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May 26, 2009

STEPHANIE SALTER: Guns, poems, cruel shoes and Liberty University

By Stephanie Salter

TERRE HAUTE — Often, I think of them as “GIBNQACs” (pronounced “Gib-n-quacks”), the singular of which stands for “Good Item But Not Quite A Column.” They mount up around a newspaper office and need to be cleaned out now and then. Thus …

GIBNQAC 1 — Just when I was worried sick about hiking in Yosemite or Yellowstone national parks without being able to carry a loaded gun, what did both chambers of Congress do? They attached a clever amendment to the Credit Card Holders Bill of Rights Act of 2009 and sent my worries scurrying.

I can now load my rifles and handguns and tuck them into a backpack or overnight bag to enjoy any U.S. park or wildlife refuge free from anxiety, fear and — the primary rationale — confusion over varying state gun laws.

U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., is the main guy to thank for this advancement in civilization, but let’s hear a special 21-Glock salute for our own Sen. Dick Lugar, Sen. Evan Bayh and District 8 Rep. Brad Ellsworth. All of them voted thumbs-up on the loaded-guns-in-the-parks amendment as part of the credit card act.

Ellsworth, in fact, voted twice for it because the House split up the votes on the credit card bill and the amendment.

The split vote was symbolic, sure, but it gave 147 Democrats the opportunity to voice their disapproval and align themselves with such groups as the Association of National Park Rangers, who do not see loaded, accessible guns among the visitors as a good thing. Ellsworth and 104 other Dems joined 174 Republicans in support of the amendment.

GIBNQAC 2 — Psychologists call it “cognitive dissonance.” It describes the uneasy feeling we get when we behold two contradictory truths. “Cognitive Dissonance” is what I would call a pair of Salvatore Ferragamo shoes I recently saw advertised in a U.S. newspaper.

Truth One: Much of the world is in deep economic trouble. Jobs and services are being slashed; fear of future poverty and illness wakes millions in the middle of the night.

Truth Two: Ferragamo, the Italian design house, is selling a pair of sandals here in the USA that feature heels nearly six inches tall with shackle-like ankle straps that must make the shoes against the Geneva Conventions.

Retail price: $2,200.

When I double-checked that cost on the Ferragamo Web site, I discovered the torture sandals are cheap compared to some of the designer’s handbags. Tops for this season is a yellow crocodile satchel for $19,500. I would call that one, “Total Psychosis.”

GIBNQAC 3 — Officials at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., have announced they are revoking the affiliation of the school’s Democratic Party Club.

An Associated Press story quotes Liberty’s vice president for student affairs, Mark Hine, who said in an e-mail that the year-old club “is contrary to the mission of LU and to Christian doctrine (supports abortion, federal funding of abortion, advocates repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, promotes the ‘LGBT’ agenda, Hate Crimes, which include sexual orientation and gender identity, socialism, etc.).”

Good for Liberty U for standing up for its Christian principles. I assume it’s only a matter of days before the school does the right thing and also gives up any tax-exempt status it possesses as a religious institution as well as federally funded Pell grants and student loans and any money it receives from the public Virginia Tuition Assistance Program.

GIBNQAC 4 — That is not it at all. That is not what I meant, at all.

British poet Ruth Padel had only 10 days in which to bask in a rich light that shone upon her when she was elected as poetry chair of Oxford University. Padel was the first woman to win the post in its 301-year history.

The problem is, Padel may be a brilliant poet, but she is also, in her own words, “naive,” “very silly,” “foolish,” and she made a “grave error of judgment.”

Actually, she made two. The first error was to e-mail a couple of British journalists in April with information supporting old allegations of sexual harassment against another poet who also was up for the Oxford chair, Nobel laureate Derek Walcott.

The second error was not to mention the e-mails when an anonymous but highly organized campaign against Walcott went quite public. Information packets about the alleged harassment were sent out by the score to Oxford faculty.

Padel not only didn’t mention her e-mails, when Walcott dropped out of the race, she roundly condemned the campaign against him and called it “cowardly.” Sunday, British newspapers mentioned Padel’s e-mails for her. Monday, she resigned the Oxford post.

Padel owns no wrongdoing, only naiveté and poor judgment. She maintains she had nothing to do with the anonymous smear campaign, but passed along the sex harassment information because women students at Oxford had passed it along to her.

“I was in touch with the students and they were concerned,” Padel said, according to the Telegraph.

In one of those statements people often wish in hindsight they’d put another way, Padel explained, “I was reacting day by day to things and there were too many things and I did not think it through.” Perhaps if she’d tried a poem:

Things again today;

Too many things to do.

I react, I react, I react

Once more;

But I do not

Think it through.



Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.

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