Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: PC rankles in military ranks Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 17:03:26 EST Message-ID: \SE A \HD PC rankles in military ranks \SH Pilot's newsletter lampoons policy \BY Rowan Scarborough \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES A Navy aviator based in Tidewater Virginia is circulating an underground newsletter to Navy personnel that ridicules the service leadership's push for cultural change between men and women within the ranks. Far from the politically correct environment inside the Beltway, the officer, who is publishing the paper anonymously, is giving voice to many Navy personnel frustrated by the service's crusade against sexual harassment and by political pressure on behalf of women and homosexuals in the military. These service people complain of reduced freedom of speech, paranoia and a military leadership viewed as knuckling under to the feminist agenda in Washington. Their views are largely - and carefully - confined to the privacy of squadron "ready rooms," the officer's mess or off-the-record conversations with a reporter. But the Navy lieutenant, who lives with his wife and daughter in Virginia Beach, is airing his protests in a homemade, desktop-published journal titled the Gauntlet. The name comes from the 1991 Tailhook Association convention where civilian and Navy women ran or were forced through a line, or gauntlet, of partying male fliers. Navy officials reacted to the much-publicized behavior at the Tailhook convention and the slow-to-get-started investigation of it by punishing several senior officers, cracking down on sexual harassment, calling for a "culture" change, stressing "core values" and instituting "sensitivity" training sessions. The Gauntlet's editor said its credo is: "Women don't belong in combat. Women don't belong in the close confines of military lifestyle. The military is not the great social experiment of the '90s. We're fighting the covert censorship that 'core values' has placed on the military and the Navy." The lieutenant has circulated two editions so far, stuffing them full of satiric attacks on the Navy hierarchy, feminists and Rep. Patricia Schroeder, the Colorado Democrat who has come to symbolize the forces of political correctness to many of the rank and file. He said in a recent interview he is considering going public, after consulting with a lawyer this week. "The Gauntlet was born out of watching," the aviator said. "Basically I think the radical feminists took Tailhook as an opening to inject their viewpoint of what the military should be. "In my frustration in watching what's happened since Tailhook and the Navy's reaction to this, I didn't think I could speak out as a Navy officer. I'm going to go ahead and let my ideas be published," he said. Priced at $1 for subscribers, The Gauntlet's first issue was a mix of crude humor and anti-politically correct rhetoric. A front page "editorial" begins: "The situation is grim. . . . There is an enemy vessel on the horizon . . . and it is called 'humor deprivation.' Feel like [you're] walking on egg shells? You can't even make fun of what is going on these days. But we all know now that a joke (any kind) is a form of discrimination. The Navy (Army? Air Force?) is on the 'PC' bandwagon." Another item, headlined "The PC Aviator," states, "How to be PC&S [politically correct and sensitive] with your new female roomate. . . . Do not stare at her buttocks when she is shaving her legs in the morning." The Gauntlet's second issue, published in October, features an editorial, "mail call" and an interview with Phyllis Schlafly, a syndicated columnist who is active in conservative women's causes. One item in that issue states: "Our purpose is to promote humor, poke fun at people and situations; past, present and future. Remember, drunken debauchery of the kind recently displayed (you know where and you know who) is not tolerated but will be graded." One letter writer wishes the editor luck with his publication, noting: "When you climb out of your cockpit and put your foot on the ground, you must realize by now that you are in a war zone. Contact with any female outside of one's mother can be dangerous to your career." Another item "congratulates" a Naval flight squadron for "changing that degrading Playboy bunny logo off your lead F-14 Tomcat. 22 years of tradition is too damn long." A cartoon on the final page of the October issue depicts the renaming of the USS Bunker Hill to the USS Anita Hill. Navy officials at the Pentagon find little humor in the Gauntlet. "I thought it was in poor taste. I didn't find it funny," said Rear Adm. Kendall Pease, the Navy's chief spokesman. Adm. Pease said he has read the newsletter and also noticed a classified ad for it in the Navy Times newspaper. But he said he has no proof that the Gauntlet is, in fact, published by a naval officer. Even assuming the editor is an officer, he is violating no Navy rules as long as the newsletter is produced after working hours on nongovernment equipment, the admiral said. "A person has freedom, and just because you're a naval officer, there are rights you have as an officer, and freedom of speech is one of them," he said. Adm. Pease defended the strong stand the Navy has taken against sexual harassment, including "core value" and sensitivity training. "I think the reaction that the Navy has taken is appropriate," he said. "Demeaning behavior is not acceptable. We all know that." The admiral said he is unaware of any negative reaction from junior officers. However, recent interviews by The Washington Times with junior aviators found plenty of resentment. Some officers were particularly critical of the Navy's decision to strip five senior officers of their commands for allowing a bawdy skit staged by officers at Miramar Naval Air Station near San Diego. The skit's target was Mrs. Schroeder, an advocate of expanded combat roles for women and of allowing openly homosexual men and women to serve in the military. One Navy pilot at the service's "Top Gun" fighter school in Miramar, Calif., wrote openly about his feelings in a letter to the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces. "Men will be hesitant to treat women the same as other men for fear of a harassment complaint," Lt. Douglas Waters wrote. "The solution is not to make men and combat ready rooms more sensitive either. Sensitivity is not an attribute in combat. Combat involves killing other human beings." The Gauntlet's editor agrees, as is evident by the recorded greeting on his telephone line: "Hello, you have reached the Gauntlet, journal for the politically correct and sensitive military person. Not!" This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM