On Wednesday the IDS ran a story about a Bloomington Planned Parenthood employee who was suspended without pay after a highly embarrassing online video of a sting operation at their location became public:

The video shows a 20-year-old UCLA student, who went undercover as a 13-year-old, going into Planned Parenthood, saying she was impregnated by a 31-year-old man and asking for help. The Planned Parenthood employee, “Diana,” is seen telling the teen to cross state lines to get an abortion that doesn’t require parental consent.

The video was released Wednesday but was filmed in June at the 421 S. College Ave. location by the student-led Live Action Films, a student human rights organization.

In the video, the employee tells the teen she is supposed to report the incident to Child Protective Services but will pretend she did not hear the age of the man who impregnated her.

Here’s the video:

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As an Ohioian I am generally skeptical of all of the Indiana natives who keep accosting me outside Ballantine and at the Union lit desk, waving their clipboards and claiming that Indiana really is a swing state. My standard response: no thanks, I’m voting in a real swing state. But perhaps I was wrong. The Economist online ran an article earlier this week chronicling all of the buzz about an Indiana swing. First off, the fact that the Economist takes note of Indiana is exciting (although halfway through they did have to explain to their snooty, highly British constituency, that the term ‘Hoosiers’ refers to Indiana residents). But will the Indiana vote matter come November?

http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?source=hptextfeature&story_id=12376911

I am excited that this election might put Indiana on the map for something other than basketball and car racing, but I will believe it when I see it. Whether  Indiana will swing, or just teeter a little bit to the left, I’m not sure. But one thing is certain: I’m still voting in Ohio.

WEEKEND magazine recently sent me to Brown County to see what was going on at the Little Nashville Opry and Mike’s Music & Dance Barn. Here’s my story:

A Night in Nashville

I could’ve been offended. I’ve written opinion columns for the IDS since September, and I’ve worked full-time in the newsroom since January. But WEEKEND magazine never asked me, an outspoken Republican, to write anything for them until they wanted to cover “hillbilly” activities in Brown County. The IDS should feel lucky they have at least one Red State Redneck to do their dirty work for them. Who does the New York Times get to cover the annual Big Apple Barbeque Block Party? But rather than taking offense at this crass stereotyping, I leapt at the opportunity to spend an evening listening and dancing to music that God’s own angels couldn’t beat. I just couldn’t understand why nobody else wanted the assignment. What were they afraid of, the Boot Scootin’ Boogie Man?

I was beaming with a big Texas-sized smile as I drove over to Brown County with a few friends. It was a beautiful spring day, and I had my country-western music blaring as loudly as it would go.The Little Nashville Opry was our first stop. This modest music hall, on Highway 46 in the middle of nowhere, has hosted some of the biggest names in country music through the years: Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, The Oak Ridge Boys, George Strait and, my personal favorite, Toby Keith. In fact, if you’re looking for something to do this Saturday night, you can go see special guest Bobby Knight. (When I remarked that he would be there to the gentleman selling tickets, he helpfully informed me that Mr. Knight would not in fact be singing.)
We got there at about 5 p.m., a good three hours before show time. Country legend T.G. Sheppard would be providing the night’s entertainment, and we wanted to be there to catch a fleeting glimpse, if possible. But being the powerful and influential members of the local media that we are, my colleagues and I were invited onto his tour bus for a world-exclusive interview.

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So, we felt an earthquake early this morning, and just felt an aftershock a half-hour ago or so.

But since it was pretty early, I wasn’t fully conscious when my bed started shaking. The first thing I thought was earthquake. The second thing I thought was this:

If you’ll recall, the rumbling of approaching alien spaceships felt like an earthquake. “Independence Day” was a formative experience as my first taste of “disaster film” and also a movie that I thought was the greatest movie ever made. It’s still the standard by which lame destruction-porn movies should be judged. In any case, my conditioning by the movie forced me to consider all options. I was momentarily concerned that I’d wake up to a humongous flying saucer over Bloomington.

Then, deciding that an alien invasion could be no worse than the system of government we have now, I went back to sleep.

Nevertheless, welcome to Urf.

Photo: Chris Pickrell, IDS

A washed-up rapper and a poorly-planned frat event get some poor kid in a wheelchair maced by police; a Messianic Barack Obama glides through Bloomington in two hours of Ghandi-like shock and awe before evaporating to Terre Haute; and then my phone plunges to its death down a sewer grate. Another year, another Little 5.

Luckily my last three years of downing tequila being a classy lady during the Best College Week Ev-uh have been, on the whole, a good experience: Nobody died, nobody got arrested, and we all enjoyed the professed point of it all by watching bikes go ‘round in a circle while holding footlongs and screaming along to Tom Petty.

It’s more than can be said for a lot of people, though – walking around Bloomington this week yields a strong sense of…well, “tacked on.” As if we’re so concerned with making this “Best Week Of Your Entire Life, Ever, No Really” truly something for the record books that in the process, much of the fun is caught up in the transition, and a lot of genuineness of the thing is lost: We want so badly for it to live up to expectations that it’s necessarily always going to fall short.

And that’s the way it goes for a lot of things, I think – remember that birthday party when you were a kid that had to be perfect, only to end up feeling miserably sold short? The sentiment transcends right up to college – except swap out monkey bars for real bars and spike the punch along the way: Bloomington was nothing but a big kids’ playground this week.

So absolutely, it’s fun – I look forward to Little 5 just as much as the next person. But it’s the nature of the fun that’s getting skewed here, I think – it’s one thing to enjoy a stupid week and an excuse to act three years younger, but it’s another to slap some artificial quota on there, thereby creating an element of self-fulfilled prophecy that can never be reached, and entailing that we will always, always, always be slightly disappointed.

So sure, enjoy it. But there’s not much to be said for people waiting in 15-minute-long lines in the freezing rain, only to stand smooshed up against our college compatriots, plastic cup in hand, in a room that’s slightly smelly, over fire code, and too loud to hear anything anyway. It’d be infinitely more enjoyable if this almost-militant notion of “WE MUST HAVE THE ENCYCLOPEDIC EXPERIENCE OF LITTLE 5” didn’t flood the server with stiletto-clad input: all we end up with is a higher person-per-square-foot ratio and a slightly hazier memory of it all.

Check out this story from IDS Columnist Scott Leadingham, published in last week’s Weekend magazine. He’s actually a Sample Gates blogger too, and could have posted this himself, but apparently he’s too worthless busy.

I myself was fortunate enough to accompany Hunter S. Leadingham on his excursion, and all references to “the editor” refer the the very humble yours truly. I can’t say I enjoy gambling (read: losing money) very much, but it was a fun night all the same. If you’ve not been down to French Lick and West Baden, you should definitely make a trip down some night, but if you’re anything like us, your heart will pine for humble Bloomington, and after losing a hundred bucks or so you can still make it back to the Bluebird by midnight.

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Chalk up one more tragedy associated with a college campus. University of Louisville student Gail Coontz, 37, is in custody after brandishing a gun on campus earlier today. A hostage situation at UofL ended when Coontz finally handed the gun over to authorities on the scene.

When Metro police were sent to check on the condition of her two kids, 10 and 14, they were found fatally wounded in their home by multiple gunshot wounds.

“She was a single mother raising two children on her own, and I thought doing a very good job,” a choked-up neighbor said on the matter.

The pictures of the house, the neighborhood, the family situation – all so…normal. Kind of frightening. Louisville is home for me – both my dad and brother teach/study at UofL – so this sort of thing makes you do a double take when it scrolls across headline news. And that itself makes you really think about, in the cases of VA Tech or NIU, how far those webs of “degrees of connectedness” span, simply in the sense of how many people are affected by these on-campus tragedies – especially when the death toll isn’t just two, which is bad enough, but far into the double digits.

So, this is pretty great- Thomas at blueindiana.net is challenging Sen. John McCain’s placement on the ballot for the May 6 primary. State law requires 500 signatures in each Congressional District in order for a candidate to get on the presidential ballot. McCain, at last count, had only 491 signatures in the 4th CD. Consequently, Thomas Cook, who resides in Bloomington, has filed a challenge with the Secretary of State’s office. If approved, McCain’s name will not appear on the ballot for the Indiana primary.

I can’t imagine how the McCain campaign could let such an oversight happen. I mean, this is pretty elemental stuff. Furthermore, how could (Republican) state officials approve McCain’s name even though he clearly didn’t qualify? While I doubt this will do much damage to McCain’s campaign, it really speaks to his organizational and management skills. You know you’ve reached a new low when you make Fred “not particularly interested in running for president” Thompson look good.

Oh, that Indiana legislature.  About the same time those lovers of controversy in the Senate were approving a Constitutional amendment that would define marriage in Indiana as exclusively between one man and one woman, the House was passing a bill that would legalize small stakes gambling in bars and taverns, with the state taking its share on every transaction, of course.  (Makes one wonder whether the legislature is really committed to  “moral values” or if something else is going on… But I digress.) From the Indianapolis Star report:

Under legislation passed by the Indiana House last week, more than 7,000 bars, taverns and restaurants across the state would be allowed to offer the pull tabs and other forms of low-stakes gambling.
The bill now moves to the Senate, where it already has received support from some key lawmakers.

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