For decades, new cadets entering the Air Force Academy were greeted by a bold slogan spelled out on a Banner several feet tall: "Bring Me Men." Originally taken from a nineteenth-century poem by Samuel Walter Foss, this slogan invited the entering cadets to entertain lofty thoughts: The Academy's slogan, however, would not survive long into the twenty-first century. The slogan was indeed probably doomed when, in 2003, a sex scandal rocked the Academy, forcing the school's top administrator--Superintendent John R. Dallager--to resign. That his replacement--John W. Rosa--would allow the continued use of the "Bring Me Men" slogan never seemed very likely. After all, Rosa was from the very first under tremendous pressure from journalists, such as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorialists, who likened the Air Force scandal to the infamous Tailhook affair that had disgraced the Navy in 1991. These editorialists asserted that the Academy's problem in 2003, like the Navy's problem in 1991, sprang from an atavistic "culture of men and power." (2) What top administrator would want to keep a "Bring Me Men" slogan in such a media environment?
