson, and could have removed the Shuriken once on board and taken off someone’s head á la OddJob.
THEN you’d all be whistling a different tune!
Comment by Big Dan on 3/28 @ 12:26 pm #
OK, shoot. Linky no worky.
Comment by Christopher Taylor on 3/28 @ 12:30 pm #
Other than tattoos and smoking, there are few things I find less attractive on women than body piercing. I am not particularly fond of earrings, women with 5 in each ear and the obligatory belly ring and the rest are just not appealing. Look at me! I’m vain, wasteful, and trendy!
Pingback by Stop The ACLU » Blog Archive » TSA Thwarting Nipple Ring Terror Plots on 3/28 @ 1:03 pm #
[...] have much of any argument against them. However, if you want the devil’s advocate argument, Protein Wisdom has an amusing one. Even more disturbing than the news….this photo that accompanied [...]
Comment by Sigivald on 3/28 @ 1:48 pm #
Surgical-grade stainless steel (which is the most common metal used for piercings – followed by titanium) doesn’t easily set off metal detectors, especially in normal piecing quantities.
She must have had very impressively large nipple rings to set off the detector at all, or it was on maximum “go off nearly at random” sensitivity, such as it would find an alarm on anyone that had fillings or a pinned bone – ie, far more sensitive than is useful for security screening.
(Now, if the rest of it is accurate, that sounds like normal TSA inspector incompetence, since there’s no rule about “no body jewelry”, just a requirement that the “alarm … be resolved”. A simple private-area inspection is the actual policy the TSA has for such things.)
(See the interwebs, such as here, for more information.)
Christopher: Sounds like a personal problem. Wasteful?
Yeah, what with metal being so scarce and all, doubtless earrings are repulsively conspicuous consumption… the hell?
Log Cabin: No. It’s never really a problem. They don’t normally set off metal detectors. That’s why there’s no disclaimer or requirement to remove, you see.
Also, uh, cabin doors are locked, so it’s hard to garotte a pilot. But even if one wished to, some nice high-test monofilament fishing line would work perfectly well, and have exactly zero chance of setting off a metal detector. Or use their shoelaces. So, that’s an utter non-starter.
Pablo: The point of the bag is that it concentrates any out-gassing of the contents of the bottle, making detection of anything naughty much easier.
Comment by maggie katzen on 3/28 @ 1:50 pm #
yeah, sorry, I was commenting from my phone…. at DFW, at least, they let military friends and family through to the gate. I got pulled to the side because I had lotion not in a ziploc bag. I think it was fairly recently they’d put those rules in place so the TSA person just put it in a bag for me and let me go. it was last March, RTO was going back to the ’stan after his two weeks of R&R. and I just kept the bag and it turned out to be a good thing cause a few weeks ago something happened to the tube and it leaked, but it’s not all over my purse. yay!
Comment by SarahW on 3/28 @ 2:10 pm #
I gotta stick up for Christopher. I have a similar, if not same, personal problem. I find obbservation of multi-pierced ears on another (woman, really), a moment for self-congratulation on my own taste and restraint. True confession – I think of multi-piercings as ridiculous flash and ostentation. I told you, my mother got me good.
Maybe it’s a typical white person thing? I’m sure there’s something racist and rumbly in there… it’s such a primitive, hotentot thing to scarify oneself like a savage. My father brought me dolls back from India, I remember being simply horrified by the nose rings and slave bracelets on the ankles.
Maggie, ziplocks have saved me from many a purse-juicing.
Comment by SarahW on 3/28 @ 2:13 pm #
On the other hand, if I had my choice, tiaras would be suitable for dinner out, if not the grocery store.
Comment by FabioC. on 3/28 @ 2:20 pm #
” I have a similar, if not same, personal problem. I find obbservation of multi-pierced ears on another (woman, really), a moment for self-congratulation on my own taste and restraint. True confession – I think of multi-piercings as ridiculous flash and ostentation.”
Yeah, but has it anything whatsoever to do with in-flight security? Screening is supposed to be about actual threats, not fashion styles.
Comment by Pablo on 3/28 @ 2:21 pm #
Sigivald,
In an X-Ray? Sorry, I don’t follow. Would you elaborate?
Comment by Pablo on 3/28 @ 2:24 pm #
Oh, she’s a beastie (She’s on with Cavuto). There goes the hawtness quotient of this whole thing. And Gloria Allred is her lawyer. I can feel my penis shrinking.
Comment by SarahW on 3/28 @ 2:27 pm #
Totally, Fabio. I’m taking passenger-with-piercing’s side on this one.
Comment by Radish on 3/28 @ 2:30 pm #
Screening is supposed to be about actual threats, not fashion styles.
Yeah, that’s why the guy with the keffiyah and the 8-oz bottle of cologne walks through while the TSA swabs my pork chops for explosives.
Comment by SarahW on 3/28 @ 2:46 pm #
You put pork chops in your carry-on? Oh, those pork chops.
Comment by piraticalbob on 3/28 @ 2:55 pm #
The TSA guy must have seen the trailer for Machine Girl:
http://www.firstshowing.net/2007/12/10/worth-watching-dec-10-next-years-cult-hit-the-machine-girl/
Comment by Cave Bear on 3/28 @ 3:05 pm #
Pablo, for a while now they have had devices at airport security that can “sniff” for explosives. I recall making a trip out of IAH once (and this was a few years before 9/11), and had a laptop with me. The screener made me bring my bag to another devices and place it up against the thing. I’d never seen one before (and I flew a lot in those days). She did something to the console and then said I was free to go. I asked her what this device was and she said it checks for explosives. It would not surprise me to find out they now have these incorporated into the X-ray machines or the like now.
Anyway, that’s why the bit about the bags and outgassing, etc.
Comment by Harry Bergeron on 3/28 @ 3:17 pm #
All your teat-bling are belong to us!
Comment by Radish on 3/28 @ 3:18 pm #
Real pork chops, Iowa Chops specifically. I was taking a hostess gift to New England. I understand wanting to examine any bones that show up on the X-ray *grin* but swabbing pork for explosives shows a marked misunderstanding of recent airplane bomb plots.
Comment by jon on 3/28 @ 3:24 pm #
If pulling out the ring is standard operating procedure for security folk, what happens when the terrorists bring in a grenade?
Time to update those manuals and mandate some more training, HSA dorks.
Comment by Pablo on 3/28 @ 3:32 pm #
Right, but at the checkpoint, only the person goes through them. Checked baggage goes through CTX, and the person might be selected to go through trace portal screening, but carry ons are not. If something suspicious is noted on X-ray, the items are hand screened. They still have the machines which will read a swab from a suspicious swabbed item. But I don’t see where the ziplock bag has any function other than limiting the quantity of liquids and containing many of them to a small, easily managed space.
Comment by Pablo on 3/28 @ 3:37 pm #
BTW, it seems that if you’re trying to detect it, and if such technology had been incorporated into the X-ray, secondary containment of outgassing is the last thing you’d want.
Comment by Cave Bear on 3/28 @ 3:55 pm #
All I can say is that this gal was either wearing some hellaciously big “teat-bling” (gonna remember that one…:), something the size of a dinner plate, or else it was some really cheap assed pot metal thing. I understand that when you first get your nipples pierced they use surgical stainless steel for the initial job. Also, they are usually pins, not rings, which makes them easy to remove.
Either way, why make her remove them? Granted, I find such things very trashy (frankly, to me things like nipple/labia/whatever piercings fairly scream “skanky ho”), but once the object was identified, why she was not immediately sent on her way makes no sense.
Comment by Christopher Taylor on 3/28 @ 3:57 pm #
Yeah, what with metal being so scarce and all, doubtless earrings are repulsively conspicuous consumption… the hell?
Each piercing costs money. Money that is wasted by spending it on these piercings. As in wasteful.
Comment by Cave Bear on 3/28 @ 4:00 pm #
Pablo, I wasn’t dreaming that explosives check my carry on was subjected to back in the late 1990s. It’s quite possible they have changed the procedures around since then, but still have the capability. How it’s done, I don’t know; the “incorporating it into the X-ray machine” was just a guess, but I could think of a couple of ways to get around the “secondary containment of outgassing” thing you mentioned.
Comment by Pablo on 3/28 @ 4:10 pm #
No, I’m not suggesting that. It was swabbed, and the swab was then tested, right?
Comment by SarahW on 3/28 @ 4:13 pm #
Cave bear – it must have been the weird cheap metal, because the jewelry was normal size. Or else maybe, it was her underwire perhaps exposed to scanning because her bra was on the ratty side, that tripped the alarm.
Radish: I hope this link works, it’s from that old Leon Redbone pork chop song.
Comment by SarahW on 3/28 @ 4:16 pm #
Boo nay. It does NOT work. If you go here, you can listen to an excerpt (Te-na-na)
Comment by Lost My Cookies on 3/28 @ 4:17 pm #
Last time I flew out of Cincinnati I had to hacksaw off my Prince Albert right there in the security line. But I knew that it was just our govenments way of keeping me safe and justifying the post 9-11 surcharge on airline tickets. My penis and I thank you TSA, and so does the old lady on her way home from visiting the Creation Museum, she learned a lot.
Comment by Diana on 3/28 @ 4:31 pm #
That settles it. I’m driving.
Comment by Cave Bear on 3/28 @ 4:40 pm #
Pablo, no, they did not swab anything. The machine was about the width of a decent-sized microwave oven, only about half again as high, and had this platform like arrangement on the left side, where my bag was placed.
The device had a control panel, fairly complicated (this thing screamed “prototype”; bear in mind this was ten years ago) with a small CRT display. Naturally I wanted a closer look at it, but the guard, a rather large woman of the black persuasion, gave me a serious “back off, honky” look when I tried to peek. She pushed a couple of buttons, watched the screen for a few seconds, then handed me my bag, saying I was free to go.
I asked her “What IS that?” and her rather terse reply was “It checks for explosives”. Hearing that, I decided it was time to get the hell out of Dodge, so I immediately headed for the gate.
I know they’ve had devices that can “sniff” for explosives or other chemical traces for some time. My guess (and again, it is just that, a guess) is that the machine drew in air from around the bag and could presumably detect trace compounds from any explosives that might be present. I say that because I noted the “platform” she put the bag on was one rather large piece of metal, with both a horizontal and vertical side. Naturally the horizontal surface is where the bag was placed, but it was also up against the vertical side, which was incorporated into the chassis of the machine itself.
Of course, this is all predicated on the idea that the guard was telling me the truth when she said it was for an explosives check…
Comment by FabioC. on 3/28 @ 6:13 pm #
Cave Bear:
“My guess (and again, it is just that, a guess) is that the machine drew in air from around the bag and could presumably detect trace compounds from any explosives that might be present.”
Yes, that’s what they do. Probably the sensor inside the machine is a semplified version of a mass spectrometer – though other types are available, I suppose.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 3/28 @ 6:31 pm #
My wife, Scottish Kate, has a rod in her right leg running from her knee to her ankle.
Would the TSA require an amputation?
Comment by TmjUtah on 3/28 @ 7:00 pm #
The sniffers use highly refined gas chromatography, which is the same ballpark as mas spectogrophy.. I too am on a phone… I reload metallic cartridges for about 5 different calibers, plus own and shoot a muzzle loader carbine.
And a small cannon.
So I handle black and nitro powders frequently.
Every time we fly, my wife goes through security first so she can get pictures the day they put me on the floor. It’ll be a Kodak moment.
Comment by Little Miss Attila on 3/28 @ 8:17 pm #
Any metal detector that picks up a nipple ring will pick up the underwire in my bra.
So unless we want to mandate the “braless look,” the TSA needs to rein itself in. (Guys: try to be objective, here, okay?)
Comment by Terry Gain on 3/28 @ 9:03 pm #
I’m unable to express an opinion this most important issue without more evidence.
Comment by The BoBo on 3/28 @ 9:11 pm #
That’s just freakin’ nuts! Can WE get any more government intrusion than this? The TSA is all screwed up.
Comment by Daryl Herbert on 3/28 @ 9:39 pm #
There. Has. GOT. To be more. To this story.
Sometimes, people get a little wacky when they travel, and flip out. Who knows?
I know this: no sane person at the TSA would force a woman to do that. There are only three kinds of TSA employees who would do that: a pervert, a sadist, and the imaginary kind.
Comment by CraigC on 3/28 @ 10:46 pm #
Sigivald, the metal detector didn’t go off. She was randomly pulled for wanding. And Karl, I may have already posted about it, but I didn’t get 57 comments. Sniff. You guys hate me.
Comment by thor on 3/28 @ 11:43 pm #
What’s up? How come Karl hasn’t posted 10 mas I-hate-Obama threads since he duped this metal nips story?
Someone please make the threads go-round.
Free the Nips!
Comment by SarahW on 3/29 @ 8:49 am #
Daryl, the TSA admits the forced removal, and failure to offer any pat down or visual inspection. In fact, they defended the guards as acting according to policy (a policy unavailable for public inspection, apparently) and to have now changed their policy with regard to alarm activating metal on “sensitive” areas of a persons body.
Comment by steveaz on 3/29 @ 8:49 am #
What this story suggests is, we need to return to the pre-9/11 normalcy in our airports. Period.
Thiink about it…remember how fast e-check-in was at LAX prior to 9/11? And now compare that memory to this week’s “Nipple-Piercing” story.
Basically, the Islamo’s and the Democrats have wrung one giant victory out of the 9/11 attacks. Working in tandem, they’ve managed to coerce free Americans into erecting a giant, unionized bureaucracy…and into accepting huge inconveniences, replete with violations of our personal space, just to get on a friggin’ flyin’ bus. Worse, together they’ve indemnified (or in-dhimmi-fied) even non-flying Americans, as every single taxpayer has to fit the bill for this ridiculousness.
Now, every American airport, big and small, is like Tel Aviv’s: under a protracted seige.
Before 9/11 we were free to fly. Now we’re not. In this respect, it can be said that Americans have lost at least one crucial battle in the global WOT.
OT, kind of: I wonder, if the Democrat(ic)s were to win the White House in ‘08, would they even have the cojones to reduce the FTA’s screeners in the face of a reduced terrorism threat? Somehow I doubt it – they’d risk losing all those unionized Federal employees’ votes.
Comment by thor on 3/29 @ 8:55 am #
Nipple yourself, child.
Comment by serr8d on 3/29 @ 9:09 am #
Where’s Dan? Stalwart, gutsy, reliable, trooper, yeoman. He must be busy.
Everyone guest posting here is excellent! Ignore the anal pores who speak differently!
(I left this NSFW ‘chop on the other nip thread, but this is another day.)
Comment by Christopher Taylor on 3/29 @ 9:16 am #
Before 9/11 we were free to fly. Now we’re not. In this respect, it can be said that Americans have lost at least one crucial battle in the global WOT.
Think this through a bit more, here’s a slight shift in wording to help you consider what you’ve said:
Before Pearl Harbor, we were able to buy gas and meat without restrictions. During WW2 we could not. In this respect, it can be said that Americans lost at least one crucial battle in the war against the Axis.
Rationally responding to a threat and making sacrifices during war does not equal victory by the enemy.
Comment by J.Peden on 3/29 @ 9:55 am #
in the face of a reduced terrorism threat
There ain’t no reduced threat, or a reduction which would be wise to presume. There is a reduced actuality – due to a changed policy – and it would be foolish to simply abandon willy nilly any element of that policy, because you would then be making a bet against the policy’s perfect record.
Comment by SarahW on 3/29 @ 10:01 am #
I’m free to farking buy or charter a plane, which is what the beautiful people do to avoid the herd searches.
So it’s still America, buddy. The TSA won’t acknowlege the wrongdoing directly, only a change of a double-secret procedure. Apparently the TSA agents believed there was no option for pat-down of a “sensitive” area, although TSA has published the opposite, and never warned the public of any other requirement for removal of body jewellry. I have read anonymously authored comments by purported TSA screeners, sayiing that some screeners “warned” the TSA of this kind of scenario occurring “when the policy was changed”; the TSA never warned the public that pat-down was no longer an option for a body piercing.
More disturbing to me is the refusal of the TSA to acknowlege that creating spectacle and male guards audibly snickering outside the curtain of the woman in this case was shocking bad manners and unprofessional and disturbing, even if the giggling was unrelated to the woman. Even in the light most favorable to the guards, with the laughter being nervous commiseration at the ridiculousness of the situation, or caused by something else amusing in the vicinity, males laughing just outside of a flimsy curtain of a woman required to yank something from her nipple is just unseemly, and should be rebuked instead of commended.
Comment by happyfeet on 3/29 @ 10:59 am #
This is not unseemly. It’s an anomaly. An outlier. You can roll the dice 100 times, have a nipple ring lady pass through 100 security lines, and not have the same outcome twice, but the odds one will run crying to Gloria Allred are really really small. Spectacle? Not so much, really.
The snickering males really a lot only became snickering males when an AP reporter deemed them so. “She said she heard male TSA agents snickering as she took out the ring.” I think this is a ladywho hears snickering males a lot as she gets through her days.
But snickering TSA peoples do not a spectacle make. It’s really never the case that people stop and stare at these sorts of things. They want to get to their gate, and there’s very much an ethos now that them’s what get pulled out of the lines for special treatment are regarded a lot as random, could-have-been-me type peoples. Unless they’re belligerent or really a lot extremely blatantly terrorist-looking. Maybe, I guess, maybe if they’re really, really hawt, but dykey homely chicks for sure just don’t make the spectacle cut.
Comment by donald on 3/29 @ 11:08 am #
A nice belly ring on a serious piece of ass is a postive I would think.
Comment by SarahW on 3/29 @ 11:30 am #
I think this is a ladywho hears snickering males a lot as she gets through her days.
As is, actually does hear it. I certainly have actually heard a lot of male snickering about her and her nipple piercings, and like I said, even if they weren’t snickering at her, they should have concealed their amusement or nervous laughter.
The spectacle complained of was, the number of guards and the small crowd of onlookers that developed. The commotion in this case did attract a crowd, unless you completely discount the passengers account, most other portions of which were admitted by the TSA.
There isn’t a whole lot of good reason to believe she imagined her humiliation.
The lack of discreet handling of the situation is as disturbing as the unwritten rules about screening of sensitive areas. She has a right to be screened in private, by sober and discreet people. The first guard actually did not know what to do, and had to summon other male guards. There was commotion, attention, and an unreasonable demand that she remove the piercings, which are, as you know, not meant to be casually removed and reinserted.
Comment by happyfeet on 3/29 @ 11:35 am #
I just have to disagree. When she runs to Gloria Allred, there suddenly becomes really a lot of reason to think she was imagining her humiliation. She is not at all behaving in the way humiliated people behave.
Comment by happyfeet on 3/29 @ 11:37 am #
She needs to work on her humiliation skills. Practice crawling under a rock or something.
Comment by SarahW on 3/29 @ 11:38 am #
Any policy about piercings should be explicit, BTW. The TSA has acknowleged a “change” is procedures, but refuses to state the policy in place at the time of the event, which would have to be a policy contrary to the official one it maintains to prepare passengers for security screening.
Comment by SarahW on 3/29 @ 11:41 am #
Some people who are belittled and humiliated try to prevent the same thing happening to others by ratting the perpetrators out. Ratting out via Allred will certainly be noticed.
Comment by happyfeet on 3/29 @ 11:43 am #
People have a duty to snicker at the discomfiture of people who have pierced nipples. This is how society safeguards the deliciously trangressive essential nature of the bejeweled teat.
Comment by SarahW on 3/29 @ 11:44 am #
TSA isn’t getting the benefit of my doubt, because it has a bad track record, worse than Allreds, even, and it admits most of what occurred.
Comment by SarahW on 3/29 @ 11:45 am #
But I scorn piercings, even ear ones. And I can’t laugh at TSA being so stupidly cruel.
Comment by happyfeet on 3/29 @ 11:47 am #
Hmmm. But even if it happened as she said, she could man up a lot I think. Marginally, anyway. The thing is, it’s not trauma, it’s an anecdote.
Comment by happyfeet on 3/29 @ 11:49 am #
If it’s trauma it’s mostly a lot cause she had pre-existing nipple issues I think.
Comment by SarahW on 3/29 @ 11:54 am #
It’s trauma because of the way nipples scar up. Hurts to pull out – piercing jewelry there isn’t meant to be casually removed and replaced. There’s danger of infection, tearing, and significant discomfort on removal and reinsertion.
Comment by McGehee on 3/29 @ 11:55 am #
I’m going to post a comment here only because I think the last comment on the last thread at Protein Wisdom should not contain the N-word.
Comment by SarahW on 3/29 @ 11:57 am #
Not that she doesn’t have some “thing” going on with the nipple hurt. But assuming she made all of this up as a stunt, notwithstanding the snickering NOW in full view, the admissions of TSA and the announced change in TSA policy – I don’t forget that TSA won’t say now and never did say what its policy was at the time of the screening.
If removal is required, because pat down and/or visual inspection of a woman’s breasts or other private areas of a man or woman, passengers have a right to know the rule before they attempt to board a flight.
Comment by SarahW on 3/29 @ 11:59 am #
That was not an attempt to foil you, McGehee.
Comment by happyfeet on 3/29 @ 12:00 pm #
I guess if she had been a hawt Nokia executive traveling with her boss, who didn’t know that those amazing breasts that taunt him every day were adorned. Then she could have a story about how awkward it was, and how her career was affected by the way her boss’s attitude changed that day. That she was pretty sure she heard him snickering too. So I guess maybe there’s some potential here for a serious conversation about rights and dignity and a Lifetime movie and all that. But that’s not what happened.
Comment by SarahW on 3/29 @ 12:02 pm #
And you are just lucky, that other than colloidal silver, there is no metal in haggis.
Comment by SarahW on 3/29 @ 12:05 pm #
I hear Alyssa Milano is cast a lot of Lifetime Television stuff now. A fine NEIJ?
(nokia exec in jep)
Comment by happyfeet on 3/29 @ 12:10 pm #
Huh? What did I miss? This is the last thread? No one tells me anything. When did we find this out? That’s not good news. No. That’s very very unwelcome news I think. Make it stop.
Comment by SarahW on 3/29 @ 12:12 pm #
Wait, what?
Comment by happyfeet on 3/29 @ 12:13 pm #
McGehee’s #80…
Comment by SarahW on 3/29 @ 12:14 pm #
Yes, that’s what I wait whatted about, #80.
Comment by J.Peden on 3/29 @ 12:14 pm #
Now the sorely aggrieved one has managed to fail the next test of her mettle, as well.
Comment by happyfeet on 3/29 @ 12:15 pm #
I hate being out of the loop.
Comment by SarahW on 3/29 @ 12:16 pm #
The slow-post day now has an ominous looming quality.
Comment by SarahW on 3/29 @ 12:17 pm #
IS THAT SNICKERING?
Comment by happyfeet on 3/29 @ 12:18 pm #
Yes. Ominous. This is very sad. This site had over a half million page views this month. That is many, and also now nipples aren’t any fun at all to talk about really.
Comment by J.Peden on 3/29 @ 12:19 pm #
Free the Nipples!
Comment by happyfeet on 3/29 @ 12:21 pm #
Nipples as harbinger of teh end. Nipples deserve better I think.
Comment by zombyboy on 3/29 @ 12:26 pm #
If McGehee is right–and he’s a pretty bright guy–then I guess this will be the last comment I’ll be leaving on the site. I sort of like the idea that it mentions nipples. Sorry, McGehee.
Nipples
Back to my point: I’ve had a similar experience with a body piercing.
Before we even get to the TSA, here’s a hearty “screw you” to people who consider the expense “wasteful”–I didn’t get it for your benefit or, obviously, for reasons you would understand. Thanks for providing your well-considered judgement to my personal expenses, though.
My own experience with semi-public and private humiliation at the hands of the TSA doesn’t sound as extreme as the young lady experienced. I shed no tears, I just got more cranky with every minute that passed by. That she would go to Allred doesn’t make her any less reliable, it just means that she trusts a well-known feminist to help her with her complaint. Shocking, I know, but there it is.
Happyfeet, she was humiliated and now she’s pissed. Personally, I can sympathize. And you certainly seem to have an awfully lot of insight to how people were reacting to the event on the scene considering that you weren’t there.
My problems with TSA are these: the agents are unprofessional, underpaid, operate from a playbook that none of the rest of us are completely privy to, and they don’t care about little things like marching you off to a semi-private space to make you remove your piercing while leaving your carry on, laptop, ipod, and other personal effects at the end of a conveyor, unwatched, unprotected, and easy prey for anyone else going through the lines who happens to have seen you taken away to your little private cell.
The rules that have been made are capricious. I remember that for passenger pick-up, it used to be required that I drive around and around while waiting for someone to get to the pick-up area at DIA. This was hilarious to me because I would love to have someone explain how your average, Islamic extremist car bomber was going to be stopped from blowing up his car. They don’t park, walk away, and blow up; these are suicide bombers. It wasn’t a change to make me safer, it was a change to make me feel safer.
Instead, it was a change that made me contemptuous of the idiots who didn’t know how to execute and create intelligent security policies.
Rationally responding to a threat and making sacrifices during war does not equal victory by the enemy.
The problem is that TSA isn’t always responding rationally and hasn’t. The problem isn’t that we’re being asked to make smart sacrifices, but stupid sacrifices that don’t make us any safer. I won’t equate it with a victory for the enemy, but I will say that it’s a big loss for common sense.
The metal from a piercing should never be enough to set off a metal detector–and, if it does, can you really tell me that our security is enhanced by forcing a woman to actually remove that ring instead of just showing it to someone in private? Was she likely to hijack the plan with a nipple ring? Or, even more absurdly, with her nipple ring still in her nipple? That’s idiocy and if the woman really offered to display the piercings to a female attendant in private, she was the one acting in a responsible and rational manner. TSA should be embarrassed.
Comment by zombyboy on 3/29 @ 12:27 pm #
Now, out of curiosity, was that just a guess or do you know something that we don’t?
Nipples.
Comment by Lesley on 3/29 @ 12:45 pm #
SarahW: we must be related. My mother believed “only whores and gypsies pierce their ears.” You are correct. A mother’s admonitions do stick with one.
Comment by happyfeet on 3/29 @ 12:45 pm #
Dan said his computer was messed up is all I knew.
Comment by SarahW on 3/29 @ 12:45 pm #
I know this. There is a shocking lack of posting.
Comment by SarahW on 3/29 @ 12:46 pm #
I need an airbook and some string.
Comment by SarahW on 3/29 @ 12:59 pm #
Lesley, you have to be carefully taught! My own mother managed to communicate that sentiment clearly, though I cannot remember her ever so much as actually admitting prostitutes and gypsies existed. Seeing as I rejected so much of my upbringing, I can’t quite figure out why that part stuck.
Comment by Carin on 3/29 @ 1:09 pm #
What is this ominous talk?
Can someone hold me?
Comment by happyfeet on 3/29 @ 1:25 pm #
This is not the same as closure. It’s like when your dryer breaks and your clothes are all still wet and you’re not sure if maybe the guy can fix it or what but you really don’t have anything else to wear and even if it was unhealthy to become emotionally attached to your Kenmore appliance, you’re just gonna have to suck it up and get a new one or maybe just do without for awhile. I remember when we all spent like a whole afternoon just talking about appliances. I think it was a dishwasher. What Ric said sounds prophetic now…
These fragments I have shored against my ruins. Or maybe it’s all just a terrible misunderstanding cause of what zombyboy said here. I missed that yesterday. That happens a lot. I still don’t get really the knock knock … boobs thing either. And I’m really a lot attentive.
Comment by Slartibartfast on 3/29 @ 1:26 pm #
I think possibly the solution to happyfeets’ problem is replaceable orifices.
And that’s all I’m gonna say about that.
Comment by serr8d on 3/29 @ 1:35 pm #
Maybe McGehee only meant ‘last’ as in the ‘last in a sequence’, to resume shortly.
Not the freakin’ ‘Last Supper’ sequence sort of thing…
Comment by happyfeet on 3/29 @ 1:40 pm #
Oh. I think I’ll maybe make a sandwich then.
Comment by serr8d on 3/29 @ 1:42 pm #
Dishwashers. Hmmmmph. Mine failed last Christmas, when we had the house full of stay over guests. I yanked the damned thing out from under the countertop, turned it over, took it apart, and pulled out some broken glass that was clogging a one-way wastewater valve, then shoved it back under the countertop.
It hasn’t caused me a bit of trouble since. Lesson learned, I suppose.
Comment by serr8d on 3/29 @ 1:45 pm #
For hilarity…
Comment by happyfeet on 3/29 @ 2:00 pm #
He a lot cultivates a certain demo, no? In my hometown in Texas there’s a nightclub out on the highway where a lot you can get drugs and get murdered if you want or just have a beer and maybe play pool. Or darts. Quite a few choose to get murdered, and you’d think they’d close it down, but no one thinks that’s a good idea cause then those people wouldn’t have anywhere to go, and they’d come to the other places where the other people are what aren’t them. AoSHQ et al a lot we should be thankful for I think.
Comment by McGehee on 3/29 @ 2:08 pm #
What? Er, um, no. No. That was not snickering.
[...]
Neither was that.
Comment by McGehee on 3/29 @ 2:08 pm #
Oh, and: NIPPLES!!!
Comment by serr8d on 3/29 @ 2:17 pm #
I especially liked #181, where he’s screaming at the top of his lungs.
Comment by maggie katzen on 3/29 @ 2:27 pm #
here ya go, happyfeet, to quote:
we just kinda ran with that.
Comment by happyfeet on 3/29 @ 2:42 pm #
Ohhhh. Thanks, maggie.
Comment by happyfeet on 3/29 @ 2:53 pm #
See now you’re just being sarcastic. But for real, no, I’m hardly ever sympathetic to the people in the AP stories so when I am sympathetic it’s mostly at least kinda genuine. Mostly really this is just some lady what has a problem not mine. Lots and lots of ladies like that out there.
Comment by alppuccino on 3/29 @ 4:20 pm #
What is this ominous talk?
Can someone hold me?
5 kids in 7 years. You’ve been held enough, I think Carin.
.
.
DAMN THIS HEAD INJURY!
Comment by narciso on 3/29 @ 7:15 pm #
Well let’s see, the TSA as presently constituted, is an abomination. They came about, only because of the stampede toward ‘doing something” after
Argenbright, screwed the pooch on 9/11.
Not everybody is equally likely to be a bomber, and they’re not subtle enough
to determine whether something like TATP is going to be used. But have the
candidates really spoken out, about abolishing or even reforming it, no.
The TSA is “Big Brotherism” as seen in “Brazil” inflexible, bureaucratic, and generally useless. We’re not affected by electronic surveillance, financial transactions tracking (better
luck next time, Gov’nor)but the TSA is
the behemoth standing in the way. That doesn’t excuse the fact, that there’s no way, they’re going to get around a
metal nipple ring.
One can speak out about the ‘innocent
Muslims at Gitmo” of course, the main problem is we usually release the wrong ones, like the “Tipton 3″ which we’ve ascertained they lied, about their terrorist training (due to some fancy MRI type lie detector)the Lousiana born Saudi national, almost all members of the Utaibi & Quahtani clans (like the one for whom Durbin, was crying ‘crocodile tears for, despite the fact he’d be dead, had Quahtani had his way)The thirty Gitmo
prisoner, who’ve bombed, or been killed
by security forces, in various countries prove the point.
Comment by steveaz on 3/29 @ 9:42 pm #
Christopher,
“Before Pearl Harbor, we were able to buy gas and meat without restrictions. During WW2 we could not. In this respect, it can be said that Americans lost at least one crucial battle in the war against the Axis.”
I appreciate the thoughtful reflection, C.T., but the fact still remains: just like Affirmative Action, the TSA’s intensive screening programs will need to “sunset” sometime. That is, the bureaucracy will need to dial-down as the threat of terror recedes.
So, my question still stands. Can it dial-down? Will the Democrat(ic)s in Congress let it? I still say, “No.”
What do you think?
Comment by SarahW on 3/29 @ 10:33 pm #
Can it dial-down? I think they just revised their policy, so that they can twist knobs.
Comment by Mike C. on 3/30 @ 8:56 am #
No, this can’t be. I thought when they de-privatized airport security that all of the problems would disappear. Certainly they’ll have all the bugs worked out when government takes over health care.
Comment by McGehee on 3/30 @ 9:53 am #
You are correct, sir! They had to federalize the security checkpoints in order to “professionalize” the people running them.
…I’m still waiting for signs of intelligent life in our government.
Comment by steveaz on 3/30 @ 11:42 am #
Nice twist, Sarah!
Thanks for the giggle!
-S
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