by L.B. Woodgate

Created on: January 05, 2011

Former Marine Corps drill sergeant and TV personality R.Lee Ermey is a “jack-wagon”

Cinema and Television success does not always correlate with political insights.  Instead, a slanted view of politics can do irreparable harm to some actors while defining them for a future role with a given political cause or agenda.  We wait to see how this bares out with R.Lee Ermey following his Obama invective at a recent charitable event in Indiana.

The salty ex-Marine “Gunny” Sergeant of “Full Metal Jacket” fame and former TV host of the History Channel’s militainment program “Mail Call” fired a surprising salvo at President Obama at a charitable event intended to raise toys for needy children,  catching his co-hosts completely off guard.  In a ad-lib at an event billed as “Roe & Roeper's Miracle on Indianapolis Blvd. Holiday Extravaganza”  in the Horseshoe Casino’s  Venue room in Hammond, Indiana last December 10th, Ermey attacked the President, accusing him and his administration of having “a lot to do” with the poor economy.

To some this could portray Ermey as a “jack-wagon”.  This term, he used in his GEICO Commercial, seen here, is an innocuous form of “jagoff” which the Urban Dictionary defines as an ass*, jerkoff, jerk, jackoff, jackass, prick, douchebag, idiot, loser, wanker, tool and ass, just to name a few of the more subtle references.

This may come across as an anathema to a man who has done as much for Marine Corps recruitment as John Wayne did starring in the “Sands of Iwo Jima” and Jack Webb did a little over a decade later in the film “The D.I.”   But anyone who uses a noble event like Toys 4 Tots to express his political views using words intended to incite those present by declaring that people should be “rising up ... [to] stop this administration from what they’re doing because they’re destroying this country” steps over the line in my book.  

I don’t begrudge Ermey his right to express his political views.  It’s a free country that he has honorably served.  As a former Marine myself I admired the man from afar not only because of the shared “brotherhood” all Marines feel towards each other but because he so aptly displays the image of the fighting leatherneck that makes all Marines proud. 

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