In case you're curious, I did actually run into this piece on Captain Honors yesterday when I was looking up Mind's Eye. I just didn't really feel like commenting on it.
For those of you who haven't heard, either through Google magic or The Daily Show, the aptly-named Captain Owen Honors has more-or-less been discharged as the captain of the naval vessel U.S.S. Enterprise following an investigation into an offensive series of videos he created using military equipment. Or, as AOL has taken to calling them, "movies."
One of the videos, which is presumably a commentary on the various "movie nights" Honors has run for his men, can be seen here. And as I watch it, I wonder quietly to myself, "What's the big freaking deal?" After some colorful cips (including a retrospective on the F-word, a montage dedicated to masturbation, and a shower scene with...heaven forbid...two chicks!), our captain proceeds to get drowned out by Starship as he disclaims responsibility on the part of his superiors. Then we get to see...*gasp!*...sailors dancing!? Well, I never!!
The video then proceeds into the Aerosmith montage glimpsed on the latest episode of Jon Stewart, complete with one of our finest naval officers eating what I can only hope is a Baby Ruth bar out of the toilet. All of the raunchier stuff is blurred out by The Virginia-Pilot, but featured prominently in the last half of the video is what I can only assume is the captain's pet parrot, before (and after) its suicide attempt. There are also some chicks in the shower, an...anal exam?...and a special appearance by...Glenn Close! Say it ain't so!
Frankly, this whole affair warrants far less attention than the media has given it, but one note I'd like to make is that "XO" (which is apparently the name our captain goes by in his videos) speaks through his three multiple personalities, including the douchebag sitting to his right who is apparently straight out of Top Gun. His use of the word "fag" is therefore representative of his own negative personality traits, much in the same way that the N-word is representative of the negative traits of slave owners.
Which, as you might guess, brings us to the Huckleberry Finn censorship scandal. In case you haven't heard, NewSouth Books is publishing a school-friendly version of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," which has excised the over 200 uses of the N-word in place of the word "slave." Proponents of this move, in addition to considering the use of the N-word to be offensive, also acknowledge that the use of the edited version is a necessary evil in order to reach a larger audience. Critics point out that not only is this plain and simple censorship, but it renders any honest discussion on the evils of slavery an impossibility.
Notable is one piece on CNN.com by the author of "Black American Money" and a spokesperson for black America, who argues against the use of a word that has such power to hurt: "Long before I became a scholar, I was a black teenage boy. At that time, I would never have enjoyed hearing my English teacher repeat the n-word 219 times out loud in front of a class full of white students. I also would have wondered why African-Americans are the only ethnic group forced to read "classic" literature that uses such derogatory language toward us in a disturbingly repetitive way.
"Although the brilliance of the Mark Twain novel must be acknowledged, students can and should be engaged in constructive ways to learn what happened to their ancestors without being subjected to racial slurs in the process."
Huh. You know, as much as I value free speech, I don't know how to tell a black man on the receiving end of the N-word that he's wrong. And knowing how well we uphold the First Amendment in this country, I don't see this stopping until the edited version of Twain's classic has been made available and has become a staple of cirricula across the country.
One quick note, though. NewSouth Books is a Montgomery-based publishing company which has given us such titles as "Alabama: One Big Front Porch", and "The Other Side of Montgomery: Growing Up White In the Civil Rights Movement." It's enough to give a guy diabetes, especially considering Rosa Parks could have died on that freaking bus.
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