Hanging with “Big Eddie”

In between classes today, I walked to main campus and was in the audience when radio host Ed Schultz broadcast his radio show from the auditorium of the Frank Porter Graham Student Union building. Today’s show was billed as a “Town Hall meeting” with John Edwards because one of the three hours featured an appearance by the North Carolina presidential candidate.

I got there about ten minutes before the show began. The one thing that I noticed right away was that the demographics was not what I had expected. I arrived expecting to see mostly a young college crowd but what I saw was an audience made up mostly of senior citizens. The crowd’s demographics was the complete opposite of what I saw at Memorial Hall in December when MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews came down to UNC to interview John and Elizabeth Edwards. I am not sure if this was a reflection of the enthusiasm (or lack of) for Edwards among UNC students or the demographics of WCHL, the local radio station that sponsored the event.

The festivities began at noon when WCHL morning host Ron Stutts (picture above) got on stage and welcomed everyone. He managed to finish his introduction just in time for Ed Schultz to come out on the stage and begin his national program at the appointed time. Edwards did not appear during the first hour and the first hour pretty much consisted of Schultz talking about current events. He played a clip of the President this morning reiterating his support for Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, interviewed Pittsboro (a town 30 miles southwest of Chapel Hill) mayor Randolph Voller who complaint about having an “MBA president,” and spent his commercial breaks tossing WCHL plastic footballs into the audience.

It wasn’t until around 1 o’clock that more college students came into the audience and the auditorium began to get crowded. Schultz introduced John Edwards, who gave an update form the campaign trail and took questions from the audience. At times I felt like Schultz was covering for Edwards. One woman in the audience mentioned about Edwards’ trip to China and asked whether he’s had the chance to makesimilar trip to other countries and before Edwards could answer, Schultz jumped in and rephrased the question to allow him to give an answer without listing exactly how many countries he has visited.

I left at around 1:30 to return to McColl for class.