Strange Times at an Evangelical Flea Market
“Strange Times at an Evangelical Flea Market”Lord knows I’m sick of talking about Christian Conservatives, but there are a few more anecdotes I need to purge before entering into my memory-erasing hypnosis sessions. Anyone who’s ever attended a partisan political summit fully understands that the event paraphernalia rooms are typically where the most entertaining times occur. This is where you find representatives from the organizations that keep the special-interest wheels greased and in full operation, and the recent Values Voters Summit was no exception.
The event’s organizers had the good sense to quarantine all the suppliers, hawkers and gypsies in a space adjacent to the main conference hall’s lobby. In this dank and windowless quarter, the credentialed dealers were free to peddle their wares with impunity, and peddle they did. The event’s sixty-some-odd booths included proponents for prayer in public schools, opponents of same sex marriage and advocates for a wall along the Mexican border. I had a mind-numbing conversation with a lazy-eyed champion of moral television ratings from the Parents Television Council (“Because 54% of programs with sexually suggestive dialogue lack the appropriate descriptor!”), and a painfully attractive supporter of abstinence only sex education, with whom the following exchange occurred:
Abstinence Girl: “I understand that abstaining is hard.”
TF: “It is hard.”
Abstinence Girl: “I know! It’s just really hard.”
TF: “So incredibly hard.”
As much as this juvenile exchange entertained me, the highlight of my time in the Evangelical flea market undoubtedly came when I encountered a mustachioed character named Jim Kushiner, a disturbing little man with dandruff and a creepily quiet voice. Jim was trying to pimp the periodical for which he is executive editor, a sharp looking magazine called Salvo that features pop-culture assailing yellow-journalism – It Might Just Be Proof of An Intelligent Designer, The Media and Their Theocracy Slur, Are We Really as Obese As the Media Claims? – and a litany of professional looking advertisements for fictionally “immoral” products – a hypothetical pill that cures impotence and seasonal allergies, a store that pushes mothers towards nervous breakdowns by offering too many baby-oriented products, a television series where couples have sex change operations and redecorate one another’s homes.
“It’s pretty edgy,” Jim said, grinning strangely and handing me a copy of the latest edition. “Pretty tongue in cheek.”
“Ok Jim,” I said while flipping through the pages. “I get it. Sort of an anti-consumerism thing.”
“Um, not really,” Jim quietly corrected, reaching to take the magazine away before catching himself. “It’s sort of, um, it’s sort of satire.”
Jim had a hard time breaking eye contact, like the kid in junior-high who shook his social anxiety disorder at some behavior modification summer camp – and now stares stoically into your face for the entirety of conversations, no matter how visibly uncomfortable it makes you.
“Some people find it sort of amusing,” Jim whispered while shrugging, ashamed that he had to explain the purpose of his life’s endeavor to the likes of me. I hastily reassured Jim that his magazine was great, and politely said farewell while backpedaling away from this sad, bewildered crusader of I’m-not-quite-sure-what.
On the way back towards the lobby, I noticed the table reserved for the National Black Republican Association. It’s worth mentioning that with the exception of Michael Steele, who delivered a short address earlier in the morning, the only black person I saw at the summit was the bartender at the Hilton’s upstairs lounge, a gentleman who poured a mean Maker’s Mark, but who didn’t have much to say about either values or voting.
I stood in the entryway for a few minutes to see if anyone would stop by the NBRA table. They did not. At that point, there was nothing really left to do but leave. Still, as someone who occasionally gets annoyed at liberal events by the progressive versions of these Booth Cities (what can I possibly do with another copy of Worker’s Vanguard?), I found it strangely comforting to realize that even values voters have these pointlessly partisan marketplaces.
Just something I thought you should know: Salvo magazine’s ten truly dangerous films – see the periodical’s reasoning in parentheses.
The Graduate (Utter Nihilism)
Pleasantville (The Sexual Revolution)
The Big Chill (The Summer of Love)
The Hours (Feminism)
America Beauty (Reductionism)
Vera Drake (Roe v. Wade)
Million Dollar Baby (Jack Kevorkian)
Boys Don’t Cry (LGBT Activism)
Thelma and Louise (Radical Feminism)
Happiness (Alfred Kinsey)
