videos that were made several years back by a few crew members of the USS Enterprise. If the ship sounds like something out of Star Trek, then the poor sap at the center of this firestorm sounds like a character from a Thomas Pynchon novel: Captain Owen Honors.
Honors was second in command of the Enterprise and the “star” of the annual films, which featured some bird-flipping, some poop jokes, a whole segment on the word “fuck,” and an unsurprising combination of fag jokes and overt homoeroticism. When I say it’s a little racy, the operative word is “little.”
Was it a good idea for Honors to do this? Clearly not, which is why one of his co-stars opines that, “Over the years I’ve gotten several complaints about inappropriate material during these videos. Never to me personally, but gutlessly through other channels.” But that wasn’t enough to stop them. Introducing the 2007 film he continued, “This evening, all of you bleeding hearts, and you, Fag SWO-Boy [another co-star, who promptly shoots him the finger], why don’t you just go ahead and hug yourselves for the next 20 minutes or so because there’s a really good chance you’re gonna be offended.”
Yes, this was a bad idea. That’s why Navy brass, after getting wind of the films, told Honors to knock it off, which he apparently did, as the last one dates from almost four years ago. Nevertheless, when the newspaper The Virginian-Pilot made its brave bid for a Pulitzer by 
blowing the lid off this tepid, dated affair last Saturday, it set off quite a commotion.
What it came down to was a newspaper getting a grade-D scoop about military personnel displaying a ribald sense of humor. Go figure. They posted the incriminating video, taking the time to blur out all the middle fingers and bleep all the R-rated words. Then the national media picked up the story and ran with it. And facing widespread criticism, the Navy issued an official statement condemning the video and pledging to “investigate” a matter it had already taken care of several years earlier.
That this has become a major national story is beyond absurd. It’s surreal. The video is on 
the level of a dumb teenage prank, the lame slapstick of some high schoolers who aren’t nearly as clever as they think they are. The most embarrassing thing here is that Honors was in his early forties. Ouch, dude. But as Misty Davis, who served on the USS Enterprise from 2006-2010 put it, “It’s no worse than anything you’d see on Saturday Night Live or the Family Guy.” She’s actually not far off.
But let me ask you this. What’s more depressing, someone making a fart joke and thinking it’s funny, or someone taking offense to it? Who’s more annoying, the immature, guffawing class clown or the prickly, self-righteous schoolmarm? At the end of the day, they comprise two sides of the same coin, each of them spending too much time concerned with the juvenile puerility.
So a Navy captain and other sailors shouldn’t make movies like this. They also shouldn’t get 
falling down drunk, sleep with prostitutes, and get ugly tattoos when they’re on shore leave. I’m not being flippant here. They really shouldn’t do any of those things. But some, perhaps many of them will. And I don’t mean that in a boys-will-be-boys kind of way. I mean that in a the-military-is-mostly-composed-of-poor-and-working-class-kids-with-little-education-who-take-a-dangerous-job-for-abysmally-low-pay-because-they-don’t-have-many-options-and-they-don’t-always-exhibit-the-most-mature-behavior-and-decision-making kind of way.
In short, I wish our entire military was, on the whole, more mature and better educated. But it is what it is. And complaining about the raunchiness and foul language in this video instead of talking about the much larger societal issues manifesting themselves in the military is like whining that the air conditioner is broken instead of talking about global warming.
So it’s not Captain Honors or the Navy that’s most disappointing in this scenario. It’s the press. Professionals behaving as if this is an 
important news story is an embarrassment to the entire field of journalism. Almost lost in the footnotes of the coverage of this incident is that while the videos were made, the USS Enterprise was on deployment to the Middle East as part of the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Wars in the Middle East? Ring any bells?
Maybe someone should write about that.