Brickbat: Flyboys

Inspections of Air Force bases across the globe uncovered more than 32,000 examples of "unprofessional" or "obscene" material displayed in common areas or stored on government computers. Those include pornographic movies, a video titled "Achmed the Dead Terrorist," a photo of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady without his shirt and a Ken doll dressed only in swim trunks.

Comments

[invisible furry hand]

Yo Fisty, time to sack Ernesto

[Fist of Etiquette]

The internet and I decided to see other people.

[BlueBook]

Do they still allow racy pinup artwork on the planes? And now that women and gays are fully included, does that artwork involve sexy firemen, gladiators, pool boys and the like?

[Xenocles]

No, to the extent that stuff still exists it would never be so overt. We used to put pictures of hot girls (and the occasional dude in a speedo as a joke) up on the missile tubes as a way of counting down the days when the patrol was close to ending. I think that practice was quashed a few years ago.

[Steve G]

Nope, gender-neutral is the general guidance now. Not sure if it's still around, but "Memphis Belle" (now on a B-52H) was the only known exception that I'm aware of.

[Guy Incognito]

I had a female CO (a helo pilot in an aviation squadron) who flipped out over the term 'cockpit.'

I remember my pre-military days when I na?vely thought the point of having a standing, professional military was to win wars...yeah, no.

[Agammamon]

I was once tapped by my DIVO to help out a fellow (woman) officer of his learn the navy's maintenance system and bring her up to speed on her responsibilities in the systems.

Our officers don't seem to get any training on their day-to-day responsibilities before they report to their first assignment - and in this case (shore-duty/her small division/mainly administrative duties) she didn't have an E-6 or CPO to take care of her.

So this new ensign, in place for a few weeks, is approached by one of her E-4's. He wants to schedule a time when she can review the paperwork and check the equipment related to a randomly selected maintainance action.

This is something we call a "PMS spotcheck".

PMS = Planned Maintenance System

She was not amused. The poor kid was stuck trying to explain his (to him) innocent actions to his suddenly pissed-off DIVO.

[BuSab Agent]

Our DO was a CWO4, he used to routinely tell us to stop playing pranks on the poor female Watch Officers...it's not their fault they not very smart; you can't really expect that much from phys ed and poly sci majors.

[wingnutx]

Damn, that interpretation had never occurred to me.

We had a Filipino SK (would be an LS these days iirc) ge berzerk when someone called up and asked him for a damage control 'flip-chart'.

Another time the riggers from my tender had dropped a valve on a submarine and fucked it all up. They had just exited the escape trunk when an MMC from the sub yelled "Get those riggers the hell off my boat!" One rigger, who happened to be black, thought he heard something that sounds a whole lot like rigger, and went flying back down the escape trunk and beat the hell out of the chief.

Heh.

[Xenocles]

It's really creepy the way porn keeps turning up on these computers. They are typically only in offices, which pretty strongly implies that people are beating off under their desks.

The good news is that despite the issue being one of the most strongly emphasized in computer use training, the government apparently still can't reliably stop it outside of these periodic sweeps.

[invisible furry hand]

What does the training say will happen to a govt employee who's caught doing it? And does the employee actually get penalised in some way in practice?

[Xenocles]

I've never seen it happen personally, and the training is a little vague on the penalties but definitely gives the impression that it's very very bad.

[db]

I thought dishonorable discharge was implied in cases of workplace porn.

[Generic Stranger]

Wouldn't it be a bad conduct discharge or administrative discharge? I thought dishonorable discharge was generally reserved for felony-level crimes, which pornography (unless it was kiddy porn) on a workplace computer doesn't exactly rise to.

[Radioactive007]

dishonorable discharge...what do you get when you're beating off under the desk?

[LTC(ret) John]

+1 onan

[db]

Bingo.

[Agammamon]

Depends on your rank - If you're senior enlisted or a mid-level officer the IT guy will just "make it disappear".
A JO or mid-rank enlisted can expect to receive a stern talking to from his supervisor and maybe written counseling.
The junior enlisted shares access to a computer with 30 other guys and what the hell are you doing playing on the computer when you should be out on deck working you lazy bastard I don't care that you're taking a break checking your email where's your damn BM3!

[BuSab Agent]

Back in my day, computers weren't capable of displaying porn. Well I guess you could make green screen ASCII porn, but what's the point? Old fashioned paper porn you kept in your rack/locker and no one said shit.

[TANSTaaFL]

Last week he was sent down to Da Nang to see the Navy head shrinker, and the crazy fucker starts jerking off in the waiting room. Instant Section Eight.

[Mickey Rat]

Only 32,000 examples in the entire Air Force? What's the usual rate on this sort of thing in any professional setting?

What's the point of this Brickbat?

[LTC(ret) John]

That; 1) The Air Force considers a ventriloquist routine worth chasing down, and as mentioned above no matter how hard Nanny tries, they just can't keep pron off the USAF computers?

[Restoras]

I blame the lame uniforms.

[wingnutx]

They recently did a massive sweep of all work spaces at Luke AFB, opening personal lockers and everything.

Woe be to any airman who had a picture of a hooters girl taped up in his locker.

They were handing out NJP like candy.

I understand that was AF-wide over the past several months.

[Cdr Lytton]

Only 32000 was the first thing that came to my head too.

Material found and removed at other bases included Maxim magazines

Oh noes! Issues of Maxim are lying around! Let me guess, they were found a) in the latrines, b) in airmen's quarters or c) behind the Playboys at the BX.

[Steve G]

This. Currently working in the HQ, I first saw the 32K number and was dumbfounded. But the majority of the items found were benign mags like maxim and I-shit-you-not Mens Health.
I'm amazed that people have the nuts (or the ability) to put porn on their machine since you can't easily get to any site like that and if you hook up so much as a thumb drive big brother knows it. I was even "caught" emailing a document with my own SSN to my personal email. Some of this porn I'm sure was on the classified network and/or overseas.
If they really wanted to dig up some controversy they'd go searching for bootleg movies/music on overseas shared drives/computers. you'd find more...

[LTC(ret) John]

"If they really wanted to dig up some controversy they'd go searching for bootleg movies/music on overseas shared drives/computers. you'd find more..."

You would see all of Bagram Airfield shut down, to be sure.

[Steve G]

I got my best music there!

[Steve G]

Actually maybe the RIAA could probably help expedite our exit

[Agammamon]

And they could only get that high by counting just about anything as "unprofessional".

I mean, if you think a Jeff Dunham routing is innapropriate then you've lost all credibility as far as being allowed to determine where the line is.

[Diligentia Vis Celeritas]

Achmed the Dead Terrorist is obscene or unprofessional? They've seen that bit, right?

[LTC(ret) John]

a video titled "Achmed the Dead Terrorist,"

Jeff Dunham's routine on film - sure, we were passing that around in late 2007, just before we left to join the surge in Iraq. Our answer to everything for two weeks was "Silence! ... infidel" or "I kill you!". Didn't realize we were so "unprofessional".

[db]

Other than the porno stored on work computers, the rest sounds like pretty weak sauce.

Except: I expect heads to roll over the Tom Brady pic. You can't have such an overt display of religious icons in a government facility.

[EDG reppin' LBC]

Fuck Tom Brady! I'm glad his dumb ass is not in the Super Bowl this year.

[db]

HERETIC! It's the Inquisition for you!

[Ted S.]

That would be for the Tim Tebow photos.

[Death Rock and Skull]

All of them= shit.

[Fatty Bolger]

So the PC brigades have invaded the military, too? I'm sure Jeff Dunham will be surprised to find out he's in the same class as pornographic materials.

At least they can always count on the Commander in Chief's staff to set a good example.

[Radioactive007]

you must be "clean" when you drop a bomb or launch a drone strike...thought everyone knew that...jerking off ruins your aim

[Agammamon]

There's nothing new about this - the PC brigade was pretty well situated in the navy as long as 20 years ago. They've just been building power since.

[BuSab Agent]

The growth of the PC brigade is one of many reasons I got out. When a black E-3 pulled the racism card because I told him he was part of my working party, (with his DivO's knowledge) that was that. When you're a damn seaman with nothing to do, it don't matter what sex or color you fucking are, you're a damn seaman and you don't mouth off to a senior petty officer.

[Agammamon]

Heh, one of my commands eventually discharged a black seaman because he pulled the racism card so much, they decided *he* was racist and let him go.

And he was - had views on par with Harry Belafonte.

I wasn't sorry to see him go, I thought he was one of the wierder ones. I mean, who looks at an organization that they think has an institutional culture of oppressing their ethnicity and thinks " I wanna be a part of that"?

[wingnutx]

"So the PC brigades have invaded the military, too?"

It's not the military, it's the Air Force.

But, overall, yes. There was a massive backlash from 'tailhook' and it never went away.

It's not too bad in the Seabees, compared to what we put up with in the fleet. Female Seabees are mostly a pretty crude bunch, so that takes the edge off.

[BuSab Agent]

I was in during the Tailhook brouhaha, and it was a major PITA. All the whiny, lazy bitches ready to be offended at everything came out of the woodwork. If you're afraid of men, can't handle crude humor and pictures of tits and snatch, don't want to go to sea or work in cramped conditions with no privacy, why the hell did you join the Navy?

[Fist of Etiquette]

You would think they would have gotten the point when everyone totally made an international incident out of the pornographic photo of that one lady soldier pointing at some dude's dick.

[Ted S.]

A woman pointing at your dick and laughing at how tiny it is doesn't count as porn, and it shouldn't be an international incident, either.

[Agammamon]

Look, there's porn about men being forced to watch as their wife is rogered by a(insert most personally scary ethnicity that isn't your own) man and loving it.

There's porn where women poitn at a guy's dick and make fun of it.

And it becomes an international incident when the chick's a military prison guard and the guy's her prisoner.

[Ted S.]

Sloopyinca finds any image of Tom Brady obscene.

[invisible furry hand]

just wait 'til he sees the photo of a shirtless Tom Brady with artisanal mayonnaise dripped over his pecs. I'd post it but it's on my work computer

[LTC(ret) John]

Why do you want to make banjos a widow? 'cause that is what the result would be if sloopy saw that pic.

[invisible furry hand]

i'm doing it for his ducks

[Agammamon]

Am I missing something with regards to the picture for this brickbat? Its about "inappropriate" material on government computers yet the picture is two football players.

[AlmightyJB]

Yes.

[Agammamon]

Thanks, that clears the whole thing up for me.

[Death Rock and Skull]

Had I been in the military, I probably would have gone crazy from fear that everything is coated in a film of semen.

[wingnutx]

It is.