'Boot Camp' should get a dishonorable discharge

It is impossible to describe Fox's latest "Survivor" rip-off "Boot Camp" (9 p.m. Wednesday) without referencing "Full Metal Jacket."\nMy reliable source, "Deep Throat," quoted the movie to describe one "recruit," as contestants are called: "I didn't know they stacked shit that high," Mr. Throat said.\nThe recruit complains during the premiere that boot camp is not what he expected. He thought everyone was just going to "screw around," have fun and get to know one another. Instead, he moans, the recruits barely talk to each other.\nYou just want R. Lee Ermey, who played the drill instructor in "Full Metal Jacket," to pop up and start screaming, "Looks like the best part of you rolled out of the crack of your mamma's ass and ended up as a brown stain on the mattress! I think you've been cheated!" \n"Boot Camp" puts recruits through one month of basic training exercises with real-life Marine drill instructors. The recruits get to dismiss one of their peers every week, and that person gets to pick another recruit to get dismissed.\nThe show makes a mockery of basic training. Not that I would know: I tried to join the Navy in 1996, but I got rejected because my member is an inch-and-a-half long -- that extra half-inch that kept me out of Naval ROTC.\nBut considering what I do know from people much stronger and more capable than I who have gone through real boot camp, Fox's "Boot Camp" is a debacle. It's not about bringing recruits together; it's about scheming and forming cliques. \nIn my humble opinion, we should send "Dolphin" or "Butterfly" or whatever the name of that hippie in the tree is to boot camp. In fact, we should start a war in some Third World country where we can send all those environmentalists. Maybe it will thin them out a little. (Please direct all hate mail to me and not my wonderful IDS editors.)\nBack to Fox's "Boot Camp": On the show, there is no real sense of unit cohesion. There are no friendships on the show, just strategic alliances. The platoon is just a group of money-hungry "Survivor" rejects.\nThe worst of them is a recruit named Meyer. Now, if R. Lee Ermey were a host on this show, he would just have screamed at Meyer a string of obscenities until he permanently expelled Meyer's smug expression. But the instructors on "Boot Camp" would let him get away with murder.\nIn the first episode, he loses the respect of his peers by moaning, "We're getting brainwashed." But the next day he wins support by giving a bogus apology and conjuring up fake tears -- he smiles when he tells the cameraman how impressed he is with his acting skills. Then he stabs another recruit in the back, befriending him and then convincing the women recruits he's a sexist pig who wants to tell them what to do.\nRight before the dismissal at the end of the show, Meyer gleefully claims that if he doesn't get kicked off the show, "Meyer (will have) orchestrated one of the biggest upsets in military history."\nHe's right. The other guy gets axed.\nIn the next episode, Meyer appears to fake a shoulder injury to avoid doing pullups.\nJames Morris, a first sergeant in the Hawaii Civil Air Patrol from when he was 14-17 years old, explained what he would do to Meyer, "If anyone ever told me he couldn't do pullups because his shoulder hurt, I'd say ,'Fine, how do your legs feel?'"\nAfter making Meyer run, Morris would have a medic check Meyer out. If the medic thought Meyer was faking it, Morris would wake Meyer at 1 a.m. and make him guard a wall. Then he'd make Meyer train with the rest of the platoon the next morning without any sleep.\nI want you all to write to Fox and petition the network to give Morris one hour alone with Meyer.\nThen I want you to write to the IDS and petition the editors to make the entire staff go through one week of boot camp. They thought I was mad when I announced over the IDS intercom that I thought it would help my column if we all went through boot camp so I could ask them how their experiences measured up to the show.\nBut those peaceniks wouldn't go for it.