It Didn’t Happen That Way

Let’s get this straight.

Sandi Webb did not jump up and give Dianne Feinstein the finger in a vicious, hostile, in-her-face manner as the media would have you believe.

It was done in a more casual, over-the-shoulder way as Webb was leaving a meeting at which the U.S. senator from California was speaking.

You might even say it was performed in a humorous, if not whimsical, manner. Perhaps even joyfully.

I bring this to you today as a means of setting the record straight. It is the kind of news you are not likely to find on Page 1.

Webb, who is a City Council member from Simi Valley, demonstrated exactly how it happened in her cubbyhole office in the Simi Valley City Hall.

She reenacted the gesture with a cheerful smile, challenging me to detect any enduring hostility or obscenity in the act.

Not that she was proud of what she’d done a fortnight ago in the nation’s capital. “I blew it,” was the way she put it. In the days that followed the event, she apologized to Feinstein, the City Council, the people, the pope and the Boys Scouts of America.

We discussed the issue as she sat at her desk before two large posters. One was the photograph of a young man stopping a tank during China’s 1989 Tian An Men Square uprising, and the other depicted the crew of the spaceship Enterprise. It was inscribed with the words, “All I need to know about life I learned from ‘Star Trek.’ ”

“I’m just an ordinary housewife with a husband, a daughter and a small business,” she said to me as a means of describing herself. “But I do tend to hold strong opinions.”

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Historically, the fingers of our hands have been utilized to communicate a variety of messages, among which are “come here,” “look over there,” “hang 10, dude,” “nice job,” “off with his head” and the one indicated by Webb, which I like to call the feminist salute.

To the best of my knowledge, Webb, 47, is not a feminist, but she is a member of the National Rifle Assn., occasionally packs a gun and believes fiercely in the right to bear arms.

That’s what got her into trouble in Washington, D.C., where a lot of people give each other the finger, though usually in a less obvious manner. Sometimes they give the whole country the finger.

Webb was there with a California delegation listening to Feinstein talk about fighting an effort to repeal the state’s ban on assault weapons when she reacted in the aforementioned digital-reflex manner.

“I got pissed when she said nobody needs automatic weapons to go duck hunting,” Webb said that day in her Simi Valley office, momentarily losing the happy face she wore at the outset of our meeting.

“It’s not a duck-hunting right! It’s the right of self-protection! It’s a constitutional, God-given right!”

The way she sees it, there’s nothing wrong with slinging an Uzi over your shoulder and, if necessary, shooting it out with some thuggish sucker who might be wanting to do you harm. It’s OK. Ask God.

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I disagree with Webb as much as I have ever disagreed with anyone, but I neither stomped out of her office nor flipped her the bird.

She informed me, however, that she would not have objected had I done so, because my right to give her the finger is protected under the 1st Amendment, just as her right to pack a gun is protected under the 2nd Amendment.

Webb considers herself a patriot and, in fact, wore a T-shirt edged with stars and stripes on the day of my visit. She loves America almost as much as she loves her Taurus .357 magnum, but doesn’t believe in Washington’s intrusion in our private lives.

“I see the government eroding our rights,” she said with a broad, though nonthreatening, gesture. “Give them an opening and they’ll nibble, nibble, nibble. . .”

Even so, she assured me she would hereafter express herself in a calmer, more rational manner and probably wouldn’t give anyone the finger anymore . . . though she added somewhat ominously, “unless driven to it.”

In this age of cyberporn, random erotica and Howard Stern, an obscene gesture is not likely to plunge society into chaos. What bothers me is not Webb’s gesture, but her obscene insistence that everyone ought to be able to carry firearms.

It’s wrong, it’s crazy, it’s dangerous, and God knows to what degree her NRA pals might go to express their rage. That might be the best reason of all to let them have their fingers but take away their guns.

Al Martinez can be reached through the Internet at al.martinez@latimes.com