Loyal Opposition

Sarah Palin held a rally at Elon University this past Thursday. Elon is only about 45 minutes away, and I had the day off (fall break, hooray!), so we decided to go and represent the other side.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been deeply disturbed by the tone that Palin's rallies have been taking. She and the McCain campaign have been trying to paint a picture of Obama as dangerous or unAmerican, and people in the crowd have been picking this up and yelling things like "terrorist" or "kill him." She has yet to stop and say anything to her crowds about this being unacceptable (although to his credit, McCain has done so). This encourages the worst in people: hate and fear, of the kind that can easily spill over into real violence. It's an ugly, ugly way of campaigning and it's not healthy for our nation. I wanted to make a stand against it (thus my sign: "Hope, not Hate!").
We got a later start than we intended, and so we arrived on campus only about fifteen minutes before the rally started. We were a little nervous -- not because we thought anything would happen, really, but it's a little hard to know you're the odd person out in a big group. It was a bit of a relief when we ran into another person with an Obama sign walking over. It also turned out there were a small group of Obama/Biden supporters near the stadium.

A police officer said to me, "If you're here for Obama, the free speech area is across the lake." I said "okay, thanks" and then proceeded to just stay by the fence outside the stadium, with some other spectators. (They moved us all across the street about two-thirds of the way through the speech, because apparently that area was supposed to be reserved for the media.) The whole "free speech area" is kind of ridiculous -- the lake was pretty big, a couple of blocks long at least, so that "free speech" area would have been completely removed from the event. ("You can express your opinion, but only in a place so far away that you won't be expresssing it to anyone who doesn't already agree with you.") But they weren't hassling us about it, so whatever.
There were a few stands and people selling McCain-Palin gear. One of them was an African-American man, probably in his fifties. As I walked by, he said, "Show me your sign!" I did, and he gave me a quiet thumbs-up. It was my favorite moment of the afternoon.

We made it to the stadium in time to hear Hank Williams Jr. warming up the crowd with a song (a remake of "Family Tradition" called "McCain Palin Tradition". I actually like the original, but the new version is really bad).

We didn't have tickets, but that didn't matter because we could hear everything just fine (and even see a bit of the screen). The stadium wasn't full (the infield was, but the outfield wasn't, as you can see in the picture), so we might have been allowed in if we'd left our signs behind, but that would have defeated the purpose!

The speech itself wasn't really inflammatory -- she barely mentioned Obama at all, and didn't say anything about "palling around with terrorists". (I think it's become clear from the polls that those lines of attack were hurting them more than helping them.) It was just a fairly generic stump speech, the stuff we've all heard before about how John McCain will fight for us, etc. (She did say that she was glad to be visiting a "pro-America" part of the country; we didn't really notice it at the time, but since then it's been getting attention for the implication that there are parts of America that are not pro-American.)

To us, the crowd didn't seem especially fired up -- there was some cheering and chanting, but not as much as we expected. Maybe the atmosphere was different inside, but our impression was that a fair portion of the crowd was there more out of curiosity than major support.

We were interviewed by one of the TV stations, but as far as we know, the footage (mercifully!) ended up on the cutting room floor. All the coverage I saw of the event focused pretty much just on Palin (and on the guys who painted her name on their chests).

The only real drama was that in the middle of the speech, a student in the stands started passing out Obama signs (supposedly no signs were allowed in the stadium, although people were waving McCain ones with no problems), and started yelling as the cops dragged him out. There were eight cops escorting him when he came by us -- seemed like a bit of overkill for one college kid, but I guess they don't play around when candidates are involved.

I'm glad we went. I'm sure it didn't actually make any difference to anyone, but it seemed like the right thing to do. (And besides, it was a gorgeous fall day and the Elon campus is lovely.)