Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

Michael Smerconish: The captain walks the plank

CAPT. Owen Honors has been relieved of his command of the USS Enterprise, the nation's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

CAPT. Owen Honors has been relieved of his command of the USS Enterprise, the nation's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

He had to walk the plank for those racy videos he produced for what they called "XO Movie Night" when he was second in command as executive officer.

Some of what I watched reminded me of my fraternity initiation at Zeta Psi years ago. What probably cost him his job was the use of the word "fag," which he shouldn't have done.

That was is the most damning of Capt. Honors' script decisions. And I believe it's the one Gen. Wesley Clark, the former supreme commander of NATO, had in mind when he called the videos "incompatible with the climate of command we are trying to establish in the armed forces."

What I suspect he meant was the climate that repealed Don't ask, don't tell.

Which is somewhat ironic, considering that on Monday's episode of the "Colbert Report," Gov. Rendell was lavished with yet more national media attention in the wake of his now-infamous "nation of wusses" comment.

A couple of thoughts . . .

First, there's no such word as "wusses." I know because I can't get it through my spell-checker as I write this. And if there were such a word, I suspect it would be a derivative of the root word "wuss," another non-word but itself a synonym of a rhyming word beginning with "p." (Funny that I can write "wuss" in a family newspaper, but not its rhyming cousin.)

MY HUNCH IS that the governor had the impolite cousin word in mind, but didn't want to say so. Too ungubernatorial. Wuss is OK - but the p-word is politically incorrect. Why? Mostly because the p-word is insulting to women, partly because in some circles it's regarded as a gay slur.

Unlike they way many reacted to Capt. Honors' word choice, people responded to Rendell's on the merits. The debate the gov started was about whether we are, in fact, a nation of wusses, not how he expressed himself.

I heard many say the NFL was correct to delay the game, but I didn't hear anyone quarrel with the word Rendell used to express his displeasure.

Was he being homophobic?

Heck, no.

For one, I didn't see an e-mail blast from Mark Segal condemning Rendell. I also know a couple of gay guys who'd have been thrilled to sit in the snow next to the governor. And I think we've reached a point where some words - however inappropriate on the surface - are used without regard to their real meaning.

Case in point. A few years ago, the now-"vacationing" state Sen. Vincent Fumo called a GOP Senate colleague a "faggot."

I don't think Fumo, who had a record of support for the gay community, meant that in the literal sense. It might not make it any more appropriate, but I don't think he was questioning the man's sexual preference.

I once had a minor brush with this sort of thing. In 2006, I was scolded by a self-proclaimed media watchdog outfit for using the words "sissy" and "limp-wristed" in a radio broadcast.

My alleged indiscretion came in the context of the war on terror. I said that political correctness had made the United States "a nation of sissies," and that "sissification" and "limp-wristedness" are compromising our ability to win the war on terror.

Later, I went on and blamed the "sissification of America" for the sentencing of al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui to life in prison instead of death for his role in the 9/11 attacks.

Sexuality never entered my thought process.

Lack of strength or lack of manliness is what I had in mind.

That's not the same thing as homosexuality unless you buy into some archaic notion of homosexuals as being only guys in leather marching in pride parades, and I don't believe that.

The point? Sometimes words are just that. Uttered without regard for what Merriam-Webster might have in mind. Over time, they lose their literal meaning.

Second, there's selective enforcement of our standards.

Note that just this week came news that in upcoming editions of Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," the n-word will be replaced with "slave."

Funny that this comes on the heels of a year when Kanye West's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" album was regarded as the year's best by Rolling Stone.

How ironic that a Twain book that many consider a masterpiece of Americana gets scrubbed while a Kanye West CD with lyrics like "Every time I hear bout other n-gga's stroking you, Might say I hit you."

This is the environment in which Capt. Honors behaved badly. That he and his crew were in the midst of a months-long deployment in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan probably widened the gulf between his intentions and how the outside world would perceive them. He shouldn't have said "fag." But when he did, I doubt he uttered the word with malice. Call it the Kanye cover.

Not that this is a defense of the captain. It's an explanation. He still should have known better, and I can't quarrel with his being relieved of his command.

Where he seriously failed was on the stupidity index.

I KNOW THE tapes are a few years old and were intended to boost morale through humor.

But he should have known that in the Internet age, they would eventually come to light. He couldn't just toss his street smarts overboard. Still, it's a sad ending for a guy who was a true Top Gun grad and veteran of so many combat missions.

Contact Michael Smerconish via the Web at www.smerconish.com. Read him Sundays in the Inquirer.