I was just watching The O’Reilly Factor and lo and behold, airport security is at it again! Now they are trying to save the world from lactating mothers! They have kept us safe from women who’ve had double mastectomies, and old men who question having their wallets searched. NOW we can all breathe a sigh of relief that we are safe from expressed breast milk!
I can understand that security must be tighter since 9/11, but there has GOT to be a limit! Strip searching grannies and throwing an old man in jail because he asks if security personnel expect to find a rifle in his wallet is bad enough. But asking a woman to stand there and drink her own breast milk just makes me go !!
I am really starting to think that some of these people are getting off on the power generated by the need for heightened security measures. Some of the people they are “randomly searching” are easy marks for intimidation and humiliation. It really pisses me off, because it’s so absurd and it trivializes the job that they are SUPPOSED to be doing! :mad:
At least this particular woman that O’Reilly featured was a lawyer and she held her ground and refused to do what they wanted. But there is apparently another case where the lady went ahead and drank the milk, because she was so intimidated. You know what? I think these turdburgers working in security ought to have to taste test their own stool samples!!! That might not be too difficult, seeing as how so many of them have their heads up their asses anyway!
Disclaimer: Yes, there are some in airport security who do a terrific job and I thank them from the bottom of my heart. But what is going on here is, quite simply, ridiculous!
A little back ground that might explain some of this:
Airport screeners require you to take a sip of any open container to prove that you aren’t concealing some sort of volatile or dangerous chemical in it. I don’t have a problem with the general policy, but this particular application does have a little bit of a gross-out factor attached. Maybe they could require you to feed a small amount to your kid instead?
Now I just have to say WHAT THE EVERLOVIN’ HELL were they thinking? EVEN if it wasn’t breast milk in the bottle, even if, let’s say, it was some deadly liquid poison that would kill the drinker instantly, did these security people think she was going to be able to force someone on the plane to drink it? Three BOTTLES of it? Or maybe she’d kill one guy with her Baby Bottle of Doom, but the other two guys she tried to get to drink it somehow wouldn’t notice?
Seriously, how humiliating, pointless and truly abusive. Not to mention they would also be depriving an infant of nourishment.
WTF!!! This has got to be the stupidest idea I have ever heard. So the person drinks the poison and dies. Or goes on the plane and barfs all over the place, makes a stinky mess that everybody has to endure. Terrorists have certainly shown that they have no problem dying, so whose to say they will have any problem drinking any kind of volitile chemical. What kind of fucked up logic is that?
Well, a nauseated, vomiting, sick, incapable terrorist is certainly better than one who isn’t right?
Yeah, a policy got stretch to it’s very end, but it isn’t quite such “fucked up logic” at the very beginning. You could certainly put something harmful in a Nalgene, and I have no problem taking a sip from my water bottle as I go through security. I’m not totally sure as for what to do in this specific case, mothers carrying breat milk for their infants.
Airport security is all bullshit anyway. If I really wanted to I could hijack a knife type weapon on board a plane with no problem. Glass, plastic, bamboo even.
Hell, I’m sure if you knew enough about explosives you could still smuggle an effective bomb onto a plane.
Yeah, that’s probably true Goldfish. What do you wanna’ do? Get rid of it entirely so that any jackass a little off his rocker with a half-assed plane can hijack any plane in the country?
Well it IS silly, but it’s our own dang fault, after all. Since we’ve bent over backwards six ways 'till Sunday not to “profile” anyone or “discriminate” against anyone, this is the result.
If there’s a danger of poisonous chemicals being brought onto airplanes in liquids, we HAVE to prevent all liquids being brought onto airplanes, including breastmilk. Otherwise, it could be construed as discrimination.
Ya know, PC was funny for a time, when it was the butt of late-night jokes on Letterman or SNL, but now it’s counterproductive, and possibly even dangerous.
As in, while Mr. Security person is occupied making Ms. Mom drink breastmilk, Mr. Terrorist is boarding the plane with plastique in his shorts.
Isn’t there a famous phrase about reaping what you sow?
I think it’s a stupid policy in that there are plenty of substances that I wouldn’t want to drink, yet wouldn’t endanger anyone on a plane. The kid who got sick after being forced to drink some of his sample of pond water that he was bringing to his science class comes to mind.
That said, I know that El-Al has had this policy for years with reguard to any opaque liquids, and I tend to think that they know their stuff on the airline-security front.
I’m pretty sure that now the implication behind a hijacking is that the plane’s gonna be used as a weapon rather than safe passage for the hijackers the passengers of any plane are far more of a deterrant to would be terrorists than strip searching grannies and adding “are you planning on committing any terrorist acts while you’re here” to immigration cards will ever be.
No offense, but it seems to me that someone planning to ram a plane into a building has already realized that any child they bring onboard is going to die. So feeding a poison to the kid may only be objectionable if it is fast-acting. In fact, it would probably be preferable to taking it themselves. I would much rather the terrorist drink the poison than a child.
Am I making any sense?
That being said, what kind of substance could they be carrying in an open container that would aid them in hijacking a plane?
Without commenting on the article, why does a lactating mother need to bring bottled breast milk on the plane? She brought the breasts with her, I can only assume she brought the kid…give her a window seat and let her feed the kid as nature intended. Or she can go into the bathroom and feed the kid. They’re pretty clean.
spooje breast feeding in public, even in a dinky ass airplane bathroom is not a thing many women choose to do…
Personally, I don’t know why this has become the big deal it is. It is her breast milk. Yes it’s meant for her baby but it comes from her body it shouldn’t be seen as disgusting. If it’s that disgusting (given the rules of the flying skies) they why would anyone like a baby drink breast milk to begin with, let alone that from someone else’s boobs! OH THE SHOCK.
It’s her own milk, I don’t think there could be any harm from it. It’s not like they asked her to drink her own urine sample, it’s human breast milk for God’s sakes. We consume products from cows and goats milk and this somehow grosses people out that a woman was asked to consume some of her own milk.
Huh.
The human thinking sure makes me wonder sometimes.
Oh yeah, had that been a COWS milk, it’s okay but OMG, NOT MY OWN BREAST MILK… HOW DARE THEY!!!
I still say it was abusive and uncalled for. Sure, breast milk is certainly fit for human consumption. But to be asked to drink three bottles of milk you’ve expressed for your child is ludicrous. For one thing, as I said before, you’re essentially depriving this baby of its dinner, and second, if the woman expressed her milk into bottles when she knows her breasts are going to be with her, it’s likely she was aware that some stupid people think breastfeeding should not be done in public, and was trying to ensure that her child got fed with a minimum of disturbance to others.
Wry, I can understand that part but I kind of wonder how much she was required to consume.
Anyhow, I think that people are more outraged that it was human breast milk. Again, I stress, had it been cow’s milk this would have never made headlines.
I wonder what makes this headline worthiness. It’s the fact it’s HUMAN BREAST MILK not the fact that it’s a child’s dinner.
Whenever I hear this story I can only think of that Friends episode.
Phoebe: (Tests breast milk on her wrist then licks it off)
All others: (Grossed out)
Ross: Oh my god, Phoebe what are you doing?
Phoebe: I’m testing the milk.
<snip>
Ross: That’s milk squeezed from another woman’s breast. Breast milk is not for adults.
Chandler: Though the packing is appealing.
!!