Phony SEALS

[Sir Brian]

Did anyone catch this story on the Inside Edition the other night? As much as I would like to vilify these posers I pause to reflect what difference there is between their self-proclaimed and false SEAL status and our very own claims of knightly endeavors, besides their outright lying to folks about their service records.

 ~ Discuss! ~ 

http://www.insideedition.com/news/6339/are-imposters-posing-as-navy-seals-inside-edition-investigates.aspx

[Sir Edward]

Well, clearly there's a big difference since we're not claiming to actually exist in the medieval period.  All that aside, honest portrayal certainly has educational value, but there's no honor at all in claiming achievements that never were.

For instance, if he were at a reenactment event and portrayed a SEAL, it would be no big deal. But he dishonors himself, and the SEALs, by claiming to have been one in the real world when he didn't complete the training.

I was reading a while back about the concept of "stolen honor". Apparently it's pretty widespread. Since you can go online and order uniforms and medals, people will buy these things and pretend to have earned them the hard way. I even ran across a website (can't remember the URL) that was dedicated to exposing public acts of stolen honor. One example was embarrassingly over the top. The guy put on just about every high-level medal our country bestows.

But going back to knights... I think as long as we're honest about what we're doing, we're fine. We're not knights via an official knighting in a country that still does that, and we're not medieval knights since we live in the modern age. But we're knights of our organization, and we're portraying historical knights. And if we're taking chivalry seriously, then we're re-awakening the aspect of knighthood that is our cultural heritage, and we can call ourselves knights. We have the added advantage here that since it's a historical re-creation, it's obvious that we didn't spend years as a squire in medieval Europe, so no one is going to be accidentally mislead.

And of course, as I noted above, being knights of our own organization is an important aspect. In a way it adds legitimacy, since any private organization is free to use whatever ranks or titles it wants internally. So if that title is "knight", then no one can dispute that.

We just have to watch out for the rare few people that will think we're being delusional. Not that it would ever happen (*cough*facebook*cough*).

[Sir Edward]

I haven't found that website yet that I mentioned. I think they were using the term "stolen valor" rather than "stolen honor"... I'm still looking.

But I found an article about the guy I mentioned who wore a little of everything. There are also articles out there about the constitutionality of the "stolen valor" laws that prohibit people from wearing medals they didn't earn.


http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=7261240

Another:

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/stolen-valor-challenges-fake-medals-met-criticism/story?id=9779478

[Sir William]

As strange as that story is, it is a well-known one (not necessarily the SEAL issue, but people pretending to be something they're not) and will always occur when there's a person who wants to be something more than what they are.

There are diploma mills - for a price they'll workup an entire dummy curriculum and test scores and diploma so you can say you were college educated.  I actually worked for a company, one of their management personnel would actually state that you were to address her as 'Dr.' - it turns out she had something on the president of the company but they got her on a technicality- she lied on her resume.  An HR rep called the school whose diploma she kept on her wall and they had no record of this woman matriculating at ALL...not in their doctorate, MBA or even BA programs, she'd never been a student there.  Crazy, right?  She lied to give herself the legitimacy she felt she lacked and spent an inordinate amount of time pointing out her doctorate (and pointing out how dumb she really was) and not enough on gaining the knowledge that might've covered her rear.

There are a whole slew of sites that cater to WWI and WWII re-enactors and cosplay types...and their medals and uniforms are regulation-accurate; I do not find it surprising that people will collect this stuff and make up stories about how they earned it...I'll bet some of them make those stories up because they fear how people will consider them inane or childish for collecting such things simply for the joy of it.  Some people's lives suck so bad they just make up new ones because it makes them feel better.

As for knighthood...I espouse the tenets of chivalry, I work to make myself a better person daily- I take pride in my arms and armor and strive to make myself better with them...I safeguard the helpless and TRY to do no wrong and if I'm not to be considered a knight because I've not yet been knighted...FINE.

I'll be one in just a week and a half!!!

I'd like to shake Mr. Sterner's hand and thank him for his service in the armed forces and his continued service to his own brethren...going beyond lip service and actually doing something about it.

[Sir Brian]

I guess what really piqued me on that particular story was the professional jouster perpetrating at being nothing more than a ‘PX heroes’, which was the term we used when I was in the Army. 

As for knighthood, oddly enough I came to the realization when I first started looking into getting armored up and doing a lot of reading and research about knights and chivalry that I have been on the path of chivalry for nearly my entire life and not so much as a conscious decision made years ago that I would follow a path of chivalry.

So in essence I feel that I had been born a knight who eventually grew into his spurs. 

[Sir Wolf]

heheeh

[Sir William]

As for knighthood, oddly enough I came to the realization when I first started looking into getting armored up and doing a lot of reading and research about knights and chivalry that I have been on the path of chivalry for nearly my entire life and not so much as a conscious decision made years ago that I would follow a path of chivalry.

So in essence I feel that I had been born a knight who eventually grew into his spurs. 

That too, is well said.  You're on a roll, Sir Brian!  Keep coming up with those gems.

LOL @ PX Heroes- what a great moniker for those types!  Besides, I always thought that if you were a SEAL, you'd never mention it while still active...don't they all claim to be low-scale clerks and such? 

I might've gotten that from TV.

[Sir Edward]

As for knighthood, oddly enough I came to the realization when I first started looking into getting armored up and doing a lot of reading and research about knights and chivalry that I have been on the path of chivalry for nearly my entire life and not so much as a conscious decision made years ago that I would follow a path of chivalry.

So in essence I feel that I had been born a knight who eventually grew into his spurs. 

Well said! It was much the same for me. It wasn't until 2006, after I had been armoring up for several years, that I realized it's what I had been aiming for all along.

[Sir James A]

Sir Edward, this is probably the site you're looking for: http://www.stolenvalor.com/

The Stolen Valor act was just passed about 5 years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Valor_Act_of_2005

It's a VERY huge difference between portraying a knight and a SEAL. There are no "knights", as went tend to think of them, today. We're embracing and revitalizing a "lost art" of sorts. Nobody will say "that guy says he's a knight, and it's great that he has put himself in danger to serve our country". There's no expectation that we ever would, or have, done anything other than what we want to, for fun. There's no financial gain from us calling ourselves Knights. I do it because I love it, because it makes me a better person, and because I'm decended from germans and english/scottish a few centuries ago and it just "feels right".

The SEALS, on the other hand, are very much a modern day group, and impersonating them is a very big deal (to me) because many of them do risk (and sometimes lose) their lives for us to keep the freedoms and safety we have.

I have family that served in the military, and it absolutely infuriates me that someone would pretend to have served in Vietnam for their own personal gain - I've never seen one case where they did it for selfless reasons. Whereas my dad served because he wanted to, and almost never speaks about it or even admits it, except when we go out to lunch on Veteran's day. It's been over 30 years, and he just last year decided to get a Veteran license plate for his car. My grandfather served, but I don't know when - all I know is he was in the Army before I was born, and that's because my grandmother told me. He never spoke of it once.

I can dress like a pirate and call myself a pirate, but unless I'm in or near Somalia, most people would have the common sense to understand it's a costume, it's a hobby, or it's a way of life - but that I'm not actually boarding ships and firing cannons and having swashbuckling adventures. Call myself a seal? It's certainly plausible, and brings a whole slew of perks along with the claim ... but it's morally reprehensible, IMO.

[Sir William]

I wholeheartedly agree, Sir James.

[Sir Rodney]

Sir James brought up a very interesting point.  Most people I know who served in any branch of the military don’t go around advertising it at every opportunity.  Most young people (18-40 year old) are happy to talk about their service if you bring it up first.

My father’s Vietnam generation is a little different as they usually don’t talk about their experience much, if at all.  I know very little about my father’s tour with the Army in Vietnam and he has never volunteered much at all.  I don’t fit the definition of an Army brat as I only spent the first 6 months of my life near Fort Benning just as my father was getting out.

People who blab nonstop about their military heroics immediately send up a red flag for me.

[Sir Wolf]

ya this is always a sticky point when i do WW2 reenactment. mainly because the vets are still out there visiting. some people don't want any medals/ ribbons etc others say to be period correct you need to look and have exactly what they had. my group has do's and don'ts as to which and what they wear.

[Sir Matthew]

I have a freind who was a SEAL and is not out of the service working as a private security contractor with the Afghan government. Impersonating a SEAL to one of them is a very good way to get yourself seriously hurt. Those guys take that way personally. He never really talked about what he did or where he was, he's not allowed to for security reasons and while he never denied what he did in the service, he also didn't advertise it. Again, for security reasons they aren't allowed to. His family and close personal freinds knew what he did, but we had no idea where he was stationed, which team he was part of or what he was doing on the team. Anyone who makes those kind of claims and advertises what they were/did is probably either flat out lying or at the very least embelishing the truth.

As for what we do, I don't think there is even a comparison. I would even go so far as to say it's not even the same as the WW2 or even Vietnam reenactors. Most people dressing up and reenacting either of those eras are obviously too young to have been there. I know Vietnam isn't all that long ago, but most reenactors I saw from that era are far too young to have fought even in the later part of the war. I think that to reenact the different time periods and wars as we do is our way of bringing honor to those who were there. It's also our way of ensuring that future generations don't forget their sacrifices or repeat the same mistakes that were made then.