Column By John Young
Baylor University’s Waco Hall is cavernous. At 2,200 seats, it can make one feel grand or small, depending on the moment.
The grand: Art Garfunkel sings “Bridge Over Troubled Water” to a symphony orchestra. I was there.
The small: Turning Point USA stages a puny partisan pep rally there. It was going to be HUGE, in the sloppy vernacular of the exaggerator-in-chief. Son Don Jr. would be there to lend his massive heft. (He canceled.)
Not only was this — the first iteration of the oh-so-tremendous “This is Turning Point” tour — a bigly bust, it offended thoughtful students with in-your-face ideo-humor and self-serving appearances by Republican politicos.
Featured: Tom Homan, who still won’t explain what he did with the $50,000 FBI agents gave him in an undercover operation before he became our border “czar.” Also: Big Lie true-believer Ken Paxton, Texas’ ever-slimy attorney general, now running for U.S. Senate.
How fitting to glorify people like these, and of course, the president’s self-dealing son.
But it fits what Turning Point — its MAGA worker bees seeking to pollinate college campuses with Krishna vigor — has proved to be: a cult’s cult.
It was troubling that Baylor would invite a MAGA Puppet Theater presentation. One seismically satisfying thing did happen, though, to Baylor’s considerable credit:
After protests about Turning Point’s partisan and hateful spiel about LGBTQ rights, immigrants, and minorities in general, Baylor took the bold step to allow an alternate campus event supporting those things. It was called All Are Neighbors.
Pretty subversive. So said the Southern Baptist Convention, which does not cater to “all,” and you know what that means.
A woodshed whacking by SBC officials seems in store for Baylor’s administration for dabbling in the inclusiveness and kindness Christ commended at every stop.
At this point, Baylor – the nation’s largest Baptist university — surely realizes the mistake it made with its invite to Turning Point.
One can see how it might happen, because Turning Point talks a big game about its allegiance to things biblical, much like little Don’s big daddy, in between racist rages and in spite of fleshy sins and law-breaking he gets away with.
Several students at the event said they were offended by MAGA “humorist” Benny Johnson, who, in a Q&A, when a student expressed experience in handling cows and pigs, said, “So you are very familiar with how to deal with liberal women.”
Yuk. Yuk.
Isolated ugliness? Not at all. One can find reams of this from sainted TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk:
— That Michelle Obama, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, and other prominent black figures “do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken seriously.”
— That the Democratic coalition bulges with “resentful, government-addicted minorities.”
Once again, TPUSA talks a big game about faith. It hoists the Bible for effect. But clearly it is conflicted.
The Scriptures advise against serving “two masters.” Turning Point has a choice. One is a felon and bankruptcy maven, a sexual assailant who comports himself in office as a god. The other is, um, God. Turning Point has made its choice, and it’s not the latter.
Speaking of the Golden Idol in the White House: How is it that Turning Point “rejoices in the truth” (1 Corinthians) when the person it venerates is a career dissembler who still insists he won an election everyone knows he lost?
And is that leader, in every vengeful gesture and action, not the antithesis of the Golden Rule?
This takes us back to All Are Neighbors, the alternate event on Baylor’s campus. One participant came away saying it was the most Christian gathering he’s attended there.
The Turning Point event drew 450 students, leaving many empty seats for its admonitions to liberals and ringing praises of the MAGA king to ping-pong around the massive performance hall.
The humble alternate event drew just about the same number.
It leaves me wondering: With that extra space in Waco Hall, would Christ have suggested that Turning Point invite that alternative gathering for dialogue inside and, say, give Christian brotherhood a try?
Now, that would be grand.
Longtime Texas newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author.
