For the first time in quite a while, we’ve had a shocking moment that came from neither WikiLeaks nor Charlie Sheen. The new year has its first scandal, and we didn’t even make it a week. Apparently, someone over at the USS Enterprise is going to get in trouble for some inappropriate humor.
A series of videos were made involving crude humor, in the form of homophobia, assumed nudity and use of an Incubus song as part of the soundtrack. The videos came to light this week when a newspaper, unable to figure out a way to put the videos in printed form, posted them on their website. The most shocking part is that it was an officer of the Enterprise who was behind all of it.
To everyone’s surprise, it was not Capt. James. T Kirk this time.
Instead, it was Capt. Owen Honors, the Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk, Va., claims, who was executive officer of the aircraft carrier at the time. The videos were shot in 2006 and 2007, when the carrier was deployed in the Middle East, supporting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The video we get to see is Honors, apparently in his last of a series shown to the crew either as punishment or entertainment. Honors is now captain of the Enterprise, which is due to leave port in a couple weeks. It doesn’t look good for the guy now that these videos are surfacing. It’s not clear who viewed these videos and why, but it’s pretty clear Honors was trying to cheer up the men and women serving aboard the carrier with his own brand of Navy humor. But this is controversial, and I really can’t see why. On the scale of military humor, I’d rank this closer to the Army’s “Telephone Remake” than the Abu Graib pictures.
CNN has attacked the released video as being vulgar, for its excessive use of the F-bomb. We all know that sailors have the cleanest mouths out of all our armed services, which is why we get the phrase “swearing like an airman,” because, let’s face it, those Air Force pukes can’t complete a sentence without some colorful wording.
The rest of the video has some homophobic slurs or jokes in it, with some sexism sprinkled in for good measure. We all know that our military has a long history of being open-minded when it comes to women and gays serving. I find it hard to believe that there are really reporters out there who are under the impression that our armed services don’t have any sexist or homophobic jokes up their sleeves, that they are issued regulation jokes from the Department of Defense which, after rigorous testing, were found to be inoffensive.
Let’s try to keep in mind that these guys don’t have access to YouTube, or even SG, so they can’t get much in the way of yucks like all of us back home can. They make their own entertainment, apparently, and because some of that entertainment looks bad when it’s analyzed by politically-correct reporters seeking to fill another five minutes of air time, this isn’t allowed. I’d say if they want to make their own entertainment while they are out there, let them. They make sacrifices to keep us all safe, and because they are gone, they don’t get our refined tastes in entertainment, like Jersey Shore.