By These Colonels must have forgot that anything possibly construed as being offensive of gays within in the military like impersonating a gay singer will not be tolerated:
Three South Korea-based colonels have been reprimanded for their part in a skit that officials believe made fun of homosexuals and the rules designed to protect them in the military.
The skit – performed March 22 at a dinner attended by 8th Army officials at the Dragon Hill Lodge on Yongsan Garrison – featured the officers using effeminate gestures in portraying openly gay musicians Elton John and George Michael as soldiers, and then lip-synching a song by Boy George, who is also homosexual.
Details of the incident and punishment were initially reported by the Army Times and confirmed Tuesday by 8th Army officials.
The Eighth Army commander, Lt. Gen. John D. Johnson, who did not witness the skit, determined the officers did not violate any regulations with their performance, but gave them administrative reprimands for showing “extremely poor judgment.”
The colonels reprimanded were Joseph Cox, commander of the 501st Military Intelligence Brigade; Brian Dunn, commander of the 35th Air Defense Artillery Brigade; and Mark Elliott, commander of the 1st Signal Brigade. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read the rest at the S&S link but parody skits are a common occurrence at dining out events in the US Army where usually people within the unit are mocked. The fact that three Brigade Commanders did the skit leads me to believe it had no homophobic intent, but the Army at this point in time doesn’t want any perception of homophobia thus these three commanders were reprimanded. The reprimands will stay in their locals files and are thus pretty much meaningless, but it allows the Army to look like they did something.
She hasn’t seen...
5:36 am on May 24th, 2011 1
PC overkill
5:40 am on May 24th, 2011 2
Is it common for Colonels in the Army to do skits?
I’ve never seen anyone above a Captain’s rank do them (Airforce)….and Captains only when there weren’t any Lts at all. For this reason. They’re always offensive to someone, but they’re a lot of fun. A Colonel performing a skit is out of his mind. They must’ve been ready to retire anyway.
5:48 am on May 24th, 2011 3
Who was “injured” by it? Who complained? One of those openly gay soldiers who are allowed to do anything they want in Itaewon while stationed in Korea?
5:52 am on May 24th, 2011 4
I don’t know what DADT Repeal training you underwent, but everyone else in the Army underwent training that said nothing about homosexuals being “a protected class.” They were a protected class before, when you could see someone going in a gay bar and not ask them about it. You also think that this won’t do anything to hurt their careers. Ask LTG Mixon how much his public conduct regarding DADT hurt his career. These three officers got bad press in both the Army Times and S & S, and their respective brigades know it.
6:00 am on May 24th, 2011 5
Liz, you are right, in the Army it is usually Captains and Lt’s that get stuck doing these skits. That is why I say the fact that not only three Colonels, but three Brigade Commander did the skits lead me to believe they weren’t homophobic and probably had some kind of DADT teaching point they were trying to get across to the audience that didn’t come off that way to whoever complained.
The way I look at it is would you paint your face black with shoe polish for example to impersonate a black singer? Likewise making effeminate gestures is not a good idea when impersonating a gay singer. If these skits were really homophobic these three commanders would have likely been removed from command.
Like you say these skits are always offensive to someone so if the Army is so concerned about not offending anyone than ban the skits altogether instead of picking and choosing who gets special victim status with these skits.
6:15 am on May 24th, 2011 6
All activities should be banned because someone might be offended. Perhaps I am deeply offended by the color green.
Mark my words, there is more to this.
6:16 am on May 24th, 2011 7
@6 – Yes you are correct homosexuals are not a protected class in the military according to the official training and I reworded the intent of my comment.
However if these guys impersonated some country singers and made stereotypical redneck comments do you think it would be in the S&S and Army Times? That is the point I am making is that people need to realize that anything that could be construed as being even remotely offensive to gays like this incident appears to be based on the information at hand, runs the risk of the Army leadership having to do something about it.
I don’t think 8th Army had any intent of the Army Times and S&S publishing this. If they didn’t publish this there wouldn’t likely be any negative side effects to these officer’s careers since this is in their local file. The publishing of the story was probably because someone leaked it to them.
6:20 am on May 24th, 2011 8
I’m guessing there was a pompolit (помполит) or a politruk (политрук) in the audience.
/oh yeah, in the US military they are now called EO Reps
6:43 am on May 24th, 2011 9
What a bunch of dumb f**ks. What were they thinking of?? In this day and age, with the rules of the game changing as they are, it is just not the thing to do. What are their subordinates thinking of these guys now, is it another case of “do what I say and not what I do.”? Kinda of hard to push a program to the troops when the actions of the leadership are contrary to the “company line.” How many folks were in attendance? did they really think being “cute” would not make the headlines??
7:04 am on May 24th, 2011 10
Only a horse’s arse would be offended by something less homophobic than an episode of Barney Miller…
Let the accusers be made known publicly and let their Brigades decide their punishment…
9:43 am on May 24th, 2011 11
Now let me get this straight.
Am I to understand that Stars & Stripes doesn’t notice dead bodies in the Dragon Hill Lodge and never follows up on strange events (if they even report them to begin with) and constantly makes excuses for situations that scream of corruption and always seems to report the “facts” while misrepresenting the story in USFK’s favor…
…but is quick to publicize casual skits in which people impersonating gay singers act like… gay singers?
Y’all funking with me. Right?
I guess, along with drunks and losers and hacks, we can add angry closeted homosexuals to the characteristics which describe a Korea-based Stars & Stripes “reporter”.
Now, I would watch this Lt. Gen. John D. Johnson. He is likely a closet diick-smoker… who PTs himself to exhaustion to remove the guilt every time he takes it in the rear from a lower-enlisted lover.
“Johnson” can’t be a coincidince. I wonder if the “D” stands for Dork or Diick or Dink… maybe John Dong Johnson. Who knows?
Not enough? He is the Eighth Army Commander. That is seriously gay right there… it has a built-in lisp.
“So, General ‘Johnson’, what do you command?”
“Well, girlfriend, I command the Eighth Army. Ohhhhh, and we call it the Eighth Army because I eighth so many diickth lasth night. It was faaaaabulous!”
Think I’m kidding? He said…
“It was obvious to everyone associated with this thing that what they had done was inappropriate because there was every chance that someone could have been offended by this, in particular, potentially gay soldiers,”
Now what the funk, exactly, is a “‘potentially’ gay soldier”?
The only people who think there are “potentially” gay people are closeted gay people fighting with their desire to smoke a big, veiny peniis.
Straight people have no concept of “potentially” gay people. You are or you aren’t. Period. The end.
Be a twink PT god in tailored BDUs alone with this general at your own risk.
While I realize he is trying to cover for “his kind”, somebody should tell him that being gay in the military is still a crime… meaning anybody complaining about this is breaking the still-current rules of DADT… as only an angry, uppity faggot would take offense at light-hearted satire.
With three wars (no longer two) going on, it churns my stomach to see any attention put on this kind of stuff while shortages on the battlefield and fraud, waste, and abuse, off of the battlefield continue on while generals look the other way… likely looking at a big, purple-headed cack in General Johnson’s case.
10:01 am on May 24th, 2011 12
I happen to know one of the BDE commanders quite well, and I served under him in the mid-90′s. He has served as a commander in the most physically and mentally challenging assignments in the Army, and has considerable “street cred” with NCO’s and enlisted people.
The only poor judgement I can see in doing this skit is that the three COL’s failed to take note of what happened to that poor Navy Captain for doing his “CO’s Movie Night” videos. They might have realized that had any member of the military’s newest protected class raise a stink, they’d get thrown under the bus, pronto. Which is precisely what happened.
Now, I suspect that LTG Johnson does not want to run afoul of the strictures of the new PC regime, and somehow jeopardize getting his 4th star. But at the same time, he does not have the guts to publish a policy letter that describes and bans EXACTLY what sort of thing constitutes unacceptable behavior towards gays under his command; such a letter would quickly become fodder for further trouble. Hell, the letter itself might constitute some sort of insult by propagating gay stereotypes.
11:57 am on May 24th, 2011 13
Divide and conquer (control) from within.
Gays are nothing more than the extension of the protected female sexism that I endured while still in uniform.
Flamers will never be equal, much less excepted with this attitude.
Bottom line: This proves that being gay is not normal.
Hey Flamers, grab your balls and be a soldier. Oh, wait. You can’t be. You’re SENSATIVE.
Weak assed little flower boys.
PC is the #1 enemy of the Military today.
4:51 pm on May 24th, 2011 14
You know, Bradley Manning is a fag. Probably a Democrat too…
6:23 pm on May 24th, 2011 15
A few years back, some pilots stationed at Kunsan made a video skit with an entertaining song about how gold bond powder was a ‘refreshing breath mint’ for their balls. It was completely innocuous, but they all received reprimands and I don’t think any of them are in the Airforce anymore. I think the highest ranking guy was a Major and it was simply sent over e mail but it went viral when people sent it to their friends (not me, I never sent it out but it was great!). Stupid move on their part really. The age of the internet is a PC age…no getting around that and you can’t wish it all away.
6:56 pm on May 24th, 2011 16
yeap cant understand how they think doing anything mocking anyone or anything gay would not land them in hot water
7:15 pm on May 24th, 2011 17
Just when commanders have enough “prime directives”:, now they have to watch out to make sure that some “potentially gay” soldier will be not offended, lose his/her mind, and as a result:
a) divulge masses of classified information to wikileaks
b) go on a shooting rampage and take the lives of fellow soldiers
c) file reams of EO complaints, all handled by the Soviet Commissariat that is the EO system
d) commit suicide
e) all of the above
IN all of the units I was ever assigned to, we had numbers of acknowledged gay soldiers. Nobody ever made an issue of it. Some were quite flamboyant, but were accepted as just part of the furniture. Of course, at that time, they were not making claims to some special victim class, but then, nobody hassled them, either.
We had one BN PSNCO who went on to become (at that time) kind of a cause celebré, by virtue of the fact that after 18 years in the Army, somebody finally realized that he was queer, and decided to throw him out.
As luck would have it, he was drafted in 1971, and had never, ever, denied being gay. On the contrary, he was a talented drag performer, and was always in demand to put on shows at the officer’s and NCO clubs wherever he had been stationed.
At the same time, he was the rarest and most treasured of birds: an admin NCO who ran his section like a Swiss watch. Absolutely no personnel action went astray during his tenure. He worked tirelessly with NCO’s and junior enlisted to make sure that their records were in good shape and that they were prepared for boards, and that they got the schools they submitted 4187′s for. As a result, we got a measurably higher share of promotions and schools than like BN’s in other divisions.
At any rate, when he rotated out of 2ID for 9ID, things went sour under a less gay-friendly BN commander. He found himself resorting to every legal avenue to protect himself from being chaptered; after all, when he was drafted, he let his draft board know on no uncertain terms that he was flaming.
He told me that he offered to blow his draft board to establish his bona fides, and I had no reason to doubt it; at a drunken NCO beer call (we had those things back then), the CSM called him a “butt pirate”and his reply was “I’m the best piece of ass you will ever have, sweety”.
But on ROKDrop, we’ve had these threads/conversations before, and they all pretty much follow a pattern. The pattern followed allows for very little middle ground.
But in the case of these three BDE commanders, I think the EUSA CG has blown the incident all out of proportion, and I think that in his quest to adhere to the party line his reputation with his peers will suffer irreparable damage.
As for the “guilty”, although the letters of reprimand will be trashed when they leave theater, this belief that the punishment will have no lasting consequences is a fond hope and polite fiction. These guys may be done for.
Again, I know one of the BDE commanders very well, and I’ve known him under the worst possible circumstances, as he supported me for 7 months while I went through a long and dragged-out version of the Army’s Stations of the Cross.
What I most fear is that this public ass-whipping will be for him the straw that breaks the camel’s back, and that he will decide to “transition to civilian life” under some perceived cloud…sacrificed on the altar of some PC God that just did not Goddamn exist when we both joined the Army.
9:25 pm on May 24th, 2011 18
[...] — despite being busy reprimanding officers for making fun of gay folk — is taking this all very seriously, reports Ye Olde Chosun, with USFK agreeing [...]
11:18 pm on May 24th, 2011 19
When I first read this I thought it said: “Three USFK Brigade Commanders Reprimanded for Gay Shit”
Anyway, Elton John hosted SNL last month and on there him and the cast members did several skits poking fun at how flamboyantly gay he is. I think the real problem was that these Colonels didn’t first clear their skit with NBC (the television channel).
6:51 am on May 25th, 2011 20
I am offended by any conduct that depicts white, anglo-saxon, protestants in any way.
In face – you offend me
choke yourself!
4:28 am on May 26th, 2011 21
Thank god there are no gays in Korea!
4:34 am on May 26th, 2011 22
#21
Not sure if serious?
4:34 am on May 26th, 2011 23
#21
http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc182/SuperSaiyanBowser2/DC/NotSureIfSerious.jpg
Not sure if serious?
10:55 am on May 26th, 2011 24
Boris yeltsin can’t understand they think do any ridicule anyone or any gay won’t land of hot water,
4:42 pm on May 26th, 2011 25
George Bush doesn’t care about gay skits.