Overheard …

As promised, I wanted to share some funny things I overheard at the meeting for Ron Paul at BJU.

First of all, let me just say that I am fully aware that the environment at BJU is not one that would be obviously welcoming to a candidate like Ron Paul. His position of liberty on social issues like drugs and prostitution fly in the face of a university dedicated to seeing not only its students, but through them seeing the entire country hold to a “Biblical worldview”, which is more often than not a code phrase for legislating morality by letting your faith permeate your politics too much.

But one would also expect a university such as BJU (or its students) to NOT be openly hostile toward a candidate either. I believe, as I outlined in my previous post, that the university was at the very least extremely disrespectful to the Congressman by its handling of the event, but some of the students were open with their opinions, and not only were they extremely ignorant but they were also pretty funny
Here’s a sampling …

Guy 1: Hey man, what’s up?
Guy 2: Nothin’, just here to see Dr. Paul.
Guy 1: Did you bring any snowballs? (followed by a goofy laugh)
Guy 2: Actually, I kinda like him.
Guy 1: Oh, yeah, that’s cool … (followed by a nervous laugh)

Here’s another …

A very sweet and, I’m sure, well-meaning girl decided to educate her roommates, and in the process everyone around her, about the ins and outs of politics.

“Well, my mom and my brother are going for Huckabee, but me and my dad are going for Romney.”

Now, this is funny to me, because they kind of cancel each other out. Bummer.

After the meeting, I asked Meredith’s friend Sarah (and her fiance, Josh) to give me the rundown of the speech and of the questions he was asked. As they were finishing up telling me about, I noticed that a crowd was gathering outside. One of them was in the middle of a sentence, and I had to interrupt. “What’s going on out there?” I said. Josh said “I guess he’s talking to people out there”.

I said, “OK then, I guess we’ll see you guys later” and took off. I thought that was pretty funny
Here’s another funny one. As we were told in the Lecture hall that we were being moved back to the small classroom, one guy said, “Well that’s it … he just lost my vote!”.

This is funny because 1) the guy probably wasn’t going to vote for Paul anyway, and 2) it wasn’t Paul’s fault that the screw up happened in the first place.

During the meet and greet after the speech, I made my way to the center of the crowd to shake Dr. Paul’s hand.  Just as I got to him, an odd looking man introduced himself to the Congressman.

“Hello Dr. Paul.  I just had a question I wanted to ask you.”

Now, this made me mad, because the Congressman only had a limited time left, and I wanted to meet him!  Plus, if he wanted to have a chance to ask a question, he could have done so at the speech.  Anyway…

“In your testimony, I noticed that you didn’t say anything about Jesus.”

Was this do-gooder serious??? Dr. Paul gave him much more grace than I would have and said, “Jesus Christ is my Savior.”  Then the man followed up with, “Don’t be afraid to say that in public more!”

Paul’s campaign manager looked at me and those around me and said quietly, “He does … all the time” with a half grin on his face, then rolled his eyes.  A fitting response, if you asked me.  Obviously, this guy didn’t do any research on Ron Paul and decided he was single handedly going to save his eternal soul.  Well intentioned, maybe, but a seriously funny moment.

Finally, it was really hard to believe how many people were there, but were not planning on voting for Paul. I heard time after time students talking to each other about “what Ron Paul believes” (mostly incorrectly, BTW), and one or both mentioning that they weren’t even voting for him, but wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

Goes to show you that political appearances actually draw impressionable ears, not just faithful cheerleaders.

Anyway, I thought that was interesting. There’s more that I overheard, but I can’t remember anything else. I guess I have a really bad memory

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