Re: Have you had a pat-down?
My wife gets an extra exam every time because she has hip and spine hardware. The TSA people we've dealt with have always been very polite. To date she hasn't been patted below the waist, although we haven't flown in a few months. She does get thoroughly wanded, though.
My local conservative morning talk radio has been nuts about this for the entire week, and it got old after the first day. I've been flipping over to Pandora lately.
This is getting beaten into the ground so extensively that I'm starting to suspect we're getting fed a red herring to take our attention off something else.