An hour and a half into the thing, we decided we had enough footage, and decided to pack it in after asking one last person. And then we heard a woman's voice yelling, 'Ask me! Ask me!'
It was a woman I didn't recognize, but I was instantly turned off by her 'Run with Ryun' polo shirt. Casey seemed to know her, though, and let her know we were with TBC and that we were doing a video project. He asked her what she prayed for, and she said this:
"I pray, every day, that my husband, Jim Ryun, wins re-election for the United States House of Representatives."
I told her she couldn't say that on a church thing. She seemed generally surprised by this. And then she asked me if I wanted to volunteer for her husband's campaign.
I was a little taken aback at this, I'll admit, so my declining her offer may have been a little more rude and abrupt than usual, because she asked me, "Why not? You're...you're not a...a Democrat, are you?"
And of course, I told the truth. "Yes, I am," I said.
"And you're saved?" Apparently in Mrs. Ryun's world, you can't be a Democrat and a Christian at the same time.
"Absolutely," I said. "I'm also a member of the ACLU."
She seemed genuinely taken aback at this. She asked specifically what I disagreed with her husband on.
"Well, the torture bill he voted for a couple weeks ago." She was geniunely clueless as to what I was talking about. "The McCain compromise?" I offered. She then said something derogatory about John McCain, but we were no closer to getting her to understand what the bill was or what it did. "It's a bill that gives the president to declare anyone he likes--regardless of whether he's a US citizen--an enemy combatant and thrown in jail without due process."
Her comeback to this was "Well, are you saying that just because you're a citizen means you're not an enemy of this country?"
"Of course not," I said, "But you're innocent until proven guilty."
At that point, Casey decided he needed to break up the fray, and the congressman appeared from the sandwich shop next door, so we asked him the question. He gave a long, rambling answer about the need to bring God closer into the day to day workings of government and for the soldiers in Iraq.
I'll probably have the video available for my perusal shortly, but I'm told there was an equipment issue while I was recording Mrs. Ryun (damn).
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