What’s with Shinseki and hats?
A veteran found the above pictured cap in the Washington, DC Veterans Affairs hospital in Washington, DC. At first he thought it was pretty funny, but, like the rest of us who’ve been married several years, his wife convinced him that his initial reaction was wrong, according to the Army Times;
“My first reaction was, ‘Oh, that’s pretty funny,’ because I have a tendency to laugh at inappropriate things,” McCuin, an Army Reserve officer, said in a telephone interview. “My wife, who has much less a sense of humor about these things, thought it was awful.”
McCuin said that instead of purchasing the hat for his car’s dashboard as a joke, he shot VA’s social media department the photo he had taken, along with a tweet: “Nice message, guys,” he wrote.
VA officials quickly responded with their own message. “This does nothing except perpetuate stereotypes. Unacceptable anywhere near a VA Medical Center.”
Later that day, our buddy, Alex Horton, who manages the VA blog, Vantage Point had written a post about PTS and TBI entitled “The Stigmas Surrounding PTSD and TBI” I suppose to atone for putting the hat in a VA hospital store.
I suspect that Janet Napolitano would like us all to wear those hats in public as a sort of warning label for the remainder of the public, but this is a real boner for the VA which should be doing it’s best to counter the negative stereotypes of veterans, not perpetuating the myths. yeah, if you have one of these hats, that’s fine, I just think it’s inappropriate for the VA to make a profit from it.
Category: Veterans' Affairs Department
I have a patch of the same, intending to put it on my riding vest with others, but haven’t gotten around to it. I have a fairly morbid sense of humor, but agree with Jonn….I probably wouldn’t stock that in a VA gift shop.
Picard does not have enough facepalms for VA selling this in one of their medical centers.
If the hat read “Warning this Vet is medicated for Janet Napolitano’s protection,” what are the chances the VA would have been selling it? Just insert any name in place of the pronoun “your” and you get the point.
That just takes gallows humor to the extreme
A couple clarifications from inside of the issue:
The post was written last Friday and was ready to go Monday, but I took the day off. It went up Tuesday morning. The original tweet with the photo was sent out Wednesday:
http://twitter.com/#!/TomMcCuin/status/121604895659933698
I run VA’s Twitter feed so I saw it immediately, told him I’d take care of it, and forwarded it on to several folks in senior leadership. By Thursday afternoon, the hats were pulled off the shelf.
The hats are not being sold in the Canteen store, but by a contract vendor at the entrance of the medical center. I’m not positive, but I’m willing to bet VA doesn’t directly benefit from the sale of these hats.
I happened to have an appointment at the DC medical center yesterday and talked to the vendor. She was surprised at the controversy, but I did tell her it sends the wrong message to not just other veterans but civilians as well.
All in all a pretty positive turnout to this. VA was notified about an offensive hat sold on the premise and action was taken immediately. No bureaucratic hangups or huddles to determine the course of action. Just results. How often does that happen? Pretty rare occurrence in the building.
hmmm. I think its funny, and in the right crowd it would get a laugh. But there is a point, MOST people are used to seeing Rambo and shit like that. They are of the assumption that all vets only need a small provocation, to try to kill everything in sight.
Maybe it this were post WWII and EVERYONE had served it wouldn’t be so bad.
I’d wear the hat but the brim looks low enough to obscure my acog.
Heh
I prefer Your own Post concerning Worry Over Swine Flu Shuts Educational facilities inside Iraq tiffany Excellent precisely what My spouse and i ended up being trying to find!.