Dan Carpenter, the Indianapolis Star columnist who sneers at everybody who is not as liberal and enlightened as he is, might have gone a sneer too far for patient Star readers:
A state that names a hospital after a football player and a university building after a comedian would seem pretty safe from any suspicion of putting on airs.
Why, we're such regular guys around here, I wouldn't bet against a rock singer giving the commencement address at Indiana University some day.
What? We've done that? Oh, yeah, how could I forget John Mellencamp himself, sending the Class of 2000 off with such inspired pearls as "Life is about getting exactly what you want."
Now, most people might think it gracious to honor people such as Peyton Manning, David Letterman and (even, I hesitate to add), John Mellencamp, especially if they have contributed generously of their time and money to the institutions that honor them. And it's just good common sense and not especially craven to associate yourself with popular celebrities in your state, especially if they're the kind not likely to end up in rehab or on a police blotter.
But to Carpenter, it's just one more sign of the backwardness of the Red State he is forced to toil in:
Take Dr. Joe Mamlin, who skipped his retirement to go to Africa and make Indiana University School of Medicine a world leader in the fight against AIDS. He's a regular guy also, but he's never won a Super Bowl or rocked us through a Chevy commercial. Ten funny lines from his typical day would be a tall order. I don't doubt he esteems most or all of his three aforementioned fellow Hoosiers; and surely he would be stunned to read his name on an eight- or nine-figure building.
Likewise, Scott Russell Sanders, Mari Evans, Jared Carter, Dan Wakefield, the late Marguerite Young or even the late Kurt Vonnegut would be as bemused as the rest of us were the new and improved Central Library to be christened in recognition of their stature as Hoosier contributors to national literature.
Those are the kind of people we should be honoring, you dimwitted Hoosier swine. Land O' Goshen, you probably don't even appreciate Dan Carpenter and his heroic efforts to drag you kicking and screaming into 21st-century enlightenment.
