rant · moment 1 of 16

Owen from Sean Cody and the Pat Tillman Fragging Theory

from Freedom Fingers · #88

Audio-only archive episode — no video to seek.

3 min

Tim tells the story of a gay porn actor named Owen who lost his legs in Iraq, which leads into a long tangent with Ray about Pat Tillman's death, the term "fragging," and the movie Jacob's Ladder and its "the ladder" drug experiments on soldiers.

In this bit8 moments
  • 1:38Owen from Sean Cody was a straight gay-for-pay performer who lost both legs in Iraq and ended up in a wheelchair.
  • 2:02Pat Tillman's friendly fire death gets covered up, and the conversation shifts to the term 'fragging' and its origins.
  • 2:16Fragging means someone shoots you on purpose—it comes from Vietnam when grunts would eliminate bad officers.
  • 2:39West Point lieutenants cycling in as white collar assholes would put troops at risk trying to look good.
  • 2:57Soldiers would stand back and throw a fragmentation grenade at officers on patrol because it happened so often there's a term for it.
  • 3:07Jacob's Ladder premise is believable: the military drafted soft guys and gave them drugs to make them hyper-aggressive enough to fight.
  • 3:40Tim Robbins and Tony Iello starred in Jacob's Ladder, where the military experimented on soldiers with a drug called the Ladder.
  • 3:56Tim doesn't need documents to believe the military gave troops speed and coke—some things are just credible without proof.
Mentioned here

Pat TillmanJacob's LadderTim Robbins

All 16 moments in this episode →