Tailhook 1993: Guys in the Grip of Denial

SAN DIEGO —  I attended the Tailhook Assn. convention last weekend wondering how an organization whose name has become synonymous with “sex scandal”--the way Watergate and Iran-Contra have become code for “sleazy cover-up”--would rehabilitate its image.

Easy.

It didn’t try. Instead, Tailhookers trashed their enemies.

Which left me wondering: Why did they bother hiring an outside PR firm to deal with the press?

Why not just spend the money on a Paula Coughlin dartboard?

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The lines were drawn at the Town & Country Hotel. On one side: Warriors who have risked their lives in combat, dammit, and want a little respect even if some act like juveniles now and then.

On the other: Alleged victims, the media, politicians and the Department of Defense, which dared take the issue of sexual assault seriously.

If the Tailhookers had been inclined toward introspection, they might have wandered out of the big hotel ballroom into a smaller meeting room nearby. There, Frances Pohl, a Pomona College art historian, had put together an exhibit that turned one of the most sordid recent chapters of American military history into cultural anthropology.

The exhibit, “Ritual and Sacrifice at Tailhook 91,” was sponsored by the Women’s Action Coalition, which also led a noisy anti-Tailhook demonstration of about 125 around the perimeter of the hotel Friday night. (“Myth: Boys will be boys,” said one poster. “Fact: Girls are Pissed.”)

Using blown-up text taken directly from the Department of Defense’s investigative report, and re-creations of items such as the now-infamous rhinoceros mural with the drink-dispensing dildo, the exhibit conveyed the “ritualized nature” of the sexual assaults that took place on the third floor of the Las Vegas Hilton.

“Ritual is an essential aspect of every social order,” Pohl explained in her introduction to the exhibit, which included some of the T-shirts worn at Tailhook ’91 (“Women are Property” and “He-Man Women Haters Club”).

“Rituals often include sacrifice, either literal or symbolic. A victim is offered up in order to confirm the power of one segment of the social order over another. Such rituals. . .are also the hallmark of highly militarized societies, in which men, as warriors, attempt to assert their dominance, as well as their sole right to determine membership in military organizations.”

Indeed, Tailhook ’91 was the first reunion to follow the Gulf War victory, and also preceded by months a decision to eventually allow women in combat. And in a rowdy Q&A; session with Navy brass during Tailhook ‘91, male aviators had expressed rabid opposition to such a change.

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I guess you could look at the 1991 mauling of Navy Lt. Paula Coughlin as a kind of symbolic sacrifice for the male power structure. If it was, it backfired. Coughlin’s complaints about being manhandled by drunken fliers in a sexual “gantlet” led to the Tailhook investigation.

Depending on your politics, she is either the hero or the Antichrist of the Tailhook sex scandal. She blew the whistle, but now, like Anita Hill, she faces accusations of ulterior motives and self-promotion.

Copies of the right-wing journal, Heterodoxy, that included a story on Tailhook ’91 were read with interest here. The story makes the preposterous claim that Coughlin set the aviators up.

” . . . As an attendee at Tailhook previously, (six years earlier, in 1985), she knew beforehand what the ritual entailed,” it said. “It is hard to believe that Paula Coughlin strayed into the hallway carnival unsuspectingly, or that she did not have a hidden agenda in putting herself into a situation where she knew she was going to be ‘harassed.’ ”

Hidden agenda? Maybe Coughlin, a helicopter pilot and admiral’s aide, thought her colleagues would welcome her with a slap on the back. Instead, they grabbed at her breasts.

Pohl didn’t seem surprised: “She wants to be part of a culture that doesn’t want her.”

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Tailhookers were subdued this time out. They had to be. The press was swarming. Also, because of the lack of junior officers in attendance (the group generally blamed for 1991’s misdeeds) the average age was considerably higher than usual. Indeed, the view from the back of the ballroom was a sea of gray hair and shiny pates.

But attitudes die hard.

During the symposium’s first session, Tailhook president Bill Knutson, a retired Navy captain, introduced his staffers. Twenty-ish and shy, the two young women took a self-conscious bow.

“Bill,” said next speaker, the group’s attorney, “Some guys have all the luck.”

A few warriors snoozed in their seats. Some leafed through a catalogue featuring Tailhook-related T-shirts.

“Aviator,” said one. “Just Do Me.”

The fallout from 1991 has been devastating. Membership is down 15%. The group is reeling--financially and emotionally--from a withdrawal of Navy support. Its insurance premium has risen from $8,500 to $33,000. Tailhook, said its treasurer, is only “tenuously solvent.”

And it has been named a defendant in 12 lawsuits filed by women--including Coughlin--who claim they were sexually assaulted at the ’91 convention.

Considering all this, you’d think Tailhook ’93 would be seized on as a great opportunity for some corrective PR. Maybe an apology for winking at bad behavior. Perhaps a forum on sexual harassment in the military. Something, anything, to say, “We get it.”

But this group is in the grip of denial.

“No facts have been uncovered,” said one retired admiral. “It’s all image and illusion.”

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It is possible, though not easy, to feel sorry for this group of gladiators whose wings have been so unceremoniously clipped.

Many of these guys, after all, have risked life and limb for their country. You want to give them the respect their sacrifices deserve. You would like to believe it when they say they are an honorable bunch.

Sure, most of them didn’t sexually assault any women. Many were even disgusted.

But why don’t they understand their tacit role? Why don’t they see that outrageous, indecent and possibly criminal behavior took place because they looked the other way?

Perhaps the Tailhook Assn. is incapable of apologizing for what happened in Las Vegas in 1991. If so, that’s a pity, because the group must answer for it.

After all, the scandal occurred on Tailhook’s watch.

And isn’t that how it works with warriors?