McCain at Otterbein
Sunday 10/19/2008 5:38 PM
Probably not the best title for this post since I never even caught a glimpse of McCain. This morning, I made it to campus by 9:30 to contribute to an effort to create a "peaceful, positive presence" in support of Obama at the John McCain rally at Otterbein. McCain rented out the athletic center for his rally and in order to (hopefully) prevent Otterbein from being portrayed as a pro-McCain campus, a couple dozen of us gathered near the entrance with Obama signs and shirts. I knew we were entering hostile territory, but I didn't expect the crowd to be as vicious as it was. The original plan was for Alex to come with me since marching for Obama in the homecoming parade was such a positive experience for him yesterday (see previous post). Instead, he decided to hang out with Ray today, which I'm mightily thankful for this afternoon.
For the first 15 minutes or so, I helped students try to distribute information about an organizational meeting for the February production of Vagina Monologues, a play produced across the country (and world) on college campuses every year to raise funds for domestic abuse shelters, rape victim advocacy groups, and other organizations working to end violence against women. In those fifteen minutes, one of the students was spit at, another had several flyers re-collected from people who'd taken them thrown in her face, and I was told that a christian college like Otterbein shouldn't be "promoting vaginas." After our first sweep through the crowd, we realized how naive we'd been to assume that people attending a political rally (or at least this political rally) might be the audience to target for support of such a cause.
So then we joined the early group of Obama supporters near the entrance to the athletic center:
I was surprised by how many McCain supporters were eager to pose for photos in front of the Obama/Biden sign. There must have been at least a dozen group photos taken with it as a backdrop. Equally befuddling was the woman in the next photo:
At first we questioned whether the lips were fake or not (thinking she might have been struck by an allergic reaction to something), but then we saw a few others with the same get-up and set to trying to figure out what the lips were meant to signify. I mean, really. I assume they're playing off of Palin's "bulldog with lipstick" line, but why the exaggerated size of them? If anything, it seems to be poking fun at that line, doesn't it? Just when I started theorizing, someone in the crowd told us (mostly women, mostly college students) that we were all unemployed, ignorant welfare mothers who ought to go live in Russia. Huh?
But we quickly learned that was par for the course. Our group was focused on showing that support for Obama exists on Otterbein's campus -- none of our signs were bashing or badmouthing McCain. We were later joined by a couple of other groups who did have signs drawing out parallels between Bush & McCain and criticizing his stance on the economy and healthcare:
But even before they showed up, we were called socialists, communists (sometimes both of these at once), baby killers, veteran haters, terrorists, stupid children who needed to grow up, etc. pretty routinely. I know: we were on their turf (though, really, they were on our turf -- Otterbein turf), but this was a little over the top.
One last confusing encounter from this afternoon: several vendors were selling McCain/Palin tshirts, buttons, etc., which was to be expected. This, however, I did not expect:
It's blurry, I know, but I think you get the point anyway. In case you're interested in the text, the button reads: "Sarah Barracuda! McCain Palin." So her best asset for the vice-presidency, according to this button, is her cleavage? Really?
After all the seats filled and the remaining line dispersed to watch McCain on a screen set up outside, we chalked pro-Obama messages on the sidewalk at the entrance to the athletic center. Several non-Otterbein people told us we weren't allowed to do that because it was a Republican rally and insisted that we'd have to wash off the sidewalk. But in fact, we are allowed to chalk on all Otterbein sidewalks and there's no duty to wash it off (the first rain washes it all away). The main sidewalks around Towers and Roush Halls have been chalked with pro-Obama messages for weeks, and evidently the College Republicans were planning to wash off any messages outside the athletic center last night. Not sure if they did or not since I rarely make it over to that side of the campus (I didn't see any during the event, but I don't know if there had been any there or not before this weekend). One woman in particular threatened to go to security with the issue until I let her in on the school policy and pointed out that there was both an Otterbein security guard and a Westerville police officer standing only feet away:
Then she decided to watch the big screen set up outside instead of argue with me any longer. One last moment to share with you: as I was walking back across campus, I ran into some late-comer supporters of the rally who said that it was people like me who make Ohio a battleground state (having two parties more or less equally supported in one state, evidently, is a bad thing) and said they didn't understand why people had to make "everything so difficult all the time" (difficult, as in having to make a choice between two competing ideologies, I suppose). And I have to say, that sorta made my day.
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