Re: MD Fun in Manhattan? (or Nebraska)

From: Steve Peterson (peterson.steve@verizon.net)
Date: Mon Jun 23 2003 - 04:41:59 BST

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    All,

    Robert said:
    > Relevance to Dynamic Quality? Everything is relevant!

    Steve:
    (It's nice to see so many new people posting recently.)

    See if this sounds relevant:

    Last week I graded AP Statistics exams in Lincoln, Nebraska. While waiting
    for my connecting flight in Chicago on my way to Philadelphia, I told my
    wife about my experiences getting through security in Omaha. Before
    approaching the ticket counter, government employees were searching bags
    that were to be checked. I happened to draw a full search in the random
    process. The consequences were that my suitcase was completely emptied and
    searched. Unlike the big city airports that I usually use, at Omaha this
    search was carried out directly in front of the line for ticketing which was
    almost entirely comprised of fellow participants in the AP exam reading.

    So this dude with latex gloves had to go through all my dirty laundry to see
    if I was hiding a bomb in my Calvin Kleins right in front of my colleagues.
    Although lucky for me I had not packed any pornography or my penis enlarging
    pump, the experience was particularly embarrassing for me.

    I felt like this was a severe violation of my privacy as I tried to explain
    to my wife looking for sympathy. However, she began to describe a similar
    circumstance this spring when as a foreign language teacher she was taking
    students on a trip to Spain where she in all her students were rather
    thoroughly frisked by government officials in the Madrid airport without
    regard to gender of frisker and friskee which would never happen in the US
    where the friskers are sensitive to issues that apparently Spanish friskers
    are not and the Europeans don't seem to care about.

    My wife seemed to suggest that I was just being uptight, and my discomfort
    was merely a cultural construct, and that there is no absolute standard for
    what is appropriate for security personnel to do.

    I was too tired to have much a conversation about it with my wife at the
    airport, and I wasn't sure what to say anyway to her cultural relativism.
    When I complained to the ticketing agent, he was not sympathetic, either,
    blaming the government and claiming that the airline had nothing to do with
    it.

    Help me dear MOQers. Was there anything immoral about what I perceived to
    be a violation of my privacy in the airport panty raid?

    Thanks,
    Steve

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