Excuse me Ma’m, is that an IED under your sari or are you just happy to see me?

BY: B. Keith Plunkett

I had every intention of writing a great morning rant on the ridiculousness of some recent Facebook trends, and I’ll likely get to that on another post. I’m usually extremely geared up for the task of rant writing in the morning thanks to the fact that I’m forced to drive through two or three major traffic zones to get to the office. By the time I’ve flipped off and cussed out every stupid A-hole driver (SAHD) on the morning commute between Madison and Rankin Counties, I’m primed for prime-time. This morning was no different, until I got to the office and picked up the Clarion Ledger.

An aside here for those of you who know I work a federal job, I come in early to do writing and then prep for the day before the office opens. At lunch, I put the finishing touches on the post and get it up. In other words, this wasn’t written on the taxpayers dime!

Front page of the CL today reads: Female diplomat patted down at Jackson Airport. The subtitle is Indian ambassador’s treatment called humiliating. Apparently this has upset “state hosts and elected officials” according to the article.

Really?! And why the hell is she so special, because, she has diplomatic papers? Big deal, having a state issued driver’s license and appearing to be nothing like a terrorist (read white cracker), a U.S.  Citizen and, in some cases, a grandmother or a 6-year old child hasn’t helped some people out of the invasive search. We should be happy that a person with a “not from around here” appearance from a country with a few billion Muslims gets a second look from TSA, shouldn’t we? Isn’t that what this whole damn exercise is supposed to be about to begin with?

Who cares if she was being escorted by a representative of the Mississippi Development Authority?  Even someone as socially inept as the guy who works at--and I think lives in the back room of--the local 7-11 and has the heavy aroma of funk and patchouli could find some guy wandering Poindexter Park in West Jackson, mumbling to himself and in need of a few dollars, to be a stooge to pull that off. Convince the park wanderer to take his meds, then clean him up and coach him to pretend to be an important person and he could get through security just about anywhere in this town.

Let’s give these TSA airport guys a little credit. They damn sure don’t want a plane to go down because they refused to check someone just because she was being escorted by a suit. For god sakes, they feel up fat people’s junk all day! It’s already a crappy enough job. Let’s give them some kudos for wanting to work bad enough to do that instead of . . . say, signing up for an SSI crazy check and wandering around Poindexter Park all day mumbling to themselves.

Shankar presented her diplomatic papers to officers and was escorted by an MDA representative and an airport security officer, but witnesses said she was subjected to the hands-on search.

"The way they pat them down - it was so humiliating," said Tan Tsai, a research associate at MSU's International Security Studies center who witnessed the screening. "Anybody who passed by could see it."

The poor thing. She must have been in shock. In her home country they would never do anything like that, right?

Wrong! Land in Delhi and you’re met with military personnel with automatic weapons. I’ll take a TSA pat down over being strip searched at gunpoint any day.

We southerners are a hospitable bunch. Nobody—that is nobody not on the sex offender list—wants to see their guests unwillingly fondled before or after a visit. But, let’s get real. While we are known for treating our guests like royalty, the outrage from our “state officials” smacks of a hierarchical superiority. If there was any message they should have received loud and clear after last month’s elections, it’s that the voters don’t think they, or their invited dignitaries, are any more special than the rest of us.

Enough with the faux outrage.