Posted by Greg Laden on January 4, 2011 
From NPR:
Enterprise Captain’s Career ‘Likely Sunk’ By Videos
Enterprise Captain To Be Relieved Of Command
Update at 10:05 a.m. ET: We’ve changed the headline on this post to reflect the breaking news from CNN and the AP that “senior defense officials” say USS Enterprise Capt. Owen Honors will be relieved of his command because of raunchy videos he produced and broadcast to the crew aboard the aircraft carrier.
His was clearly conduct unbecoming of an officer. Yes, cry that this is no longer Dad’s Navy, one in which the good ol boys can’t make fun of gays and use raunchy porn to get across a point.
But the good ol’ boys who just want to let of some steam are no longer in charge of the Navy. We’re in the 21st century now, and there are women and gays aboard who also want to be part of the Navy and not “outsiders.”
Awesome choice of pictures, Greg!
And, in contrast to the Captain depicted, Capt. Honors will not be able to blame everything on a Ferengi mind control device or a rogue subspace distortion.
It’s the correct decision, simply because the sheer juvenility of the clips would have permanently undermined his authority as a commanding officer. Unfortunately, media will focus on the anti-gay aspect alone and allow anti-gay organizations to hold this up as an example of the repeal of DADT causing a witch-hunt against Christian officers.
Guess someone won’t make admiral like all his predecessors.
At #2: Perhaps a court marshall would be excessive but loss of command and being allow to retire as an O6 is not all that bad.
In the Navy, they lose command for the smallest things, like running over other boats for example.
At #2: Perhaps a court marshall would be excessive but loss of command and being allow to retire as an O6 is not all that bad.
They should investigate the CO and the admiral who condoned this stupid, stupid behavior. How did this guy get promoted?
Russell, he will probably just retire. That is how embarrassing high level people are usually handled. And he SHOULD lose his command, which is all I’ve heard them say he is facing at this point. Leaving aside the sexist, homophobic and just plain immature nature of these videos, the fact that he as the XO was doing them just really calls his judgment into question.
Geez, how did he have time to do them, anyway? Most XO’s are way too busy with things like running a large nuclear warship with around 5,000 crew to make weekly silly videos.
I was listening to a discussion of this story on NPR, they were speaking with a couple Navy Fliers about this. Their take was he did this when he was the Executive Officer of the Enterprise and it was not appropriate.
They said his career is over and he would have to bide his time and retire. Not too bad of an outcome really.
Here is a link that seems to have the video itself.
They should investigate the CO and the admiral who condoned this stupid, stupid behavior. How did this guy get promoted?
As I understand it, in the opening to one of the videos (as reported in an AP article I read about it, I haven’t seen any of the actual videos yet as I’m at work), he admitted that there had been complaints and he’d heard about them through administrative channels. His main beef had been that nobody complained directly to him, and the attitude seemed to be that since they hadn’t, those who complained were just cowards and he didn’t have to pay any mind to the complaints.
So I’m guessing the behavior wasn’t condoned, and that they gave him a chance to shape up since it was really the only thing about his performance that they had a problem with. His response, if reported accurately, seems worse than the videos themselves and may be the real reason for him being stripped of command. Insubordination — especially openly acknowledge to the entire crew — cannot be tolerated.
What strikes me is the arrogance of the attitude that if something is not offensive to him, it is not offensive to anyone else, as though he were the arbiter of polite behavior.
He acts like a frat boy in making the videos and then gets all high and mighty when complaints are made through channels instead of directly to him. With DADT in place, who in his right mind would complain abut such a thing? And over in Pharyngula we read all the time about high school prayers where kids are allowed to leave if they don’t want to participates. Who leaves, even in the relative safety of a high school?
The US is supposed to have a military of citizen soldiers. How can they learn what makes this country great if in the military they learn that sexism and homophobia (racism? Didn’t they fix that?) are not only tolerated but encouraged?
The time to fire this idiot should have been after the deployment was over. As it is, we now have an aircraft carrier headed to a war zone with a new Captain who hasn’t had nearly enough time to get used to his new command.
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