‘Don’t touch my junk!’
FOR our neighbours to the north, the third week of November is the busiest travel time of the entire year. That’s because the most seriously observed holiday in the United States, Thanksgiving, occurs on the third Thursday of the month. Just about every American tries to at least call home to wish separated family members the best. If they can possibly do so, they return home for the traditional dinner of turkey, mashed potatoes and turnips, pumpkin pie and all the other trimmings. It’s hard to find a last-minute seat on many US airlines at this time of the year and even buses and trains are jammed. Americans, who are among the hardest-working people in the world, employ the alignment of the holiday to take a rare long weekend off and savour pleasures they often forego for the rest of the year.
This year’s observation of the holiday was expected to be marred by yet another cloud apart from the serious economic slump blanketing the country. After a bunch of terrorists based in Yemen sent explosive packages to some Jewish organisations in the US last month, the people responsible for air safety have clamped down even tighter than before. More and more airports are obtaining high-tech machines which can scan a passenger’s body for possible hidden explosives, and if someone declines to go through the scanner, they’ll have to submit to a body search known in the policing trade as a “pat-down”.
Transport officials geared themselves for huge line-ups and even more grumpy travellers than usual these days, after one man’s response went viral on the electronic talkways. Because a Nigerian man stuffed explosives into his underwear just under a year ago, those pat-downs now include a careful search of the groin, which many people — including those who have to do it — find distasteful. Horror stories were circulating in the past few days about the pat-downs, typified by the response of California’s John Tyner to a search: “If you touch my junk, I’m going to have you arrested.” Captured on video, it was widely viewed on YouTube and circulated on television, radio and the press.
Critics of body scans and intensive searches seized on it as a rallying cry for passengers to refuse the scans. Many travellers arrived at airports prepared for hassles and interminable delays, but as things turned out, things for the most part went smoothly. Some passengers were aware of the protest, but not many went along with it. News agencies report that at airports like O’Hare in Chicago — third-busiest in the world — both passengers and officials of the Transportation Security Administration (led by the hardly appropriately named John Pistole) were on their best behaviour this week. Some passengers commented that the TSA employees were generally courteous and pleasant, and one remarked, “They all wished me Happy Holidays. They must have got some directive to be friendlier.”
There was a time when it was an absolute pleasure to travel by air, even though it was by no means as safe as it is today. In fact, people used to dress up in their Sunday best before boarding a plane and airlines employed a variety of methods to attract business. I recall travelling in the late 1960s on a round trip to Miami on the new Air Jamaica with a friend and colleague, the late Peter Walker, to gather material for a broadcast. We described the fashion show the flight attendants had to present, in addition to serving meals and drinks and making sure the passengers completed their cards for presentation to immigration on arrival.
Air travel went with my job as a radio journalist, and apart from the physical demands, I enjoyed the ability to see other parts of the world, meet new people, taste new things and savour new experiences. Security was there, of course, but aimed mainly at avoiding unfortunate events while airborne. For instance, you had to leave behind flammable substances which could easily ignite and cause an airborne disaster. But nobody worried if you had a Swiss Army knife in your pocket, if you carried a sewing kit, manicure set, a bag full of shampoo or body lotion or even a concealed weapon.
All that changed after some individuals with ulterior motives decided to divert flights to destinations of their own choosing. In the late 60s and early 70s the destination of choice was Havana, totally off limits to Americans. People who found themselves in trouble with the law routinely pointed weapons at pilots and forced them to fly to the Cuban capital. After the initial fears, though, it became clear to pilots and airline officials that the danger could be almost eliminated by following the hijackers’ instructions. In time hijacking was reduced to little more than an expensive nuisance for airline and air traveller alike, and it eventually went out of fashion in the US.
But others discerned a diabolical usefulness and employed it to their advantage, with increasingly dire results. Zealots in the Middle East didn’t share the niceties of the Havana-bound hijackers who merely wanted to run away from the arm of the law. This new breed of hijacker had deadly serious aims and weren’t afraid of killing as well as dying in the process.
The whole thing deteriorated to the point where desperadoes converted planes loaded with passengers and fuel into missiles on the day etched in history as 9/11. That dastardly event was the brainchild of Osama bin Laden, who hates everything about the west and its freewheeling, open way of life and has attracted legions of young men in many countries to that twisted, constrained, constipated view of life. He wanted to embarrass and exasperate the western countries. While those countries haven’t fallen face down, or even on their knees, he has succeeded in making daily life more complicated, annoying and miserable for many. The irony is that people from his ethnic origin are now being targeted by security forces in many places.
Like everything else in life, the tightened security measures have become fuel for jokes on television, the stage and the printed page. It’s given cartoonists new fodder for their sardonic comments and many circulate around the cyber world. One favourite of mine has an older woman at the departure wicket at an airport. She tells the ticket agent, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m just here for the pat-down.”
This having to take off more articles of dress for the security check takes me back to the 60s when the government declared a state of emergency in a part of west Kingston after a string of violent acts which would seem like child’s play in today’s Jamaica. At the time I was reporting for RJR and wandered throughout the restricted area with Astley Chin, a photographer with the Gleaner. We stopped at a little corner bar for a cold beer and we heard shouts outside. We ran out to see the police and soldiers at a nearby checkpoint accosting a man pushing a bicycle. When they told him they wanted to search him, he obligingly removed all his clothes and stood with his arms outstretched. All he had left on were his luminescent lime-green underpants. Astley fired off a couple of shots with his ever-present camera and the picture featured on the front page of the next day’s Star.
As the old saying goes, “We tek bad t’ing mek laugh.”
keeble.mack@sympatico.ca