| brucekluger.com |
The Chicago Sun-Times, January 18, 2007
The Naked Truth: Air Force is picking the wrong battle over photos of its sexy drill sergeant, says a former editor of Playboy By Bruce Kluger
photos were shocking. Last week, Staff Sergeant Michelle Manhart of Lackland Air Force Base in Texas debuted in the pages of Playboy magazine. Posing withfellow soldiers, free weights and assault weapons— and, in other shots, wearing little
lit boudoir setting as she does marching flyboys around the tarmac.
country," she tells Playboy. Unfortunately for Manhart, the Air Force's top brass wasn't exactly titillated. "This staff sergeant's alleged action does not meet the high standards we expect of our airmen," said a spokesman for Lackland AFB, "nor does it comply with the Air Force's core values of integrity, service before self, and excellence in all we do." Manhart was immediately demoted to a desk job, and now faces a possible discharge pending an "investigation." I was an editor of Playboy for 13 years, and during that time I witnessed this very same cultural burlesque so often it almost became boring: Woman with high-profile job poses in Playboy; employer goes bananas and fires her; model becomes martyr for girlie mags everywhere; Playboy sells out at newsstand. And all of this, of course, was always catnip for the media, especially during a slow news week. But that's just the point: We're not in a slow news week now—particularly where the military is concerned—and I find it curious that this bauble of a story has actually bubbled to the top of the Air Force's priority list. Talk about picking your wrong battles. A poll taken by the Military Times last month revealed that morale among American service men and women plummeted in 2006, with only 50 percent feeling optimistic about the war in Iraq (down from 83 percent in 2004). This comes at a moment in which the president has proposed marching an additional 20,000 troops into the quicksand of the Middle East, where soldiers already stationed are feeling overworked, undersupplied and in serious need of support from home. In other words, this is really not the time for military leaders to be publicly wagging their fingers at a dedicated soldier whose offense is, arguably, pretty damn harmless. Granted, Manhart's decision to doff her fatigues for Hugh Hefner's photographers is a peculiar way of expressing her patriotism, and we can only be grateful that not every member of the military has done likewise. (Picture Norman Schwarzkopf in a teddy. Yuck.) But the fact is, Manhart has served in the U.S. Air Force for more than a dozen years, part of that time in Kuwait. Her job at Lackland, one she's apparently good at, is to train recruits who are heading into battle—and, frankly, the Pentagon needs all the help it can get. Like most "scandals," Manhart's sacking is drenched in near-comic irony. For one thing, despite the Air Force's sudden case of the vapors over the sergeant's unauthorized tour in a nudie mag, Playboy continues a long and healthy relationship with military PXs around the world—a tradition that dates back to World War II grunts stashing pinups of Betty Grable in their footlockers. As for concern that Manhart's naked cheesecake dalliance might reflect badly on soldiers who prefer to keep their uniforms on, I'd say we have bigger fish to fry. For my (tax) money, I'd feel a lot more comfortable if the folks at Defense were investigating the repercussions of real scandals—like the Haditha massacre, or prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay—rather than one sergeant's impetuous furlough to Bunnyland. And what of the claim that new recruits at Lackland might find it difficult to take orders from a superior whom they've now seen stripped of her regulation... everything? One only need look at the pictures of Manhart in Playboy—the clothed ones, in which she's putting the rookies through their paces—to note that the lady can probably handle the fallout. Indeed, she already has. In a CNN interview on Friday, Manhart was asked about the prospect of basic trainees snickering at her commands and thinking salacious thoughts about her. "When I'm in my uniform, I'm all military, all discipline," Manhart replied. "Besides, if they were going to undress me with their eyes, they'd be doing that even if I hadn't appeared in Playboy." |
Michelle Manhart, in and out of uniform. Photographs by Playboy.
