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Stop the presses. Sailors, when they go off to war at sea, curse incessantly! They engage constantly in ribald horseplay! They laugh at crude sexual jokes and juvenile toilet humor! This was the lockerroom tone aboard the USS Enterprise during the aircraft carrier's tour of duty in the Arabian Sea in 2006. The Virginian-Pilot newspaper obtained a series of crass videos made to entertain the crew by its then executive officer Owen Honors. Captain Honors now commands the ship, but the exposure of his antics may cost him his command. All three newscasts led with Honors' attempts at humor, making smutty saltiness the Story of the Day.

Jim Miklaszewski, NBC's man at the Pentagon dug out file footage of Honors when he was an F-14 pilot in 2002, strutting the right stuff for then-anchor Tom Brokaw. Miklaszewski called Honors' career so far "stellar" before blind-quoting one of his former commanders: "Being a leader does not mean being an entertainer. Otherwise you are just another guy on YouTube." ABC's Martha Raddatz put it this way: "He is supposed to be a commander not a comedian." On CBS, Bob Orr told us that Honors' video productions were a regular Enterprise cameo, intended to boost morale as an introduction to the shipboard feature film on movie night: "My sense is that he is on very big trouble."

Andrew Tyndall 1/7/11 8:33:53 pm

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