An insufficiently colorful color guard?

How deep does the culture of political correctness run in the military and the service academies? We’re getting some idea in the case of Major Nidal Malik Hasan. The Hasan story has rightly overwhelmed the news. Evidence of the red flags preceding his murder spree continues to accumulate and enrage. One inevitably sees in the disregarded red flags a case of political correctness run amok.
The story of the Naval Academy’s insufficiently colorful color guard has not quite broken out yet, and perhaps it won’t, but it provides additional context to the case of Nidal Hasan. It appears that Naval Academy senior commanders decided during the World Series to remove two Midshipmen from the color guard that appeared. What was their offense? The color guard was deemed too white and too male. There was accordingly a push to make the color guard more “diverse.”
Two members of the color guard were removed and replaced by a Pakistani and a woman to achieve the requisite “diversity.” The Pakistani unfortunately forgot his cap and shoes. He himself had to be replaced at the last minute by one of the two middies removed earlier. The midshipmen have reportedly been ordered not to speak of these events (i.e., punishment will be dispensed for violating a direct order) In any event, the middies aren’t talking.
The tale of the insufficiently colorful color guard initially turned up last week on the Commander Salamander blog here and here. The story was picked up by the Navy Times, which ran this story on Sunday, and by the Washington Post, which follows up this morning with the official line of the Navy brass partly disputing earlier accounts. Commander Salamander returns to the case with a close analysis of this morning’s Post article here.
UPDATE: Diana West also addresses the story in “Diversity über alles.”