Author’s Note: Despite the title, this isn’t a bootleg copy of a scruffy Evangelical’s New York Times column — just a scruffy Evangelical attempting humor to keep himself from visiting Davy Jones via a millstone.
Veterans routinely have to answer for the sins of their respective services; it’s part of the deal. Retired Marines get questions about the authenticity of stall-based self-satisfaction depicted in Jarhead, and Air Force veterans field queries about the best hemorrhoid creams.
Sailors — who already catch it in the neck about the Navy’s reputation for being fruit afloat — now have to discuss a paper-pushing yeoman, done up as a nightmarish parody of a woman, prancing and lip-syncing in Navy recruiting material posted on CCP-controlled social media. Great Neptune’s beard is this stupid.
A sailor’s “liberty” — his time off from the ship — is his to do with as he chooses. But his actions should not and cannot negatively affect the Navy’s ability to defend the nation and recruit future sailors. That the Navy has decided to take a sailor’s private kink and make it a sales pitch to the American public is incomprehensible, and shoulder boards should be removed for it.
For those who haven’t been so-cursed to know what I’m talking about, the U.S. Navy partnered with an active-duty sailor and part-time drag queen in some of its recruiting videos last year — watch at the risk of your mortal soul.
This past week, House Republicans demanded Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “put an end to drag shows and any ‘drag queen influencers’ performing in our military.” How detached from reality are the public relations junior officers and marketing firms that collaborate to peddle this bunk?
As I’ve written in the past, military recruitment is declining because the families whose generational business it is to serve are steering their kids away from the military — in other words, the people who provide the most value today and into the future are demurring because we’re attempting to recruit people who won’t join using methods that offend those most likely to serve.
The thing that chafes my pantyhose the most is there has always been cross-dressing in the Navy, but it was, at least up until now, understood as anti-establishment. Sailing is dangerous, miserable work — at least it still is for pit snipes. The line-crossing ceremony at the equator, wherein pollywog sailors earn shellback status, is replete with shenanigans. The chance to goof around and genuflect before King Neptune and his court have all sorts of poncy, semi-homoerotic components. But that’s the point — it’s subversive. The U.S. Navy as an institution has done everything it can to make a madcap day of abuse into a momentary sterilized handshake.
Now, cross-dressing has been legitimized and institutionalized. That Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) departments aboard are hosting sailor drag queens on the mess decks is abominable.
Note: This Yeomen Second-Class (YN2) Joshua Kelley, stage name of “Harpy Daniels” — egad — who almost certainly existed in Personnel, had the office hours of a DMV supervisor. For background, Personnel is purgatory — a cavern where a sailor goes when he needs vital paperwork processed (finances, attaching/detaching, separation, etc.). A seasoned sailor knows to prepare to stand in line for hours as the yeomen avoid eye contact; they then close Personnel for a two-hour lunch. Come afternoon, the sailor will rejoin the line until he dies.
If YN2 has time to strip, let it be stripping paint with the undesignated seamen up in the focsul — they’d love the help.
I don’t care what sailors do in their off-time — their liberty. Degeneracy is the sailor’s pastime — sodomy and the lash. But the second a sailor’s and service’s actions negatively affect the Navy’s ability to recruit — reinforcing its position as the greatest naval force the world has ever seen — Americans have every right to be furious.