[vodpod id=Video.5238398&w=425&h=350&fv=] It’s hard to believe 20 years after Tailhook that some Navy officers still don’t get it. So here’s the drill: if you don’t want your gay-bashing and sexual-harassment antics leading the network news, keep your comments close-held among like-mind cronies….and, God forbid, don’t broadcast them via video to the entire crew of the USS Enterprise. Because if you do, someone is going to tip off the hometown paper — in this case, the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot:
In one scene, two female Navy sailors stand in a shower stall aboard the aircraft carrier, pretending to wash each other. They joke about how they should get six minutes under the water instead of the mandated three.
In other skits, sailors parade in drag, use anti-gay slurs, and simulate masturbation and a rectal exam. Another scene implies that an officer is having sex in his stateroom with a donkey.
They’re all part of a series of short movies produced aboard the Norfolk-based aircraft carrier Enterprise in 2006 and 2007 and broadcast to its nearly 6,000 sailors and Marines. The man who masterminded and starred in them is Capt. Owen Honors – now the commander of the carrier, which is weeks away from deploying.
Sure, these college-frat videos are four to five years old. But this kind of stuff was finished after Tailhook, nearly a generation ago. It’s worth noting: these weren’t made by some testosterone-crazed solo aviator, but the No. 2 officer aboard a Navy aircraft carrier, who is slated to head out as its commander shortly. It raises as many questions about the Navy as it does about him, just like the case of Capt. Holly Graf.
Capt. Honors – savor the name — is, according to Navy officials, likely to lose command of his carrier before it heads out from Norfolk on its imminent cruise to support U.S. war efforts in Afghanistan. He’s lucky if that’s the sole toll. It cost Ernie Blanchard a lot more.