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July 26, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:25
July 26, 2005, Tuesday, Hour #3
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There's a story breaking today that this is a watershed event in American cultural history.
TV Guide is essentially going under.
You know, there was a time the TV Guide was the number one circulation magazine in this country.
Everybody used to get TV guide.
I think they peaked at 21 or 22 million.
That's not 21 or 21, 22 million readers, that's subscribers.
Go into a household two, three, four people in there.
There may have been as many as 70 to 80 million people who read TV Guide in a given week.
Circulation is down to 9 million.
They're apparently losing money.
And they announced plans today to remake the magazine and bring it back as something radically different than what it is right now, and their target date is sometime in the middle of October.
First of all, it's not going to be a small tabloid format anymore.
They're going to go to a regular magazine style format, a larger magazine.
Secondly, they're pretty much going to dump the listings.
Presently TV Guide is about 75% TV listings and 25% stories.
They want to change the mix and make it 75% stories and features and only 25% listings.
In addition to that, they will no longer have local editions.
Right now, TV Guide is a magazine that if you live in Pittsburgh, you get the Pittsburgh TV stations in there.
If you live in Denver, there's a specific edition for you.
If your stations in Denver are numbers, whatever they're numbered, those are the numbers that are on there.
Your local programming is listed.
They're instead going to produce just two editions, one for the eastern part of the United States, the other for the western part of the United States.
Two editions, not focus so much on the listings and instead do feature stories.
Apparently, the competition from on-screen guides that cable and satellite users have is so extreme, plus daily newspapers that publish their own listings, plus the internet where TV listings are available.
TV Guide was no longer seen by the reading public, by the TV viewing public as essential, and they're going to try to remake the entire thing and turn it into an entertainment magazine that focuses on television rather than a magazine that you pick up to see what's on TV at that given point in time.
Who would have thought that it would have worked out this way?
If you'd been told 30 years ago that we're going to go from the four or five, six or seven stations in your own local market, and you're going to have almost an infinite number of choices.
There are going to be zillions of cable channels and all this material out there.
You would have thought, if anything, that would bode well for a magazine that told you what was on television because no one could ever remember what was on.
Instead, what's happened is there are so many different channels that you pick up a magazine like TV Guide and you see all these listings.
You can't focus in on much of anything.
You can simply scroll to your own pull-down menu.
If you have cable or satellite, it'll tell you what's on, and TV Guide has been rendered largely irrelevant.
Their target for the new magazine would be three million subscribers.
That's what they're going to guarantee to advertisers.
They were once at 21 or 22.
They're down to nine, and the new magazine may have as few as three million.
TV Guide.
I grew up, I think I learned how to read reading TV Guide.
I wanted to know what was on television.
Now here's a story for you.
Kickball is back big time with adults.
It's kickball, and the schoolyard game is catching on with adults, such as 33-year-old Don Riddell who plays on a team with his wife, her friends, his bowling, and soft softball buddies.
The return of kickball mirrors the resurgence in the popularity of dodgeball, another schoolyard playground game that is now being played in increasing numbers by adults.
Kickball.
Kickball is back.
I know why kickball is back.
You know why kickball is back?
Kickball is back because anybody can play it.
Who can't play kickball?
Baseball is hard.
You're throwing fastballs and curveballs.
Even slow pitched softball, you can whiff at that thing.
How do you play kickball and miss the ball?
You can't miss the ball.
If the ball is kicked at you, if the ball is big enough, you're going to catch it.
So we're bringing kickball back.
Dodgeball is already back.
It makes me wonder what's next.
What's the next grown-up game that's going to come back into vogue?
What's the next game the kids played that we all played as children?
Any guesses?
Capture the flag.
How about hide and seek?
How about hide and seek?
They're playing that on the trains now.
How about tag?
Tag is a universal game.
Well, you see if you saw went out to a playground, a bunch of 40-year-old fat guys running around playing tag.
My own favorite, kick the can.
Kick the can was great.
You have kicked the can where you guys grew up?
I'm from Wisconsin.
You know how kick the can worked?
Kick the can, somebody was it.
You kick the can on them, and they had to get back to the can in Choiva.
Doubt's plan kick the can.
And finally, uh how about keep away?
Keep away.
Those are the next games that could catch on with.
Those are Republican tax cuts.
Keep away, yes, yes.
From New Jersey.
Home state of a good percentage of the staff of the Rush Limbaugh program.
Can we blame you guys for this?
New Jersey is kind of becoming the California of the East Coast when it comes to stupid ideas.
A member of the New Jersey state legislature is proposing to ban the smoking of cigarettes in your own automobile.
The uh the uh guy's name is uh John McKeon.
He's an assemblyman from New Jersey, he's a tobacco opponent, says his father died of emphysema, sponsored the legislation.
He says in addition to the health risks, that smoking is a driver distraction.
Cites a study in which one percent of traffic deaths linked to driver distraction were able to be linked to the uh smoking of cigarettes.
Cigarette smoking is becoming the most politically incorrect legal activity you can engage in.
Look at the number of things that we are told that we have to tolerate from people.
But smoking of cigarettes is deemed to be so unacceptable, so socially terrible, so bad for you, that you now see the reaching into people's automobiles.
My own belief is that smoking eventually is going to be banned everywhere except your private house.
And that's when the cigarette smokers, who don't ever want to speak up for themselves, that's when they're probably finally going to rebel.
So in New Jersey, we now have a proposal to ban smoking while you're in your automobile.
Story from Chicago.
Santiago Calatrava.
Ever heard of him?
No one.
This shows what a renaissance guy I am.
I know who Santiago Calatrava is.
He is one of the renowned architects in the world.
I know this primarily because I'm from Milwaukee and he designed a building that's in Milwaukee, otherwise I might not know that.
He's real real hot though right now.
He is one of the designers of something that's going on near ground zero.
He is designing a building that will be the largest in the United States, tallest building in the United States if built, skyscraper in Chicago that would reach 115 stories, topping out at 1,458 feet.
A spire on top would reach 2,000 feet, making it the tallest building in the country, some 270 feet taller than the Sears Tower in Chicago.
The Burge Tower in Dubai under construction is said to be uh 2300 feet.
That is likely to be the tallest.
Donald Trump is weighing in on this, says it's a terrible idea, says any building that is the tallest is going to naturally be a target for terrorists.
Trump has his own skyscraper that he's building in Chicago, was to be 150 stories after 9-11.
He scaled it back to 90 simply for terrorism uh terrorism reasons.
I read the architectural review of this in the Chicago Sun-Times, guy named Kevin Nance.
He says it is a feminine-looking building and this building is a positive step forward because it will allow the city of Chicago to get in touch with its feminine side.
We come back after the break.
Is the military going soft?
Are we turning drill instructors into wimps?
Is boot camp just one more sensitivity session?
That's next.
I'm Mark Elling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
A little bit uh earlier in the program we were talking about profiling potential terrorists.
This story is breaking just today ABC News reporting five Egyptian men with maps of the New York City subway system and video of New York landmarks have been arrested by the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Newark, New Jersey.
FBI and law enforcement officials say the five men, four of whom are illegal immigrants, the other one is a fugitive from law enforcement, were arrested Sunday night following a tip received by the Newark Police Department.
In addition to the subway maps and video, the men had trained schedules and $8,000 all in $20 and $50 bills.
One of the men answered the door allowed police to enter he claimed he had the maps because he had a new job as a street vendor FBI officials say that while the man men don't have any link to a terror network noted none of them could adequately explain the items that they had in their position or in their possession all five men Egyptian nationals.
I want to talk about a story in the New York Times today headline as recruiting suffers military reigns in abuses at boot camp.
Eric Eckholm wrote this let me give you a few paragraphs here so you get a sense of where they're coming from Staff Sergeant Michael Rhodes until recently a driller of Army recruits at Fort Knox says he was only doing his job hammering civilians into soldiers who would not crack under the pressures of war.
Sergeant Rhodes's methods investigators said included punching a recruit in the stomach hitting him repeatedly in the chest and throwing another to the floor and calling him a fat nasty years ago such accusations if privates dared to voice them might have led to no more than a reprimand or a transfer for a drill sergeant.
But Sergeant Rhodes, a 16 year veteran was court martialed in May, found guilty of cruelty and impeding an investigation.
He was dishonorably discharged.
Two other drill sergeants in his unit were demoted for mistreating recruits a th a fourth is awaiting court martial.
Their captain is serving six months in prison for dereliction of duty Rhodes is getting a raw deal says he's being punished unfairly for techniques that have long been a part of basic training.
It's commonly known that he says that all drill sergeants work in the gray area.
If you don't you aren't doing your job the military however is having nothing of this attitude Colonel Kevin Schweedow, chief of operations for the Army's recruitment and training command we will hunt down and prosecute those who mistreat recruits if we don't do that we won't get the support of the mothers and fathers we won't attract the right kind of people into the military the courts court martials going
on at Fort Knox have drawn praise and criticism from soldiers and veterans.
After one of the trainers Sergeant First class David Price was demoted in April for telling a recruit to swallow his vomit dragging another by his ankles and hitting a third with a rolled up newspaper one soldier wrote to the Army Times saying that when she was in basic training in 1988 the drill sergeants were allowed to do a lot of things.
Now if they look at a recruit the wrong way they get in trouble.
Back then it was still the real army and not a FARS drill sergeants still get carried away commanders say but not often the Army the largest branch of the military had about 2600 drill sergeants training almost 1800 recruits in each of the last two years.
It received 99 complaints of abuse in 2003 109 last year.
All right so we've got the military now sensitive to drill instructors who are too tough who are too rough one is being court several have been court martialed including Sergeant Rhodes who is accused of drilling a guy in the south in the stomach, hitting another man repeatedly in the chest.
I'm not sure exactly where I come down on this.
I think it's a real, real fine line.
What I am afraid of, though, is that we are going to subject the military to the same standards that we have in the remainder of our society.
Not understanding that the military by its very nature is different.
We're taking very young people, 18, 19, and 20 years old, and taking them from a society in which they've been coddled, rarely criticized, often overprotected, and we're preparing them for an environment in which they're going to go halfway around the world and are going to put their lives on the line.
They're going to be shot at people are going to try to kill them.
We have to turn them into the most level-headed, toughest, mature adults, as we can, and these drill instructors only have 13 weeks to do so.
We're not preparing somebody to go out and work at a submarine shop.
We're preparing them to go out, arm them with deadly force, and put them in a situation in which they may die.
And I think that that demands that we bend over backwards to toughen them.
If you can't take getting clobbered by a drill instructor, how are you going to take an environment in which you may be shot at?
You may have to go into very dangerous areas.
You may have to follow orders that would otherwise seem to terrify you.
In addition to that, the beauty of having boot camps that may be borderline brutal is that they do weed out the people who are too sensitive, who can't take it.
I'm not even going to use the term too weak, but people who are not suited for the kind of environment that they are being put in.
The real world right now for our military is one in which it may well be likely, maybe over 50-50, that you're going to be put in a situation in which your life is at risk.
And I don't think we can afford to respond to a bunch of fears that we're being too tough on people.
And there's no doubt that some drill instructors are just wackos.
They're just people who get off on viciously treating other people.
There are bad people in every line of work.
I have a concern that we're going to take this thing too far.
My own theory as to where this is coming from is not parents who are worried about their young son being savagely treated by a drill instructor.
It's the women.
It's the women.
Since we have sexually integrated drill instructor platoons right now, we're reacting differently to some guy who gets in the face and starts screaming and yelling at an 18 or a 19-year-old woman.
It just strikes us the wrong way.
Well, we've got to prepare her for war, too.
And I have a fear that we are going to go too far in this regard.
Having said that, I have tremendous trust in the American military.
It is the one institution of our government that works.
They produce incredibly high-quality human beings who are being asked to do a very difficult job, and virtually every one of them responds to it with honor.
Their level of training is outstanding, and if they think they need to pull back a little bit, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but there are some red flags here.
And we have to understand what it is that we're training people to do.
To Kenosha, Wisconsin, Chris.
Chris, you're on the EIB Network with Mark Belling.
Hello, sir.
I just want to say you're doing a great job for Rush today and this week.
Thank you.
What I was calling about is, basically, I like the system.
I just got out of the military about a year ago.
I was through Fort Benning, which, in my opinion, I know you're going to get a bunch of people who are going to call up and argue with that.
It's one of the hardest trainings for basic training for U.S. Army.
ever face the kind of behavior that was described in the story though in which the drill instructors slugged people and so on.
We did not get drill surgeon that um you know hit us, beat us, um you know anything like that, but it did mentally break you down and like what the story said did change civilians into uh and that that's what I don't want to lose.
I don't know where the physical contact comes in.
I just I have a fear of saying absolute rules that you can't do this, you can't do that.
You use the term break.
I think that's what has to happen.
You've got to break people from the conventions of our society and put them in an environment that is terrifying for them.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
I'm Mark Belling in the right uh in for rush you can go to the uh Club Gitmo gallery at rush limbaugh.com and keep the pictures coming buy Club Gitmo stuff at the EIB store at Rush Limbaugh.com and then email us a photo of yourself wearing your club getmo gear where is it worse?
Gitmo or basic training to go under the United States military.
We live in a society which everybody wants everything now to be nice.
My fear of the pressure that is in being applied to the drill instructors in the military to not go too far in dealing with recruits is that we are applying standards of fairness, civility and behavior that are appropriate for civilian life but are not appropriate for the military which is a unique institution.
Police work may have some similarity but even there police officers are not facing the same kind of death to all that soldiers are facing.
These are people that we are putting in a position in which they may die and some of them will die.
And I think it does require a radical personal transformation and beating up on them a little bit not necessarily physically maybe necessary.
Quoting from today's story in the New York Times Sergeant First Class John Jennings sometimes you have to get in their faces but it's not about making them cry.
The old philosophy was that you're not ready for combat unless you're made miserable all day.
Jennings said when he was trained in nineteen eighty nine he said he saw verbal cruelty and more rarely physical contact that would now be reported.
According to their detailed manual drill sergeants may address recruits only as soldier or private or by surname with few exceptions they must ask before touching a recruit the use of extra pushups as a corrective action remains common but with limits the Marines are now considering filing charges against an instructor at Paris Island, South Carolina, who they say failed to prevent a flailing recruit from drowning during a test in a swimming pool.
The court's case has been referred for a hearing similar to a civilian grand jury to determine if a court martial is warranted.
To the telephones and Rocky in Minnesota Rocky are on Russia's program with Mark Belling.
Yes sir Mark I'm a lifetime Marine.
I grew up in the Marine Corps I was a drill instructor in 1958, 1959 down in San Diego shortly after the uh staff sergeant uh marched his platoon into the swamps at Paris Island resulting in the deaths of a number of recruits.
That was nineteen fifty six as a matter of fact.
Again that was in nineteen fifty six that that happened you're right.
That's correct.
That's correct.
And I was Staff Sergeant McKeown.
The recruit training underwent some pretty dramatic changes right behind that because of the hue and cry about the training.
And I went on to the drill field two years after that happened, and I was under the gun, as were all the other drill instructors.
And we still had to, we were expected to do our jobs to change the civilians.
So what do you think of the new attitude that's coming in now, then?
I think it's doing a disservice to to the military and of course the Marine Corps has the the boot camp the Marine Corps boot camp has traditionally been tougher than the other services and it still is uh as far as I've been able to determine but I you were you're right on the money about uh taking these young men who have been coddled for most of their lives sticking them into these life threatening conditions in combat and to come out on top without ever having been thumped.
Well what ought to be acceptable verbal abuse?
Oh absolutely absolutely uh phys How about how about hitting somebody?
Um there again you get into the gray area.
We used to call it thumping.
Uh to slap a man in the face, that was that was not that was not considered uh acceptable.
Do you do you agree with me that part of what's going on here is that it is naturally different to try to treat a woman in the same fashion you may be willing to treat a young man here.
Of course of course and I and and there again I have very strong feelings about uh women in combat although the Israelis can can certainly prove their point.
If we're changing our standards though and saying that we have to be more sensitive in the way that we're dealing with recruits because of the realities of how parents in society respond to a sense of real harshness toward women, I think that we may be making a mistake.
Now I will say this we haven't seen any sign the discipline in the military is going to pot.
It still seems as though they're able to motivate these people and the individuals that were sending to battle in Iraq and Afghanistan have performed heroically so I don't see any sign that they're screwing up here, but I think this is something to be concerned about.
I agree with that too and I'll say that in every platoon that graduated that uh that I uh had anything to do with their training at the graduation at every single one of the platoon graduations I had at least one set of parents would come up to me and and thank me for having done in three months what they hadn't been able to do in eighteen or nineteen years.
Thank you for the call Rocky appreciate it.
I love that retired marine drill sergeant and his name is Rocky.
Sometimes profiling does work.
To uh Oklahoma City and Dwayne Dwayne you're on Russia's program I'm Mark Belling.
Hey Mark I was uh going to take some exception you keep vaccinating back and forth whether or not uh physical contact is with the exception I think it's a close call.
I mean if I'm if I'm waffling I want to answer explain my position here.
If I'm waffling it's because I do trust the leaders of our military in terms of the decisions that they're making here.
This trend though that we see is something that I am worried about.
I'm not convinced it's a problem yet but it might become one.
So if I sound it sounds like I'm vacillating it's because I don't think that this is this is a black and white situation.
Go ahead.
Well, I'm a Vietnam veteran.
I was in 101st Airborne also.
And when you're in that kind of training, advanced individual training, advanced infantry training, you're going to special forces, Green Beret, you expect to have that kind of physical contact training.
When you're in basic training, those instructors should be intelligent enough and sharp enough to get in the face, nose-to-nose with any young recruit, make him miserable mentally physically and his job is to make that guy that girl physically competent to where they can withstand any kind of physical confrontation that they're going to see in combat.
They're to make them good uh uh marksmen they're uh to to know what um uh combat activity is all about so that they can have the confidence that they can carry out their job.
I think well I think your point is very i is very important.
We have to understand some of these people could be taken prisoner.
The individuals that we're fighting are vicious sadistic people.
The level of abuse that an American soldier taken prisoner in Iraq could receive is terrifying to think about.
They've got to be prepared for that and if you think a little bit of yelling and screaming by a drill instructor is bad, imagine what's going to happen later and I think one of the benefits of a harsh drill instruction is the people who are not emotionally suited for that will wash out and I don't think that that's I I think that that is good that that happens now rather than once they're in the what once they are set overseas.
But he's also responsible for esprit de corps.
I mean it's not just individual uh survival uh you know it's a he's got to develop teamwork he's got to develop respect for officers uh and you got a guy you got an instructor that loses it you know and just abuses uh you're going to I think develop uh an opposite reaction from from your recruits uh they're you know and then you hear uh uh sergeants getting fragged and and things like that.
Uh I think you have to uh uh there's always been limits when I was in the uh basically well do you think they're going too far now in limiting them or do you think that the drill instructors that are being court martialed have it coming?
Well let's put it this way if you have limitations on physical contact with a basic recruit then you don't have to differentiate between male and female.
If they can't do a hundred pushups if they can you know they can't drop drop and do that.
What about the guy at Fort Knox that was you know he hit hit hit one of the recruits in the head and thumped him in the chest repeatedly is that going too far there's why there is no reason not only that if the recruit were to fight back he'd be court martialed so I mean are you saying that that that drill sergeant acted wrongly or not.
Uh well I don't know what the circumstances if he was acting in self-defense but if he was just trying to get that recruit if that recruit refused to do something uh that he ordered him to do uh then he needs to be reported and shipped out just like you would in in a real life situation.
Thank you for the call Dwayne.
I yeah I think this is a very very intriguing topic because I don't know what the rules should be myself.
I have not served in the military I'd probably be the first guy to wash out if I had to face that kind of treatment.
But I don't think they're looking for me over there.
They're looking for young Americans who are being taken out of a very nice cushy existence that we have here and being put in a very very difficult situation.
And I think that that does require a pretty rapid introduction into the harsh realities of what it is that they're going to be facing.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh interesting story in today's New York Times about the military cracking down on drill instructors in both the Army and the Marine Corps who have gone too far.
On the other hand they make it clear that they're not trying to coddle anyone that they are still trying to produce outstanding quality fighting men and women but that there are limits and they're trying to draw lines that establish what they are most of us who have not served our country and the military know nothing about what basic training is our notion of basic training is Sergeant Carter and Gomer Pyle or what was the Bill Murray movie stripes?
Remember that guy Sergeant Hulker or whatever he is other than that what do we know?
You imagine me in basic training I'm a kind of argumentative guy.
The first time one of those guys got in my face I'd start yelling back but you wouldn't want me doing what those heroic young men and women are doing in Iraq right now.
First of all I'm in a situation in my life where I'm beyond having to do something like that.
Secondly I don't think I could do it.
I'm not strong enough I don't know that mentally I can handle the pressure of it.
We're looking for people that are better than the rest of us.
And that's what we all need to understand about the military.
We're not just trying to produce ordinary Americans we need and we require extraordinary Americans people who are willing to do way more than most of the rest of our selfish self-indulgent society will do.
We're asking them to go and die for a vague concept that they may not even fully understand.
And we're asking them to do it at a very young age in their lives and that means they require the best of training and it means that they are that they are trained to be tougher and stronger and more resilient than the rest of us.
Springfield Illinois and Troy Troy you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Hey have a good day today I'm a former Marine and when I was in boot camp back in 2000 my drill instructor beat the tar out of me more than once.
Physically physically he did it for a reason.
A fi uh when you say beat you'd beat the tar out of you do you mean physically?
I mean physically I mean punched kicked because I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing.
Because I got in a fight with another recruit and he came in separated and beat the crap out of both of us shows that that's something we don't do.
And you're saying that that was positive for you.
Yes it taught me that helped me learn how to be a bigger man how to be a better man and how to be a good marine.
Would he have been able to accomplish that without laying a hand on you?
Probably not a pretty rowdy and uh disrespectful individual when I went to boot camp.
I learned a lot of discipline and a lot of self respect A lot of respect for other people and authority while I was there.
Well, I will say this.
Uh we all know young men and women who join the military, and you see them when they come back for the first leave, and they are different people.
They are more mature, they have it.
You can just see it in them.
There's a different air about them.
There's a maybe a little bit more of a seriousness or a sense of purpose.
Something does happen.
It does become a transforming experience, and it's almost always a positive one.
I don't think we can say, however, that there isn't a line at which someone may take it too far.
And I don't think that we can just carplon say that a drill instructor can do anything, because I think often that going too far is an excuse for using your head and figuring out other ways in which you can motivate the person.
Thank you for the call, Troy.
Florida and Joe.
Joe, you're on EIB with Mark Belling.
I I don't, sir.
I'm very thinking.
I'm a former uh captain and lieutenant that was any base training unit, and I train these privates to go over to Iraq.
I'm telling you, these privates, they don't listen.
They they're coddled by the by the uh tent command.
We're told not to swear at them.
We can't even call them guys.
I have a private at the five of them who get on get off the firing range, point a loaded weapon at me.
Not knowing this uh her miles in the year, I had to slap her in the head to wake up.
And I believe these privates need to be smacked on sometimes to wake up.
It's no joke.
I had uh uh drill sergeant who had a uh uh M16 with a loaded weapon with a bullet in the chamber, pointed at his chest.
Again, times not knowing what they're doing, they have their head in the air.
In other words, yeah, unintentionally, that gun was pointed at the drill sergeant's chest because the person was not paying attention.
Exactly.
And the problem is that the chain of command, the lieutenant colonel isn't above, they're so worried about the media and political correctness that we can't even call them, hey guys, come here.
We gotta call them soldier or private.
They ain't earned the right to be called a soldier yet, because they ain't graduated pay the training yet.
I'm telling you, these people are babied.
I I'm surprised that they go over there and do a good job because that's the question that I want to ask about uh ask about.
So far, we are getting report we haven't gotten reports that they can't handle the pressure in Iraq.
They've been performing heroically.
The problems that you're saying, in which hands are being tied have not manifested themselves in a lower quality soldier, have they?
The problem is this, right?
Uh the ones that you see at Iraq, they go to Fort Benin to become infantry soldiers.
Those guys are trained a little differently, a little harder.
They have to because they're gonna be facing the enemy.
The ones that I trained were the uh uh comet support and server support.
My God, these people are babied.
I'm telling you, and the drill sergeants' hands are tied.
We try they try to train them and and they tie.
They can't yell at them, they can't do nothing to them, they gotta baby and call them.
Did you feel as though when you were serving as a drill instructor that I was an officer, I was the guy.
You're an officer.
Okay.
I I was my drill sergeant there and I was there watching them.
I felt like a baby structure because I'm telling you, okay, people with 15 years experience, right?
I I got confidence in all my drill sergeants when I was over there serving, and I had to babysit them because they're afraid that they're gonna hurt it in private.
Why do you think this attitude change is coming in?
Do you think they're just they're just afraid of bad publicity from the media?
Pretty much, pretty much.
And the problem is this that I said it when I was in and I got flag for it.
When you when you put when they put the females and males together in business training environment, that's all the problems happened.
Well, I that it that makes sense to me because our society just is uncomfortable with treating women in the way we are willing to treat young men.
Thank you for the comments, Joe.
That's very helpful.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
I'm Mark Bellings sitting in for Rush.
It's been a pleasure doing the show the last couple of days.
We've been talking about story in today's New York Times about how the military has disciplining and court-martialing some drill instructors who have taken things too far.
My own position on this is one of r ambivalence.
I'm not I'm not going to criticize them for the court martials that they've undertaken because they may well have had good reasons in those cases.
Anyone can take anything too far.
The thing that's important for us to understand though is what it is that we are training these young men and women for.
We are training them to do things that most of us would never do ourselves.
We're putting them in terribly difficult situations.
We're training them to become heroes.
And that requires a toughening process.
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