Annapolis Capital Punishment

Alderwoman Hoyle’s proposed resolution to petition the Naval Academy to reinstate Midshipman and star Quarterback Lamar Owens got a hearing Monday night--both pro and con. CP knows it’s a complex issue and is depressingly on the fence, wondering whether the City Council should be involved. CP listened to impassioned arguments pro and con and hates to see this become a racial thing, but he can’t help but acknowledge it already is. CP says again that if Owen’s father and grandfather had been Admirals, this would not even be a story. He never would have gotten reprimanded for anything. Of course, how many Black midshipmen are the second in their families to go to the Academy, much less are the son of flag officers?

CP thinks about Senator John McCain, possibly the next Republican nominee for president, whose “exploits” and shall we say, “disciplinary challenges” in the Class of 1958 are legendary. McCain, the son and grandson of highly decorated four-star admirals, all named John Sidney McCain and from an even longer military ancestry, managed to graduate fourth in his class--fourth from the bottom, and with enough demerits to have made graduation questionable at some points. Well, the moral of the story is that McCain was allowed to graduate and by most accounts, did well in life, and what a life it has been. So, CP must ask again, would the Lamar Owens story even be a story if his father and grandfather were Admirals?

Part of this is due, whether we wish to admit or not, to the simple fact that the Academy is now a co-ed institution, albeit one with strict prohibitions against the boy-girl “thing.”