Captain Owen Honors *UPDATED*

Because I was away, I missed the whole first impact of the Owen Honors thing, but for glimpsing a horrified PC headline on CNN while waiting for a flight.  That millisecond of MSM-manufactured finger-pointing was enough to clue me in to the fact that, if CNN disapproved, I probably wouldn’t be that shocked.

Having watched one of the videos at CDR Salamander’s place (along with an excellent post about the PC hysteria going on right now), I have to say that the only thing that shocks me is the fact that the liberal media watch dogs, people whose worship at Lenny Bruce’s obscene shrine, were able to pretend such outrage.  This is the Navy, for goodness sakes, not a floating DAR meeting.  Capt. Honors is trying to reach guys (for the most part) — young guys, who have been raised their entire lives on an obscenity-laced diet of rap videos and Hollywood movies.  I actually thought the video was funny, and I’m usually quite prudish (0r, at least, uninterested in vulgarity)!

Bottom line:  if our military can’t take some weak, silly, mildly offensive jokes, how in the world can it take bullets and bombs?  We’re supposed to be training fighters here, not delicate flowers.  We want, of course, to have a moral military, made up of people who aren’t monstrous, violent, raping killing machines, but there’s a huge difference between inculcating decency in our forces, and turning them into a ladies garden party.

As for the military high command, which reacted with knee-jerk speed by destroying Capt. Owen’s career, I don’t think it did itself any favors.  When will traditional forces realize that the liberals in this country can never be appeased?  A less extreme response would have been proportionate to the low level of the offense, and would not have fed the perpetual outrage machine on the Left.  As it is, conservatives, with their abject overreacting keep conceding liberal points, even when the liberals really have no point at all.

UPDATEMax Boot nails it:  the “humor” was mild compared to what normally crosses young people’s radars; Capt. Owen (as OldFlyer said) should have comported himself with more dignity; and Owen’s real sin was to mis-read the PC signals.