Submarines give me the creeps. Submarines staffed with predatory homosexual officers seem like the other side of enough. I can’t imagine that submarine duty during the Korean War was any more hazardous than during peacetime.
USN ships shouldn’t be named after people at all. I don’t know, but I’ll guess that the USS Sullivans was the first to be so named.
Enterprise, Hornet, Yorktown: That’s the sort of names you want on ships.
After reading Dan Flynn’s, “Sin City “ I got a different perspective of the Milk story as it played out side by side with Jim Jones and his “church “. Quite the read. Looking back the recent and current elites in the City and State wear the taint of that era. The glorification of Milk as a gay pioneer is a fantasy. He was just another corrupt San Francisco democrat.
Harvey also had a penchant for very young, emotionally troubled young men. He got a pass even after Me Too. The gay rights movement has been spectacular at whitewashing its sexual promiscuity and hedonist culture and mores for the consumption and support of straight whites, especially women.
Hegseth should name it the USS Dan White. Thank you I'm here all week.
White apparently served five years with the 101st Airborne including a tour in Vietnam and was honorably discharged as a sergeant. So basically he's doing his job competently and getting promoted every year, on track to staff NCO at some point.
A lot of people misjudged Jim Jones. I actually work at San Diego State's Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. I have several phrases on the whiteboard behind my desk to remind people of our important work.
"Jonestown--it's bigger than Jim Jones."
"Sometimes a Kool-Aid is just a Kool-Aid (when it doesn't have cyanide in it.)"
On Twitter, Jerry Dunleavy writes: "Harvey Milk wrote a 1978 letter to Jimmy Carter defending Jim Jones & opposing custody efforts Timothy Stoen made for his 6-year-old son John. Milk praised Jones & urged Carter to let Jones keep John at Jonestown. John was among 918 killed by murder-suicide there later that year."
I've read a number of articles about Jonestown and the contemporaneous reactions to Jones seemed to be either what a great humanitarian and credit to the City of San Francisco, or why does anybody have anything to do with this freak.
The Jonestown massacre is in my opinion an under-studied, under-publicized phenomenon. The audio recordings of these poor, simple people miles from home questioning this cult leader who's telling them they have to kill themselves and their children are nightmarish.
You're absolutely right, and Milk was aware of how bad they were. I read somewhere, maybe in Randy Shilt's bookn that when one of Milk's assistants was to attend a People's Temple meeting, Milk told him to be careful. I don't have the exact quote but it was something like "they're crazy and they're dangerous and you never want to get on their bad side." And Milk knew that before he wrote that letter to the Feds saying what good work Jones was doing.
Hey how about the USNS Village People? "In the Navy" was originally intended for navy recruiting. I think the Navy even paid for the video. For some reason they decided against using it.
How about they name the ships after native americans who lost their mascot status like Chief Illiniwek?
Well I’ll be damned. I never heard of that before. Thanks, I think.
When I was young, I read a book titled “ The Last Tallyho.”
It was written by Richard Newhafer, a decorated WWII aviator who went on to write for television.
The book has a subplot concerning a cowardly homosexual. I remember thinking that was highly implausible, but now I’m sure it was based in reality.
Of course, the book is never mentioned in any discussion of Second World War novels, though it’s at least as good as The Naked and the Dead or Battle Cry.
I worked with a nuclear engineer in the early 1990s who served on Navy submarines. We were taking a programming class together, and the instructor broke the ice by asking us to each give a brief discussion of our backgrounds. The discussion of his military service led to the instructor asking how long a submarine was at sea. My co-worker said that the deployments were generally three months in duration, and that three months was a LONG time to have 120 men underwater in a pressurized steel tube.
Of course, one of the women in class said something to the effect of "Men? What about the women?" My co-worker stated that women did not serve on submarines (at that time); the crews were entirely men. The woman said, "Well, why not?" My co-worker, clearly becoming annoyed by this point, turned to the woman and said, "Because they would get raped, that's why." The woman then asserted that the navy (because she was obviously a military expert, and all) should have some all-female subs. To which my co-worker said that the navy tried that, and the crew of women became emotionally unstable under the conditions.
I don't know if all of this is true; what I can say is this is a true story, I witnessed the exchange, and my co-worker was a solid, reasonable guy. I doubt he was being contentious for sport.
So ... how does the navy manage this situation now? I mean ... three to six month deployments? Guys get edgy.
Harvey Milk doesn't deserve a naval vessel to be named after him. But I don't like the idea of any vessels named after famous politicians. The way the Navy names aircraft carriers after presidents is sort of a bribe job. I'd rather go back to naming vessels like the old days. Hornet. Wasp. Thunderbolt. Hurricane. Storm. Panther. Lion. Indefatigable. Jupiter. Surprise. Stalwart. Hammerhead. Barracuda.
In your 2008 review, you say that Milk served in the Navy "without incident," but in this post you say that he was kicked out of the service "for doing gay stuff." Which is it?
Also, I will not be making any jokes about Milk's name being attached to an oiler, that would be insensitive and wrong.
I was associated with the Navy only very briefly, but in that short time I learned one thing- sailors may get tired of being the butt of jokes, but they never get tired of butt jokes. The good ship Milk must have brought more happiness to more naval personnel than anything that didn't involve incinerating the enemy.
Obviously the left in America cannot stand the average person's conception of a hero and has to craft absurd narratives to manufacture their own heroes that everyone is going to be forced to worship. Milk is offensive but at least his namesake is pretty low profile. Clearly the activists who ran the Biden WH would have moved on to more in-your-face gestures, and we would have been treated to stuff like the Floyd-class of guided missile destroyers, with the initial batch of ships featuring the USS Michael Brown or RuPaul.
At any rate, I feel like Navy ships ought to bear the names of important battles, historic locations, or people with significant service to the country. Even the latter needs to be carefully curated as apparently we have future aircraft carriers that will be named after Bill Clinton and George W Bush and frankly neither one of them deserve to honored that way. There is also the future USS Doris Miller, which is going to be named after a black enlisted man who performed notable service at Pearl Harbor, which is frankly way more palatable to me than Clinton or W.
The gay-camera-shop-as-locus-of-progressive-activism angle is pretty hilarious. Gay men are usually pretty image-savvy but they often get trapped behind these really lame pretexts, like Christian Cooper the Central Park "birdwatcher" or Wayne Williams, the Atlanta "talent scout," or Jerry Sandusky and his literally dozens of "troubled youths."
I laughed out loud at this. Excellent point. The campaign to sanitize gay male life might actually surpass that of blacks because at least with the latter most people have some firsthand experience that makes them doubt the official narrative. In contrast, the average person has no idea of how insanely promiscuous gay men are, or that the AIDS ‘crisis’ was essentially nonexistent amongst heterosexuals and only ended thanks to new treatments because gays still didn’t modify their behavior. The more recent example of monkeypox was similar, with the media avoiding some really uncomfortable questions about how young children or pets got it, but almost no women.
Harvey Milk had far more than a passing relationship with Jim Jones. He blocked the child abuse case by grandparents that would have saved an abducted foster care child from death. He more than flirted with Rosalyn Carter, that idiot macrosephalyetic anorexic, and convinced her that Jones was a special religious leader (actually a communist) tending to poor blacks (soon to be dead), to oil the public benefits sent to these poor souls who begged for relief, then drank the Kool-aid at gunpoint. Jimmah was too happy to help, and the money ended up in Jones' colleagues pocket. He should have been lynched for that alone. I think Jimmah's sister was sleeping with Jones but have no proof. At least advocating for him. What the heck is the difference?
A few years ago, I did a deep dive into the San Diego State University Program's "Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and People's Temple." It's an academic department, publicly funded, run by Jones' inner circle who conveniently left the Temple a few days before the Congessional investigation and massacre. Feel free to call them, and if you are California residents, demand that they be removed from campus, tried, and imprisoned. They somehow got really rich killing hundreds of poor blabk elderly and children. They're hiding behind the utopian community studies journals and conferences, ie. Quakers and the very much more rapey stiripuculturian Onedians.
I have files upon files. Anyone interested? I have too much work. It is a fascinating cultural site; I'd say top three in the U.S. Actual elderly stiripculturians still live on the grounds. Good thing the first generations turned from cultism to capitalism so they could support those damaged beyond repair. There are many ex-commie cults like this from the 19th Century.
Submarines give me the creeps. Submarines staffed with predatory homosexual officers seem like the other side of enough. I can’t imagine that submarine duty during the Korean War was any more hazardous than during peacetime.
USN ships shouldn’t be named after people at all. I don’t know, but I’ll guess that the USS Sullivans was the first to be so named.
Enterprise, Hornet, Yorktown: That’s the sort of names you want on ships.
It was a photo of submarine enlisted berthing that effectively ended Clinton's attempt to allow open homosexuals to serve in '93.
My dad's wooden-hulled, poorly-armed, and slow minesweepers were named Agile, Aggressive, Bold, and Bulwark. The Navy has its jokes.
How do they handle female berthing on subs these days? That has to be a nightmare.
It can be pleasurable, I'm sure.
After reading Dan Flynn’s, “Sin City “ I got a different perspective of the Milk story as it played out side by side with Jim Jones and his “church “. Quite the read. Looking back the recent and current elites in the City and State wear the taint of that era. The glorification of Milk as a gay pioneer is a fantasy. He was just another corrupt San Francisco democrat.
Harvey also had a penchant for very young, emotionally troubled young men. He got a pass even after Me Too. The gay rights movement has been spectacular at whitewashing its sexual promiscuity and hedonist culture and mores for the consumption and support of straight whites, especially women.
MeToo only applies to female victims. It doesn't apply to a 33-year-old Milk having sex with a 16-year-old boy.
The gay age of consent is 11.
I know that but it’s also sexual assault, rape and inappropriate relationships.
I agree with everything you say, but I think you mean "Cult City", right? That's what I found on Amazon. It looks like quite a read.
Oh, no. It’s exactly what I met. Although Sin city fits, then and now. My embarrassment knows no bounds. Sorry Dan.
A great book.
Hegseth should name it the USS Dan White. Thank you I'm here all week.
White apparently served five years with the 101st Airborne including a tour in Vietnam and was honorably discharged as a sergeant. So basically he's doing his job competently and getting promoted every year, on track to staff NCO at some point.
The 70s were just a really strange decade.
The USS Pat Buchanan. Or the USS Anita Bryant.
Sorry. He killed two people.
Two people what a freaking amateur. George W Bush killed 200,000 Iraqis and he's getting a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier named after him.
https://thedefensepost.com/2025/01/16/us-ford-carriers-clinton-bush/
Instead of Pride Month, June should be known as Dan White Month.
Every city should have a Dan White Boulevard, except instead of being the crummiest part of town it will be the nicest part of town.
White Castle burgers --- Dan White Castle burgers.
Sorry don’t agree.
We could call it the USS Jim Jones. The USS Jonestown.
Instead of the Kool-Aid Man busting through the wall and saying, "Oh yeah!," it's Jim Jones in a white leisure suit.
Instead of hiring an Elvis impersonator to sing at your wedding reception, you hire a Jim Jones impersonator to serve punch at your wedding reception.
Since you like naming things after killers, Jim Jones would work for you.
A lot of people misjudged Jim Jones. I actually work at San Diego State's Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. I have several phrases on the whiteboard behind my desk to remind people of our important work.
"Jonestown--it's bigger than Jim Jones."
"Sometimes a Kool-Aid is just a Kool-Aid (when it doesn't have cyanide in it.)"
"The Miscegenation Generation."
“Jim jones impersonator to serve punch at your wedding reception “
Priceless
Ironic that White invented the Twinkie Defense.
FWIW, the SF Chronicle is going bonkers.
Which billionaire owns it now?
On Twitter, Jerry Dunleavy writes: "Harvey Milk wrote a 1978 letter to Jimmy Carter defending Jim Jones & opposing custody efforts Timothy Stoen made for his 6-year-old son John. Milk praised Jones & urged Carter to let Jones keep John at Jonestown. John was among 918 killed by murder-suicide there later that year."
https://x.com/JerryDunleavy/status/1930268498342666392
Text of the letter: https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=19042
Damning.
I've read a number of articles about Jonestown and the contemporaneous reactions to Jones seemed to be either what a great humanitarian and credit to the City of San Francisco, or why does anybody have anything to do with this freak.
The Jonestown massacre is in my opinion an under-studied, under-publicized phenomenon. The audio recordings of these poor, simple people miles from home questioning this cult leader who's telling them they have to kill themselves and their children are nightmarish.
"under-studied, under-publicized phenomenon."
Reasons.
There are books about it. I’ve read one.
Yep.
You're absolutely right, and Milk was aware of how bad they were. I read somewhere, maybe in Randy Shilt's bookn that when one of Milk's assistants was to attend a People's Temple meeting, Milk told him to be careful. I don't have the exact quote but it was something like "they're crazy and they're dangerous and you never want to get on their bad side." And Milk knew that before he wrote that letter to the Feds saying what good work Jones was doing.
A lot of people misjudged Jones.
Doing gay stuff onboard? Any time the discussion turns remotely in this direction I am compelled to post: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newport_sex_scandal
It's fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A
Hey how about the USNS Village People? "In the Navy" was originally intended for navy recruiting. I think the Navy even paid for the video. For some reason they decided against using it.
How about they name the ships after native americans who lost their mascot status like Chief Illiniwek?
Well I’ll be damned. I never heard of that before. Thanks, I think.
When I was young, I read a book titled “ The Last Tallyho.”
It was written by Richard Newhafer, a decorated WWII aviator who went on to write for television.
The book has a subplot concerning a cowardly homosexual. I remember thinking that was highly implausible, but now I’m sure it was based in reality.
Of course, the book is never mentioned in any discussion of Second World War novels, though it’s at least as good as The Naked and the Dead or Battle Cry.
"Thanks, I think." is the correct reaction.
I've long thought this incident deserved a movie or HBO series. I feel like the last democrats to worship FDR are dying as we write.
There's a childrens book idea in there somewhere- 'Stephen the Cowardly Homosexual."
I worked with a nuclear engineer in the early 1990s who served on Navy submarines. We were taking a programming class together, and the instructor broke the ice by asking us to each give a brief discussion of our backgrounds. The discussion of his military service led to the instructor asking how long a submarine was at sea. My co-worker said that the deployments were generally three months in duration, and that three months was a LONG time to have 120 men underwater in a pressurized steel tube.
Of course, one of the women in class said something to the effect of "Men? What about the women?" My co-worker stated that women did not serve on submarines (at that time); the crews were entirely men. The woman said, "Well, why not?" My co-worker, clearly becoming annoyed by this point, turned to the woman and said, "Because they would get raped, that's why." The woman then asserted that the navy (because she was obviously a military expert, and all) should have some all-female subs. To which my co-worker said that the navy tried that, and the crew of women became emotionally unstable under the conditions.
I don't know if all of this is true; what I can say is this is a true story, I witnessed the exchange, and my co-worker was a solid, reasonable guy. I doubt he was being contentious for sport.
So ... how does the navy manage this situation now? I mean ... three to six month deployments? Guys get edgy.
It’s a good story but I’d be shocked if they aver really tried all women subs. Disaster waiting to happen. They can’t be that dumb.
I'd go for the USS Michael Obama.
Damn Mormon media establishment!
Harvey Milk doesn't deserve a naval vessel to be named after him. But I don't like the idea of any vessels named after famous politicians. The way the Navy names aircraft carriers after presidents is sort of a bribe job. I'd rather go back to naming vessels like the old days. Hornet. Wasp. Thunderbolt. Hurricane. Storm. Panther. Lion. Indefatigable. Jupiter. Surprise. Stalwart. Hammerhead. Barracuda.
Absolutely.
In your 2008 review, you say that Milk served in the Navy "without incident," but in this post you say that he was kicked out of the service "for doing gay stuff." Which is it?
Also, I will not be making any jokes about Milk's name being attached to an oiler, that would be insensitive and wrong.
She carries lubricants by the drum. Her sailors must be tired of being the butt of jokes with other sailors.
I was associated with the Navy only very briefly, but in that short time I learned one thing- sailors may get tired of being the butt of jokes, but they never get tired of butt jokes. The good ship Milk must have brought more happiness to more naval personnel than anything that didn't involve incinerating the enemy.
Obviously the left in America cannot stand the average person's conception of a hero and has to craft absurd narratives to manufacture their own heroes that everyone is going to be forced to worship. Milk is offensive but at least his namesake is pretty low profile. Clearly the activists who ran the Biden WH would have moved on to more in-your-face gestures, and we would have been treated to stuff like the Floyd-class of guided missile destroyers, with the initial batch of ships featuring the USS Michael Brown or RuPaul.
At any rate, I feel like Navy ships ought to bear the names of important battles, historic locations, or people with significant service to the country. Even the latter needs to be carefully curated as apparently we have future aircraft carriers that will be named after Bill Clinton and George W Bush and frankly neither one of them deserve to honored that way. There is also the future USS Doris Miller, which is going to be named after a black enlisted man who performed notable service at Pearl Harbor, which is frankly way more palatable to me than Clinton or W.
The gay-camera-shop-as-locus-of-progressive-activism angle is pretty hilarious. Gay men are usually pretty image-savvy but they often get trapped behind these really lame pretexts, like Christian Cooper the Central Park "birdwatcher" or Wayne Williams, the Atlanta "talent scout," or Jerry Sandusky and his literally dozens of "troubled youths."
I laughed out loud at this. Excellent point. The campaign to sanitize gay male life might actually surpass that of blacks because at least with the latter most people have some firsthand experience that makes them doubt the official narrative. In contrast, the average person has no idea of how insanely promiscuous gay men are, or that the AIDS ‘crisis’ was essentially nonexistent amongst heterosexuals and only ended thanks to new treatments because gays still didn’t modify their behavior. The more recent example of monkeypox was similar, with the media avoiding some really uncomfortable questions about how young children or pets got it, but almost no women.
Steve, it might only be appropriate to name a submarine after Milk because it's long and hard and full of seamen.
Playing a gay man is pretty close to being a gay man. I bet Sean Penn has some secrets.
If asked to play a gay, I’d just say even I’m not that good an actor…
Harvey Milk had far more than a passing relationship with Jim Jones. He blocked the child abuse case by grandparents that would have saved an abducted foster care child from death. He more than flirted with Rosalyn Carter, that idiot macrosephalyetic anorexic, and convinced her that Jones was a special religious leader (actually a communist) tending to poor blacks (soon to be dead), to oil the public benefits sent to these poor souls who begged for relief, then drank the Kool-aid at gunpoint. Jimmah was too happy to help, and the money ended up in Jones' colleagues pocket. He should have been lynched for that alone. I think Jimmah's sister was sleeping with Jones but have no proof. At least advocating for him. What the heck is the difference?
A few years ago, I did a deep dive into the San Diego State University Program's "Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and People's Temple." It's an academic department, publicly funded, run by Jones' inner circle who conveniently left the Temple a few days before the Congessional investigation and massacre. Feel free to call them, and if you are California residents, demand that they be removed from campus, tried, and imprisoned. They somehow got really rich killing hundreds of poor blabk elderly and children. They're hiding behind the utopian community studies journals and conferences, ie. Quakers and the very much more rapey stiripuculturian Onedians.
I have files upon files. Anyone interested? I have too much work. It is a fascinating cultural site; I'd say top three in the U.S. Actual elderly stiripculturians still live on the grounds. Good thing the first generations turned from cultism to capitalism so they could support those damaged beyond repair. There are many ex-commie cults like this from the 19th Century.