I was struck, the other day, by how deathly quiet the media has been on one aspect of the recent hubhub around the failures of President Clinton's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. Although many people in both media and politics have been quick to acknowledge that it's not working, nobody seems to have voiced a blindingly obvious question: why aren't those in positions of command being held accountable?

The case that's brought the issue to a head, is the conviction of Pvt. Calvin N. Glover in the bludgeoning death of Pfc. Barry L. Winchell. Pfc. Winchell was made to suffer endless stings and taunts over a period of months in the service, and the command structure around him implicitly condoned this behavior against him, behavior which escalated ultimately and led to the soldier's violent death.

Yet I didn't see a single news account which asked why his officers let this continue. There was no mention in news accounts that any judgement or censure should be levelled against any of the officers. And yet the military's officers are always the first to trot out the "chain of command" principals when it suits them.

So now President Clinton talks of trying to fix "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". Surely the obvious way to fix it is to make officers explicitly culpable for permitting patterns of anti-gay behavior. If a complaint is raised and a military court determines that anti-gay harrassment was allowed to exist in a unit over a period of months or more, then all officers up the chain of command, to a certain level, should be punished - either by reducing their pay grade, or reassigning them to positions of lower responsibility. This punishment should be leveled whether the officer knew about the harrassment or not. The point is that they are the ones who are ultimately responsible for the climate of their military unit, and, if they knew that they'd be punished for a climate of anti-gay harrassment, you can be sure they'd do all they could to make sure such a climate never came into existence.

Okay, off my soap-box. I've probably been doing too much reading recently. It's amazing how much time you have when you're sick for a week. Yesterday, finally, I felt a whole lot better and was able to get out of my apartment for a while. I even went to buy a Christmas tree. I still didn't feel strong enough to lug around a real one so I'm afraid I bought a fake one (don't take away my gay card please!)

Putting the thing up reminded me so much of doing it as a kid. We always had a fake one - and even worse, my Dad always went for a white or silver one. Come to think of it, we probably used the same one for most of my childhood. Woolworth's best.