in case you missed it | From the ‘duh’ category

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FROM THE ‘DUH’ CATEGORY

Note to would-be thieves: If you are actually stupid enough to steal something valuable from some poor innocent person, don’t go on national television to try to sell it, because if you do, you will likely get arrested and go to jail.

This is the lesson that Erie resident Gene Newton apparently (and allegedly) failed to get from his parents. While other kids were learning about fencing stolen goods, it appears that Gene was busy watching the Discovery Channel.

According to reports, Newton went on the television show American Guns and was attempting to sell a couple of pistols, including an 1800s vintage colt Dragoon black powder revolver worth as much as $20K. While good for ratings, the superduper rare revolver also piqued the interest of a viewer in New Mexico who had, coincidentally, just been robbed of such a gun. A couple of phone calls later and the Erie police were arresting Newton for allegedly trying to sell the stolen gun on national television.

POLIS IS MOSTLY RIGHT

As you read in Pamela White’s “Uncensored” column this week, U.S. Rep. Jared Polis doesn’t think that pizza should be counted as a vegetable in school lunches. He also thinks that it’s wrong to allow giant agribusinesses to sell cheap crap food at big profits to our kids and then buy off politicians with campaign contributions to keep the whole unhealthy scheme going. Hard to argue with that part.

But it seems that Rep. Polis hasn’t spent much time eating in school cafeterias.

If he had, he would realize that the lousy pizza is one of the few foods served that actually gets eaten at all. Until we really do the right thing and go all Jamie Oliver on our school lunch programs — that’s to say, start shopping for healthy food and preparing it in delicious ways that the British food activist has shown can be done for the same money we now spend on vegetables like pizza — redefining where pepperoni, catsup and bread goes on the food pyramid or wheel or whatever it’s called now just doesn’t matter much. Until then, both our kids and the greedy crapfood corporations will get fatter.

BOOING BENSON

Isn’t about time the University of Colorado began shopping for a new president?

The average tenure for a CU president in the past few decades (with the exception of interims) has been four or five years, and Benson was appointed in early 2008.

Besides, he was booed after being introduced to give a speech at the May 11 University of Colorado Boulder commencement.

We likely yawned or clapped politely when the president of our alma mater took the podium at graduation. But it was probably somebody we barely knew the name of. Benson must be pretty bad if that many in the audience knew enough about him to boo.

After finishing his speech, he proceeded to spend most of the remainder of the ceremony reading a document. Talk about disengaged and checked out.

Not sure he has changed many minds since the outcry against his appointment more than four years ago.

And ProgressNow, which opposed Benson back then, began circulating a petition this spring calling for his ouster, in part because of the flap over the use of tuition money for already over-inflated administrator salaries. To sign it, go to bit.ly/BensonResign.

It’s about time to go back to hiring accomplished faculty leaders as presidents, academics who have a true appreciation for things like academic freedom, tenure and the open marketplace of ideas.

The Brown/Benson experiment of running the university with right-wing businessmen and politicians has come up short.

Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com