Marine Publicly Crucifies Himself on Easter, Sorta Regrets it Now
The United States Marines don't half-ass anything. Not even bizarre misguided protests in front of state capitols.
Former Marine Sgt. Joshua Klohr feels he was wrongly railroaded into a court-martial and a discharge. A disgraced military career is a hell of a cross to bear. Or, in Klohr's case, to climb.
To draw attention to his plight, he hung himself up on a replica cross for an hour on Easter Sunday in front of the Colorado state Capitol in Denver, flanked by billboards and binders that explained his case to bewildered passersby. It also happened to be 4/20, which is kind of a big deal in Colorado these days, so Klohr had quite the crowd on hand.
The Marine Corps Times tells the backstory:
While serving as a Marine recruiter in Boulder, Colo., Klohr said he struggled to make recruiting goals, despite working 14-16 hours a day. He refused to "fraud" enlistees into the Corps by ignoring factors that would disqualify them from service, he said, and ultimately said he could not do what was required of him in the region, which his superiors interpreted as quitting. When he went to trial, he said, he was not allowed to testify in his own defense, and was quickly found guilty and harshly punished.
Sounds sorta noble, maybe. Except if there were a poster boy for fraudulent enlistments, it might be Klohr, who now openly admits that he concealed some background info from the Corps when he signed up. Bad info: He was expelled from high school and arrested for helping to kill a young cat by setting it on fire and throwing it off the school's roof. (He also has asthma, a disqualifying medical condition.)
The more one reads about Klohr's case, the more troubled he seems—and the more one might question why the Corps ever took him in the first place.
In any case, after he posted pics of the demonstration on his Facebook profile, Klohr faced a furious backlash—and began to regret the tactic. "I wasn't trying to be disrespectful or anything, he told the Marine Corps Times. "There was a lot of symbolism that I was trying to throw out there."