Nobody expects them to live a monastic life. Nobody has said they should, yet there is a time and place for everything.
Honors opted to openly say that he knew he had offended people. His job is to lead everyone, not just some of them. You can't be an effective leader will you offend them and after offending them tell them to go screw themselves. That is what he did when he admitted that and called them gutless, and told them to hug themselves for the next 20 minutes.
Gee, thanks Boss, at least I know through intimidation to keep my mouth shut if I want to get promoted under your watch!
At least we can all agree he gave fair warning on his personal stance regarding this issue.
The AF has for decades been called the "corporate branch", but I would be the 1st to say, when they are hanging out in the hootch or at the club, they are not angels.
They became more anti-septic back in the 90's after Tailhook. They were not about to be the next branch to be on the nightly news day in and day out. They learned from the Navy's mistakes and it is a shame that the Navy didn't learn from their own mistake.
To me I would give him a pass if this was done at an aircrew meeting on Friday night while they were having a few beers, and someone used their phone to take video of this. However, it wasn't. It was pre-meditated and he knew what he was saying to a general audience of 5K. He didn't care if he offended anyone, and again worse yet, he acknowledged that he had continue to do even after people complained.
To him it was his way or the highway. That is not a leader.
For him, not only is his Navy career over, but he will have a hard time getting a 2nd career going. He could have written his ticket for his 2nd career, but now he will be seen as politically incorrect and companies like Rand, Raytheon, SAIC, Lockheed, even the govt would not touch him with a 10 foot pole.
I hope he likes his retirement pay as an O6 because that is what he will live on for quite sometime.
In case anyone else didn't see it now Glenn Close is involved because she was informed that she is in these videos. SHe had visited the E and was video taped, but never knew that her image would be used in this manner
"I am distraught that my image has been used to perpetuate something that I abhor," said Close via a statement that her publicist, Catherine Olim, gave to Kelly.
"The cynical, unauthorized use of my image in this video is deeply offensive and insulting, and was the result of a seemingly innocent request of me during a visit to the aircraft carrier over four years ago."
Also, for me, I have an issue with this because I am sure he had to reprimand sailors for sexual harassment, yet somehow he could not put 2 +2 together and realize that these videos could be seen as a wink and a nod regarding sexual harassment. There are women on that carrier, he created an environment where a logical female sailor would say, no reason to report this because he jokes about it in his morale boosting videos. If I as a woman had to endure watching his show, and worked with guys who made jokes about my breast size or anything sexual, I would keep my mouth shut because I would not expect support from the hierarchy in this issue. So tell me, how is that a good leader? How can you say he is leading when people are too afraid to speak.
You know what, the more I think about it, the more I know exactly what to call his remarks ...BULLYING. Again, it really does come down to that 1 statement of I know I have offended people, but guess what...go screw yourselves because I matter more than you do.
"Over the years, I've gotten several complaints about inappropriate material during these videos - never to me personally, but gutlessly through other channels," Honors said in one of the videos. "This evening, all of you bleeding hearts - and you, fag SWO boy - why don't you just go ahead and hug yourselves for the next 20 minutes or so, because there is a really good chance you're going to be offended tonight."
Imagine being a male SWO who reported to him. Imagine the crew just gossiping around trying to determine if there was a particular officer he was inferring in that video. If you can't say he crossed the line with these comments, what exactly to you would be crossing the line?