Task and Purpose has a lofty goal for a mere website:
Task & Purpose is a news and culture site geared toward the next great generation of American veterans.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are coming to an end, and what results is a new kind of American veteran.
They return to a nation in reformation; to a nation with a fragile, recovering, and off-kilter economy; and to a nation with more political division and dysfunction than ever before.
They return with remarkable skills, having shouldered unprecedented burdens, with a spirit of sacrifice and service needed to move the country forward.
We have no doubt that these men and women will do incredible things over the next 50 or more years.
Our mission is to give them a voice.
In short, they market themselves as the "New Great Generation of Veterans," a not so subtle comparison with veterans coming out of WWII, the Greatest Generation, as coined by Tom Brokaw to honor not only veterans but those that served on the homefront.
The guys and gals running T&P are confident and cocky, traits needed both in military circles and in today's fast moving and ever changing world wide web.
The problem comes when a company purporting to support the military community starts publishing articles that harm it only to increase their profit margin. When articles enhance and reinforce negative stereotypes of veterans and their families, they attract a vehement crowd to argue in defense of the community at large. According to a friend who writes at T&P, every click increases the paycheck of the author that wrote the article in the first place, so the more controversial the piece, the more money the author makes. This form of incentive pay encourages T&P writers to focus on controversy rather than quality. It’s what has become known in internet circles as click bait, that article with a sensational title and tags to maximize SEO without necessarily being quality content.
One author is making a name for himself publishing this kind of click bait. His name is Carl Forsling. He's an active duty Marine officer and pilot, about to say goodbye to the service forever and start a new career as a retired veteran.
Carl Forsling is your typical angry white man. Of course, that wasn't clear from his first pieces. Then he was just your typically angry veteran, writing about the entitled culture of the military community. His pieces on entitlement both begin with sex - comparing battle with sexual intercourse in the first and a joke about a bear raping a hunter in the second. Smart people would probably stop reading there.
In his entitled veterans piece, he talks about people I have never met: the veteran that demands a discount at the hardware store because they served in Afghanistan and the active duty service member that gets upset at the amusement park staff because he couldn't get a fourth family member in for free. He speaks of these people as if they are attacking civilian businesses en masse and have become the face of the military community.
He writes that stories in the news about veterans with post traumatic stress are overblown. He doesn't want them to be the face of the military community either.
Not once does he talk about the diversity of the military community. Or how we should find strength in that diversity, not make it part of the problem.
And then he tries to soften the blow and explain that life isn't easy in the civilian community either. It's a kum-ba-ya moment meant to pull us all together. His entire article has been one of tough love - let me tell you like it is so that we can overcome our stereotypes and all be happy with each other again. Very conservative idea, isn't it, tough love? Well, there's more.
He writes about entitled military families in the same way. How dare a military spouse put a bumper sticker on her car that says "Toughest Job in the Corps/Navy/Army/Airforce"? He really takes that one to heart and asks:
Being a military spouse is tougher than jumping out of a plane, disarming an improvised explosive device, or landing an aircraft on a ship? Change jobs for a moment. Put the military spouse on short final to an aircraft carrier and drop the service member into a minivan and see who dies first.
His disdain for military spouses is clear - he basically tells them that they asked for it. That the problems they face as a military family are by their own choice and their own doing. End of discussion. Oh... and civilians have it hard too so let's have another kum-ba-ya moment to end the article and no one needs to go away angry.
His pieces on entitlement are written in response to a meme common in conservative circles: "the culture of entitlement" that is basically ruining modern day society. We find it debated in British newspapers and lauded on Fox Business News. Half the time people are arguing the legal definition of entitlement and the other half the dictionary definition. And neither side seems to understand the difference. It's made the entitlement wars a heady topic and guarantees clicks when it's written about. Which guarantees Carl a paycheck and T&P ad revenue. Worthy goals to be sure but is it worth the damage being done to the military community at large?
If Carl Forsling had left it at those two articles, I probably never would have written a piece for a civilian audience. But then he published an article this morning titled "The Military's Problem with Political Correctness."
And he crossed a big line. As usual, his hook is controversial but rather than use sex, he uses racism. He talks about going to college in the 1990's when the term politically correct was born. His example of extreme political correctness is one that called out racist behavior in a student at his school:
Back then, events like a white student calling black women “water buffalo” at my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, earned that student an investigation, and that incident a place in every major media outlet.
Like I said above, smart people would have probably stopped reading. But this guy is writing about my community and I was attracted like a slug to beer bait. It got worse:
Veterans have become the new third rail. God forbid someone talk about dysfunction among veterans or military families. There is a new type of politically correct backlash to any discussion on the negative aspects of the military community. Just as with race or gender, people can have negative perceptions about veterans and their families, but apparently can never, ever, say them out loud.
Is this the same author that believes stories on veterans and PTS are "overblown"?
Or that thinks military spouses shouldn’t talk about the negative aspects of military life because they asked for it?
Then came the kicker:
Veterans and military families are the new “black,” so to speak.
Excuse me? the new “black”?
I can't believe with the current protests in Baltimore and the recent events in Ferguson that he would even attempt to say the veteran community is like the black community. For one, I've never seen an amusement park offer a "Thanks for being Black!" free entrance day. And although veterans find some discrimination in the hiring process, it is nothing like the discrimination faced by generations of people of color.
He speaks as a white male harmed by politically correct speech and then goes on to list what he thinks are the best examples:
[Veterans] are taking their place next to ethnic minorities, the LGBT community, the “differently-abled,” “little people,” “people of size,” and every other PC-protected victim group. The military community is now among the protected groups that we just can’t talk about, like some type of patriotic Voldemort.
Just the term victim group should tell you exactly where Carl is coming from. Only the most conservative of the conservative consider these groups as victims. They are people and individuals within those communities are victimized but they aren’t victim groups. Sounds like he needed a good editor to help him clarify his message.
Do we think he is seriously comparing the life of the average veteran with the life of the average gay man or lesbian (many who are veterans) or to the differently-abled (many who are veterans injured at war). Yet that seems to be exactly what he is doing.
I think what Carl was really trying to say is that giving veterans a hiring preference is like giving minorities affirmative action. That would fit the conservative framing of the entitlement culture he hates so much. Again, a good editor could have helped Carl write this more clearly so he wouldn’t be so misunderstood.
The final salt rubbed in the wound was a comment he made about PTS veterans needing trigger warnings:
Many people think veterans are such delicate flowers that they have to be protected from even imaginary slights, like classic rock anthem “Fortunate Son” being played at a Veterans’ Day concert.
I may not have gone to war but I have experienced a veteran's reaction to a PTS event... something not unlike a song at a Veterans Day Event. The anger, the fear, the loss of control over one's emotions... it was all there. A simple warning to the crowd that graphic images from war would be shown and any person that wanted to leave the room could have - a trigger warning. It's that simple. Carl may want to make fun of trigger warnings like he makes fun of being politically correct, but he only chips away at what little credibility he has left.
Carl says something else in this piece. Something that resonated with me:
Policing our own begins with correcting those embarrassing the military community. The individuals acting like jackasses in public are truly the individuals harming the community at large, not those who talk about them.
Consider yourself warned, Carl. You are being a jackass. You might want to stick to writing more articles that compare and contrast General Han Solo to General David Petraeus and stay away from entitlement.
As for Task and Purpose, the editors need to get a clue. Articles like this are harming your brand name. And we know the bottom dollar is ultimately what is most important. It obviously isn’t well edited writing.