When I arrived at the office shortly before eight o’clock this morning, Gretchen informed me that my anticipated consultation, a diplomat from the Embassy of Afghanistan, had requested a postponement – something about the situation involving the Akhtar Mohammad Mansour impostor. Perfectly understandable, I guess – yesterday, after all, it became common knowledge that NATO paid the guy a huge fortune to conduct negotiations with them on the behalf on the Afghan Taliban. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promptly announced that no US funds were involved in the swindle, naturally. And it’s hardly any surprise that Hamid Karzai is spouting similar denials, claiming that the Pakistani shop keeper who ripped off NATO got none of his government’s money either. Boy howdy, I guess those English, German and Dutch NATO guys over there getting seriously killed by all those wily Pathans must be some kind of natural born suckers. I mean really, dear European cousins, how pathetically and embarrassingly gullible can you possibly get?
Oh well, every problem, as the venerable adage goes, is an opportunity, and therefore, having some unexpected free time, I quickly set to work on an analysis of the financial ramifications proceeding from the Irish bailout. What I have found most extraordinary about that, actually, is that it’s going to total around 100 billion Euros and, strangely enough, there are only about four and one half million people in the entire nation of Ireland. That works out to about twenty-two thousand Euros, or, as of this morning, about thirty thousand US dollars apiece. I wonder if anyone has told them yet.
Not that I got much farther than that, though, since about two minutes into my calculations, Gretchen popped into my office to let me know that my dear sister Rose’s husband’s brother’s wife, Shannon, was on the phone from National Airport.
“She says,” Gretchen informed me, “that she’s flying to Chicago for Thanksgiving.”
“That’s correct,” I confirmed. “Shannon’s from Chicago, and she has a great, big jolly Irish Catholic family out there whom she hasn’t visited in six years.”
“But who,” Gretchen wondered, “is taking care of her enormous brood of Irish Catholic children while she’s gone?”
“Rose and Hank,” I informed her.
“What about her husband?” Gretchen inquired, a bit puzzled.
“He’s attending Thanksgiving with the Palikowski family in Delaware,” I explained. “He hasn’t seen them in years, either.”
“Holy [expletive],” Gretchen exclaimed, “you mean your sister Rose and your brother-in-law Hank are going to be taking care of those kids, plus their own kids, and feeding all of them Thanksgiving dinner this Thursday in that house both of their families share out in Fairfax County?”
“Yes,” I confirmed, “but you must bear in mind that Rose and Hank aren’t like you and me – they simply love children.”
“Well [expletive],” Gretchen declared, “I guess they had [expletive] better!”
With that, she glided back into the reception room, closing the heavy oak doors of my office behind her, and I picked up my desk phone.
Shannon: Tom?
Tom: Shannon?
Shannon: Um, well, I just got off the phone with Rose. She made me promise that I’d call you.
Tom: Okay. How come?
Shannon: Because I’m here at National Airport, getting ready to fly to Chicago, and today is TSA Body Scanner Opt Out Pat Down Protest Day.
Tom: “TSA Body Scanner Opt Out Pat Down Protest Day?” Says who?
Shannon: Ah… uh… the Internet and stuff, you know? It’s all over. I can’t believe you haven’t heard about it.
Tom: Who says I haven’t heard about it? Of course I’ve heard about it! But what the hell are you doing participating in it?
Shannon: Because I’m angry at the federal government for invading our rights – why do you think, anyway?
Tom: On the basis of what?
Shannon: On the basis of… because on account of my job I had to fly business class out of National Airport down to RTP couple of weeks ago and the TSA made me get in a body scanner. And before that, I had to fly out of Dulles to Atlanta, and before that, I had to fly out of BWI to Houston, and each time that damn TSA scanner me feel all naked and violated! So by opting out of the body scanner, we angry citizens can make our displeasure known by demanding that TSA agents administer an intense, invasive, hands-on, full-body exploratory physical interrogation instead.
Tom: But I don’t understand. Can you please explain? How is this supposed to work? You don’t like a bunch of TSA guys ogling your… uh… irradiated assets on a computer screen, snickering and cracking jokes about your… um… endowments and such… so you’re going to employ federal legal and regulatory technicalities to force some vigorous, muscular bull dyke in a TSA uniform to run her hands all around your… um… soft and shapely… ah… chest…
Shannon: Yeah…
Tom: And then fondle your… admittedly firm and fetching… uh… gluteus maximi…
Shannon: Uh-huh… oh…
Tom: Then grasp your creamy calves and velvet thighs in a firm and determined embrace…
Shannon: Omigod, yes…
Tom: And slip her strong but slender hands, hardened and calloused by chain saws, carpentry, welding and auto repair, deftly past the yielding elastic of your sweatpants band, plunging, eager and determined, toward…
Shannon: Stop, stop! Oh Christ, Tom, I’m having… impure thoughts, and if you don’t stop, you’re going to make me spend hours in confession, okay? Just knock it off, okay? I have a job, a husband and a flock of kids, and I simply don’t have time for the kind of penance that would be involved!
Tom: Sorry. But, on the other hand, if that’s the case, isn’t there a significant chance that when you opt out of the body scanner and that TSA bull dyke starts, um… touching you, then you’ll start having similar… ah, impure thoughts? And won’t you have to have to confess those to Father Flotsky before the week is out, lest you get hit by a bus, as the nuns always told us, fail to die in a state of Divine Grace and end up in Hell?
Shannon: Father Flotsky’s been… um… replaced… I guess is the word… transferred, maybe. Something about the choir boys, they say. It’s Father Alarcon now, but yeah, otherwise, correct.
Tom: So how do you intend to handle the… um… impure thoughts issue when the TSA… ah… pats you down?
Shannon: The same thing I do as when I… you know… um, sleep with… my husband.
Tom: You think about the Virgin Mary?
Shannon: No.
Tom: You think about Saint Patrick?
Shannon: No.
Tom: You think about Jesus on the Cross?
Shannon: No.
Tom: What in Heaven’s name do you think about, then?
Shannon: Ironing.
Tom: So, you’re going to opt out of the full body radiation scan, request a physical search and avoid committing the sin of impure thought during it by thinking about ironing, thus gumming up the works at National Airport on the day before Thanksgiving?
Shannon: I want to, but when Hank told Rose what I’m planning, she called me up, right there in the Fairfax Flyer airport limousine in front of five other people and the driver and tried to talk me out of it. But she had to stop talking when she got to school – it’s the last day before a holiday and all – so she made me promise to call you to talk about it. And so I did.
Tom: Your sister-in-law cares a great deal about you.
Shannon: Yes, living with both our families in that house since we lost ours in the real estate crash has made me and Rose very close, I think.
Tom: Aren’t you worried that if you and people like you succeed in snarling up National Airport today, you’ll miss your flight to Chicago?
Shannon: The airline will still have to put me on a later one. That’s why I got here so early today. My father says, he will come pick me up at any airport in Chicago, anytime I get there, so I’m not worried. Thanksgiving dinner isn’t until five in the afternoon tomorrow. I’m pretty sure I’ll be there in time for that no matter how bad the TSA Body Scanner Opt Out Pat Down Protest Day delays turn out to be.
Tom: Okay, it’s certainly very nice that your family back home is so supportive. But you have to realize that those full body radiation scanners are necessary for our national aviation security.
Shannon: They weren’t before. So why now?
Tom: Because of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Detroit Jock Bomber. He concealed explosives in his underwear and made it past airport security in Amsterdam onto Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day, 2009. And the only sure-fire way to detect jock bombs is a full body radiation scanner.
Shannon: Which they are now using on everybody who boards an airplane in Amsterdam?
Tom: Uh, no, but that’s beside the point.
Shannon: Okay, then, what is the point?
Tom: The point is, whenever some terrorist spends all night in his kitchen concocting a way to circumvent airline security for chump change, and then conclusively demonstrates how incredibly stupid he or she is by getting caught, it’s the moral responsibility of the United States government to spend as much money as possible to stop any other terrorist who might be marginally more intelligent from trying the same thing again and succeeding.
Shannon: But how come the solution has to involve making everybody get virtually naked in a big radiation machine?
Tom: Because, as I just explained, that’s the most expensive, most resource intensive, most inconvenient and most offensive way to do it – and that’s the way the US government does everything! It’s traditional!
Shannon: Well, okay, far be it from me to muck around with the federal government’s sacred traditions, but why do they have to put me through that stupid scanner? I’m no terrorist!
Tom: The TSA doesn’t know that.
Shannon: Oh, come on! Everybody knows what terrorists look like. Put them in that infernal machine, not me!
Tom: You say everybody knows what terrorists look like? Okay, what do they look like?
Shannon: Ah, you know – the dark complexion, the black curly hair, the beards, the weird clothes, the big nose…
Tom: You mean, terrorists look like Orthodox Jews?
Shannon: Huh? No, no, I mean they’re Arabs or something…
Tom: But not all of them are Arabs, you know. Some of them come from Indonesia, and they would look like Chinese to you – not to other Asians, of course, but to you. Others come from Africa, and they look like, well, not to put too fine a point on it, they look like black people, because that’s what they are, and…
Shannon: All right then, let the TSA put people who look like that through the body scanners, not me!
Tom: But don’t you see, Shannon, that since you look Irish…
Shannon: And what, pray tell, does an Irish person look like?
Tom: Well, there’s black Irish and scotch Irish and smoked Irish, too, but leaving them aside, there are, for example, fair lasses with fiery red hair and sparkling green eyes.
Shannon: Oh, go on now, Tom Collins! You’re making me blush!
Tom: I’ll bet – and believe me, colleen, folks a hundred feet away can see it!
Shannon: Okay, you teasing silver-tounged devil you, I’ll admit – I look Irish. What of it?
Tom: So I’ll bet you a hundred dollars right now that there’s at least one person in your great big, beautiful and jolly Chicago Irish family who has given money to the Irish Republican Army, that’s what!
Shannon: Are you serious? That’s not the same thing at all, now is it? The IRA are freedom fighters, not terrorists!
Tom: Sure and begorrah, now you’re getting into some deep water, I think. Maybe you consider the IRA to be freedom fighters, but anyone from England will tell you they are terrorists.
Shannon: Now wait just a minute there, Tom! Members of the Irish Republican Army are not terrorists! The English invaded Ireland and oppressed the Irish for six hundred years, and… what? I’m talking to a friend, if it’s any of your business! Huh? Tom – it seems the TSA overheard me… discussing things… with you and now I don’t have to tell them I want to opt out of the radiation scan and have a full body search instead.
Tom: Really?
Shannon: No, now it seems they’re more or less insisting on it.
Tom: Well then, it appears the situation has devolved into what we policy consultants here inside the Beltway call a “moot point.” Happy Thanksgiving!
Shannon: Same to you.
Tom: And Erin go braugh!
Shannon: Rath Dé ort! And what do you know, here comes that TSA bull dyke we were talking about! Well, you certainly look like one, don’t you? Oh yeah? I’m entitled to my own opinion, aren’t I? You don’t say? Same to you! Um, well… anyway… ‘bye, Tom!