ALL NEWS IS SLANTED

The below comments were in response to an email that someone sent regarding a female chaplain at the Air Force Academy who bad mouthed too much religion at the Academy. The full article can be found at the Thursday, May 12, NY Times. The article was sent to me by a chaplain buddy of mine.


Thanks for sharing this article, Lamar. My basic feeling is that probably much has been taken out of context by the news media. All news media slant; whether it is the NY Times, Newsweek, Time or some of the various patron saints of Conservatives: O'Reilly, Fox, etc.; all slant, even us "bloggers." My suspicion is that this is true of the comments of this female chaplain. I started to say, gal, but then decided to be PC. I think the account of her comments were probably slanted.

My basic reaction is "to hell" with the crowd wanting us to be other than what we are. Fight their asses tooth and nail. I know you guys won't remember this but at the big Reserve Chaplain Conference when I was at the Presidio (of San Francisco when it was a full scale military installation), the Chief (of Chaplains) was suppose to show up for the morning talk and cancelled. The 6th Army Chaplain made the mistake of asking me to fill in at the last moment. I developed a talk about an outfit in San Francisco called, "Class Act." They would do anything for you in the way of organizing a party, gathering, etc. and their concept was that it should always show "class." I did a take off on this idea that chaplains should always be who they were: if they were Mormons, Baptists, Catholic, Jewish, whatever--just because they were in the chaplaincy should not change who they were. I thought the speech was fairly benign, nobody reacted to it as I remember. Later in the day, I almost got in a fistfight with the Rabbi that the Chief, (of Chaplains) had hired to waste money fighting the unconstitutionaly (two law students back during the 80s filed a law suit attemtping to get the chaplincy decared unconstitutional. They did it as a school assignment and the Chief of Chaplains overreacted) suit against the chaplaincy. The Rabbi who happened to be a lawyer and a Reserve Chaplain later wrote a book. Anyway, this Rabbi goes back to the Chief's Office and distorts everything. I don't know what happened but as I remember, nobody stood up for me. The moral of this war story is "Let's give this gal the benefit of the doubt" and if the story is accurate, "to hell with 'em, chaplains need to be a "class act" and who they are. Airborne. Power in the blood.

I am much more concerned with spending all this money on sending us these lapel pins, etc. (see previously published blog article). We need an AllServe conscription plan in America and it ain't going to happen with stupid stuff like spending money on us "over the hill" types to help them recruit--how many people have you talked into joining the Army lately? God bless America. What a great country!