Pat-downs, full-body scans, potential “junk” touching. A lot of Americans have expressed outrage over the methods of safety checks the Transportation Security Administration has recently implemented. Civil rights befouled, personal space violated. “I don’t want anyone touching me down there but my wife and my doctor,” says John Tyner, ballsy folk hero and TSA-aphobe. “If you touch my junk, I’ll have you arrested.”

“Calm down, Redd Foxx. I’m just doing my job. As much as I love groping baby testicles all day, I really just want to get this over with. You smell funny and that looks like crusty ejaculate on the front of your trousers.”

That’s what I wish the TSA agent had said. Sadly, it didn’t go down that way. And seriously? Your wife? I have a feeling she let out a humiliating (to you) guffaw when she heard that. “Touch him down there? I haven’t touched him down there since he fooled me with the old “wrinkled penis at the bottom of the popcorn box” trick during the Titanic. He had it hidden under an unpopped kernel.”

You may get the impression that this Tyner fellow annoys rather than emboldens me. You would be right. Such a coincidence that on the day he decides to throw a fit about his junk being touched, his little cell phone happens to be on and captures the whole incident. Forgive me if I don’t equate this great moment in video journalism with the Rodney King beating or perceive it as being even remotely as engrossing as anything John Stamos has ever done. It felt all too manufactured.

I have two questions and a comment on this whole TSA kerfuffle.

1) Would your outrage be the same if you were to see a dark-skinned man with a beard and turban and holding the Koran get stripped to his underwear and one sock for a simple security check? Or his kid for that matter? I’m thinking no. But I could be wrong.

2) Would your outrage be the same if the TSA became less stringent with their rules and some guy with an ass-bomb ended up taking down a plane somewhere between Peoria and Waukesha? I’m thinking yes. And I doubt I am wrong.

3) While I will agree that the methods by which the TSA chooses to examine people are not perfect and are at times violative, I must consider the alternative. I will be traveling soon and the idea of another man sliding his hand up my crotch without paying me does not titillate in any way, form or fashion. But you know what? If it means that I and the aircraft I am on get to my destination in one piece, they can give me a prostate exam for all I care.

I hope to GOD I am not regretting that last sentence in the next few weeks.

“You using your whole hand there, buddy??”