Today's Must-Read: A Follow Up

Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly is acting no more -- he resigned. Ads a folliow-up to this post from Monday, here's a must-read from Digby that adds a couple of dimensions to the story:

You do what he wants or else. And if it blows back on him, you will take the fall. That’s the deal.

Why so many people eagerly sign on to that is beyond me but there seems to be an endless supply of them:

Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly resigned Tuesday after traveling nearly 8,000 miles to Guam to berate thousands of sailors on Monday, later saying he stood “by every word,” and then subsequently apologizing for the remarks within the span of about eight hours.

Modly submitted his resignation a day after audio of his speech on the carrier was published by Task & Purpose. James McPherson, Undersecretary of the Army, will be tapped to replace Modly, a defense official told Task & Purpose.

His remarks were even more tone-deaf and -- well, "clumsy" is inadequate, but it will have to do -- than I had known from initial reports:

“Crew of the Teddy Roosevelt, you are under no obligation to love your leadership, only respect it,” Modly said. “You are under no obligation to like your job, only to do it. You are under no obligation, you are under no obligation to expect anything from your leaders other than they will treat you fairly and put the mission of the ship first.”

“That’s your duty,” Modly continued. “Not to complain. Everyone is scared about this thing. And let me tell ya something, if this ship was in combat and there were hypersonic missiles coming in at it, you’d be pretty fucking scared too. But you do your jobs. And that’s what I expect you to. And that’s what I expect every officer on this ship to do, is to do your jobs.”

It's like he's trying to a WWII movie hero. What he is is a jackass.

Read the whole thing -- it's probably not an eye-opener -- we should have known -- but it's illuminating nvertheless.