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COLUMN: 'Fag Bomb' Should Be Viewed as a Reflection of War, Not Language
Wednesday, November 14, 2001
By Katherine Mulvany
The Daily University Star (Southwest Texas State U.)

SAN MARCOS, Texas -- U-WIRE
Did you see the photograph of the infamous "fag bomb" aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise aircraft carrier? You had to look closely because the picture disappeared rather quickly.

"Fag bomb," I hasten to say, are not my words; they are the words of Washington Post writer Hank Stuever in a recent article about the picture in question.

The picture I'm referring to was a photograph taken by a journalist aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise. The bomb was being readied for deployment in an air mission above Afghanistan, and a sailor had scrawled the words "HIGH JACK THIS, FAGS" in a childish handwriting on the casing of the bomb.

Soon after the picture was distributed by the Associated Press (the wire service that supplies news stories and photos to newspapers across the country), a gay and lesbian advocacy group called GLAAD protested, and the AP withdrew the picture from circulation. Jack Stokes, a spokesman for AP, apologized for what he called "a journalistic error," explaining "the picture never should have gotten through, and nobody should have seen it."
(More: UWire.com News Source)
2001 © The Daily University Star.

Dan