AVOIDING THE PAT-DOWN

Susan Castillo, a former winner of the Miss USA Beauty Pageant, has become an Internet sensation of sorts, but not for her beauty or talents. She's become the newest critic of the US Transportation Security Administration's pat-down procedure used on a small number of passengers attempting to board airliners here in the United States. Miss Castillo has been quoted as saying that she felt "helpless and violated" by the ordeal, but before I go any further in this discussion, I want to point out something omitted from her statement. That something is that she chose to undergo the procedure.

Although Ms. Castillo may have felt "helpless and violated", she made two choices with full knowledge that those choices would place her in that situation. First, she chose to travel by air. Second, she refused to pass through a full-body scanner. Had she chose an alternate mode of transportation or elected to walk through the full-body scanner, she would have avoided the pat-down procedure altogether. But she didn't. She made her choice, and now she wants to moan about the consequences. Pardon me if I'm not sympathetic.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm as irritated as the next person about having to go through all the security measures these days. You can't go into a government building without getting searched and having to remove your belt from your pants and keys from your pockets. I find the whole process invasive and demeaning. But I also recognize that the world is a very dangerous place, with no shortage of wing-nuts and terrorists trying to create mayhem, and if we're going to have to sacrifice personal freedom for safety, whatever safety measures that are undertaken better be rigorously applied and applied to everybody.

Miss Castillo was quoted as saying, "I just kept thinking, 'What have I done to deserve this treatment as an upstanding, law-abiding American citizen?' Am I a threat to US security? I was Miss USA, for Pete's sake!"

I can answer those questions. What Miss Castillo did to deserve the pat-down treatment was choose to fly and refused to walk through the full-body scanner. Is she a threat to US security? Probably not, but just because she was a former Miss USA shouldn't give her a free pass to bypass a safety checkpoint the rest of us must pass through. We're upstanding, law-abiding citizens too.

Let's face it. Terrorists are fixated on airplanes. September 11th proved how destructive they can be, and since then, there have been no shortages of attempts to bring down more of them. We've seen explosives hidden in a shoe and in a crotch, and you can bet there are plotters out there looking for any way possible to bring explosives onto a plane. That's just a harsh fact of life. If we're going to continue allowing travel by air, and want to keep it safe, the scanners and pat-downs will need to remain until somebody comes up with a non-invasive method of keeping unwanted things off an airplane.

In the meantime, if you want to avoid the pat-down, take a train, a bus or a car. It's your choice!