'The Final Voyage Of The Enterprise'

Mark Krikorian:

But after this year the U.S. Navy will no longer have an Enterprise, which is why there’s a petition to name the next planned carrier, CVN-80, the USS Enterprise. Sign it, because we’ve gotten into the habit of naming our greatest warships after politicians, and not even dead ones — one of the newest carriers is the USS George H. W. Bush. Look, I voted for the guy, and he was a whole lot better than the current occupant, but nothing named by the U.S. government — not a building, not a scholarship program, certainly not one of the greatest warships built by mankind — should be named after a living person. Except for posthumous Medal of Honor recipients, it seems to me you should be dead for 50 years, preferably 100, before your name is even eligible to be considered for a naval ship.
And while we’re naming ships after Jimmy Carter and John Murtha and Bob Hope, keep in mind there’s no USS Lexington or Yorktown or Saratoga or Midway or Khe Sanh or, if we want to name them after people, Benjamin Franklin or John Adams or Jefferson or Madison or Monroe or Jackson. There have been nearly 1,000 Marine and Navy combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan — any one of those is more appropriate as the name of a ship than the USS Gabrielle Giffords.

I agree with Mr. Krikorian,we have gotten into a bad habit of naming our warships after politicians and celebrities,with the exception of Bob Hope.For over 60 years Bob Hope work tireless with the USO,bringing a little slice of home to men and women in uniform in a far away land.How many of the spoiled brats in Hollywood do that now?Not many.

Also,after naming the next carrier Enterprise,we should name the next 2 John Paul Jones and William F. (Bull) Halsey respectively.