The Rise and Fall of an Aircraft Carrier CO

Read a pretty good discussion of the issue and watch the video here, on Information Dissemination. 

Here's what I wrote in the comment section:

I had hoped not to spend too much time on this, but a phone call from my brother raised the question, and now that I've formed an opinion, I'll share it with whomever might be interested.

1. Galrhan does a fantastic job of providing context to the situation. Big E was in the yards a long, long time, and bringing a Dinosaur like that out and getting it up to operational speed is a Herculean task, one that would stress the abilities of any leadership team. Captain Honors was confronted with the task of motivating a crew that had long since ceased to see itself as a sea-going concern, and he clearly resorted to some of the more theatrical elements of leadership in the hope of creating that motivation. Leadership without some sense of theater is sterile and does not elevate the performance of subordinates.

2. Some of this stuff is genuinely funny, and as a red-blooded American guy (and former SWO), I say "bravo". There was creativity and bawdy humor laced throughout what I watched and sitting here at my computer desk, I was roundly entertained.

3. I got the jokes--and that's the problem. What we see here is inside Navy baseball at the major league level--and if you're not "read in", all you see is hostility to homosexuals (not homophobia, as I saw no fear), frat boy treatment of women, and sexual innuendo. Stuff that our increasingly "disconnected from all things military" American public finds discontinuous with their image of the military, and all of which they are quite comfortable with having had exterminated from THEIR workplaces. Taking this and showing it on Youtube et cetera is quite shocking to folks who simply don't do what the Navy does.

4. But none of this should be surprising. In the absence of complaints from the crew, Captain Honors should have had the sense not to make videos like this. He's been through all the training, he's seen the Navy dragged through the mud post-Tailhook. He knows that the past twenty years have been about professionalizing and diversifying the Navy workforce to the extent that yes--it looks much more like what the Youtube crowd watching at home looks like. Putting aside the offense that everyday Americans are taking at what is portrayed in these videos, the likelihood that crewmembers in ENTERPRISE would be made uncomfortable by the videos seems self-evident. That they registered their complaints with Captain Honors and he did nothing to censor his behavior raises questions about his judgment and fitness for duty at more senior levels, let alone that one he was at.

5. Most distressing to me, where was the Captain? I can assure you, if either of my XO's was routinely making video content for "enjoyment" by the crew, I would have had an interested eye cocked to the monitor simply out of curiosity. Had content like this been produced, I'd have had their asses.

So--should Captain Honors be fired? No. He should be reprimanded, and he should stay in command. ENTERPRISE CO's don't grow on trees and that ship has important business to attend to.

But they need to speed up whatever pipeline his relief is in, because when the deployment is over, Captain Honors should seek other employment.