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What I suspect he meant was the climate that repealed Don't ask, don't tell.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