The Candidates

Although we know little more about politics than the average high school freshman, we have been swept up in all the hoo-ha of the Pennsylvania primary. But before we get into this rambling we will let you know that we will not express our own political views (because we don't have them) and we will not try to push one candidate over another (because ... see previous parenthetical confession).

The campaign trail swept through State College last weekend, giving us an opportunity to really "get to know" the candidates. Bill Clinton came to town on a dreary Thursday evening to speak in the gymnasium in Chad's building. 6,100 people withstood the rain waiting in line for as long as 5 hours to hear this ex-president talk about how wonderful the wife that he was unfaithful to would be for the country (not expressing our views - just stating the obvious). We did not feel like standing in the rain, but Chad does suffer from ES3 (see earlier post), so we waited in Chad's office. Thinking that Chad's status as graduate student (that shares a normal-sized office with four others) and his knowledge of the Recreation Building on campus gave us an edge on the "normal people" that stood in the rain waiting to get in.

To make a long story short, the barrel-chested secret service squad that cased the building are smarter than they look. We sent our friend, Alex (one of Chad's office mates), through the bowels of the building searching for a secret entrance. At one point he got yelled at by the only female member of the SS. She had the bubbly presence of Pat Summitt and Hillary all tied into one, and Alex still, over a week later, is not sleeping well. We, on the other hand, were unfazed, gave up on our quest to hear Slick Willy, and went home to watch a re-run of The Office.

Penn State expressed its political neutrality by, while setting Bill Clinton up in a rickety old gym (capacity 6,000), giving Barack Obama a podium on the steps of the campus' most famous building, Old Main (capacity - limitless). So we rushed home after church on Sunday morning to get to Barack's early afternoon speech.

We, again, thought that Chad's status as "average graduate student" and his knowledge of the campus lawn could get us closer to Barack than the diehards waiting in the mile-and-a-half-long line to get through the metal detector. We (Chad) failed. Kathi made it clear that she needed binoculars because he was so far away and x-ray vision to see through the weeping willow between us and the podium.
Penn State offensive tackle, Gerald Cadogan, kicked things off with the national anthem. Gerald is a great student-athlete and a great person. We pretend to know him because he goes to our church and he said hi to Kathi once during the "greet one another" time one Sunday morning. Chad was so jealous at not getting to greet him that he marked the "needs prayer support" box in the friendship bulletin that went down our pew later in the service.

Penn State cornerback, Lydell Sargeant, who does not go to our church, followed Gerald's Stars and Stripes by introducing Obama. Lydell is one of numerous Nittany Lions football players that have been arrested in the past year. However, he totally redeemed himself by presenting Obama with a brand new Penn State football jersey (staunchly conservative Coach Paterno couldn't have been too happy about this).

Barack then excited the 22,000 fans (crowd) by jumping into a stand-up comedy routine that had the audience splitting their sides (again, not expressing our views). His self-deprecating monologue rivalled Jon Stewart's opening to the Academy Awards this year. Stewart talked about the difficulty of Obama sharing his middle name with the last name of one of the worst tyrants the world has ever seen, and having a last name that rhymes with the man behind the 9/11 massacre. History is against Obama, because a similarly evil-named presidential nominee, Gay-dolph Titler, should have won the 1944 election had he been known by any other name.

We left the speech early (we really don't have political views yet), and spent our time much more wisely - cutting coupons from the free newspapers in the public library (insert Dutch/frugal joke here). We did feel a little guilty skipping out. But on our walk home we overheard numerous conversations from students that attended the talk. We heard comments like, "No, I don't think he's a Muslim," and, "Is he really Dick Cheney's cousin?", which made us realize that we didn't miss much.