{"id":9126,"date":"2010-11-17T09:26:12","date_gmt":"2010-11-17T17:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=9126"},"modified":"2019-12-23T15:15:24","modified_gmt":"2019-12-23T23:15:24","slug":"fly-commando","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2010\/11\/17\/fly-commando\/","title":{"rendered":"Fly Commando!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:3113,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/wewontfly.com&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260213134152\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.wewontfly.com\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-06 12:45:12&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-18 11:05:25&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-07 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loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/tsa2691.jpg\" alt=\"TSA Checkpoint\" border=\"0\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" style=\"float:right;\" \/> A couple days ago, disgusted (as <a href=\"http:\/\/wewontfly.com\/\" title=\"We Won't Fly\">everyone<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.optoutday.com\/\" title=\"National Opt Out Day\">should<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thousandsstandingaround.org\/\" title=\"Thousands Standing Strong\">be<\/a>) with the TSA&#8217;s current policy of sexual abuse at the screening stations (your choice: <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/5690749\/these-are-the-first-100-leaked-body-scans\" title=\"Gizmodo: One Hundred Naked Citizens: One Hundred Leaked Body Scans\">nude photos<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ourlittlechatterboxes.com\/2010\/11\/tsa-sexual-assault.html\" title=\"Our Little Chatterboxes: TSA - Sexual Assault\">sexual assault<\/a>), I tweeted <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/djwudi\/status\/3927814650724352\" title=\"@djwudi: After this...\">this<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  After this <a href=\"http:\/\/djwudi.com\/4fk\">http:\/\/djwudi.com\/4fk<\/a> and similar, I\u2019m almost disappointed I\u2019m not flying soon. I\u2019d wear my kilt. <em>Commando<\/em>. Grope away, sucker!\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It seems I&#8217;m not the only one who&#8217;s had this idea&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/national\/archive\/2010\/11\/tsa-opt-out-day-now-with-a-superfantastic-new-twist\/66545\/\" title=\"TSA Opt-Out Day, Now with a Superfantastic New Twist! - Jeffrey Goldberg - National - The Atlantic\">TSA Opt-Out Day, Now with a Superfantastic New Twist! &#8211; Jeffrey Goldberg &#8211; National &#8211; The Atlantic<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  It&#8217;s a one-word idea: Kilts. Think about it &#8212; if you&#8217;re a male, and you want to bollix-up the nonsensical airport security-industrial complex, one way to do so would be to wear a kilt. If nothing else, this will cause TSA employees to throw up their hands in disgust. If you want to go the extra extra mile, I suggest commando-style kilt-wearing. While it is probably illegal to fly without pants, I can&#8217;t imagine that it&#8217;s illegal to fly without underpants.\u00a0 I If you are Scottish, or part Scottish, or know someone who is Scottish, or eat Scottish salmon, or enjoy Scotch, or have a vestigial affection for &#8220;Braveheart&#8221; despite Mel Gibson, you can plausibly claim some sort of multicultural diversity privilege &#8212; the term &#8220;True Scotsman&#8221; refers to soldiers who honor their tradition and heritage by wearing kilts without drawers underneath.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>For the record, I <em>always<\/em> fly wearing a Utilikilt, and as with any time I wear a kilt, unless there&#8217;s some situation that demands otherwise, I generally do go commando. Hey, it&#8217;s comfortable, and under normal circumstances, there&#8217;s little to no likelihood that anyone&#8217;s going to be seeing anything they don&#8217;t want to. It&#8217;s never been a problem &#8212; quite the opposite, in fact, I usually just breeze through the metal detectors.<\/p>\n<p>This past summer, though, as I was flying up to Anchorage from Seattle, I was pulled aside after going through the metal detector for a patdown. I was surprised, especially when the TSA screener told be that I was pulled aside specifically <em>because<\/em> I wore the kilt. My best guess is that because they can&#8217;t eyeball the shape of your upper legs as easily as when wearing pants, it&#8217;s marginally more likely that I could have something dangerous but non-metallic strapped to my upper\/inner thigh. If that was the reasoning (they didn&#8217;t say), it does make me wonder if they regularly pull women wearing skirts aside for the extra pat-down, or if they reserve that treatment for men in skirts. Obviously, weirdos like us are far more likely to be dangerous.<\/p>\n<p>The pat-down itself was about what I&#8217;d expect of a normal pat-down &#8212; thorough enough, with a quick run of the hands up my legs and under the kilt, but not <em>so<\/em> thorough that the screener knew whether or not I was commando. No fondling was involved, though there was a cursory brush-down of the front of the kilt that jostled things around a bit. A bit surprising, but at the time, I just shrugged it off.<\/p>\n<p>No more of that, though. While I&#8217;m not flying anytime soon, if all of this ridiculousness is still going on when I do have to fly somewhere, I&#8217;m <em>definitely<\/em> opting out, and they just better do their jobs. If they&#8217;re determined to sexually assault me, then I&#8217;m at least going to get my money&#8217;s worth!<\/p>\n<p>(via <em><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/jackwilliambell\" title=\"@jackwilliambell\">@jackwilliambell<\/a><\/em>&#8216;s retweet of <em><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/furf\/status\/3899553833029633\" title=\"@furf: How to deal with the TSA...\">@furf<\/a><\/em>; image via <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.boingboing.net\/2010\/11\/16\/achtung-tsa.html\" title=\"BoingBoing: Achtung, TSA!\">BoingBoing<\/a><\/em> via <em><a href=\"http:\/\/olegvolk.livejournal.com\/919747.html\" title=\"Oleg Volk: Achtung, TSA!\">Oleg Volk<\/a><\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m almost disappointed I\u2019m not flying soon. I\u2019d wear my kilt. Commando. Grope away, sucker!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2043],"tags":[6,14,573],"class_list":["post-9126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-humor","tag-politics","tag-utilikilt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}