I had expected an interesting cross-section of opinionated people, which could have involved a near-politician-esque overuse of the first-person singular, but that thankfully did not pan out. I had also expected many unique and compelling viewpoints and people, and that thankfully did pan out. The singularly unique “Controversy Outta Nowhere” by a participant — who sat at my table at lunch and was an entertaining conversationalist, despite the fact that if you were to attempt to tidy up his preferred manner of address, the best you could do would be “Eau de Poo” — needs no further comment, serving as it did to underscore that this was a different kind of event for the John Locke Foundation.
Apart from meeting several interesting bloggers, including Ed Cone, Confederate Yankee, Bruce Carroll, Scott Elliott, and Jeff Taylor among others, I also experienced another first for a JLF event: being hugged by invited speakers. Please don’t read this as an indictment of previous JLF speakers; I neither expected nor coveted hugs from the likes of, say, Newt Gingrich, Christopher Hitchens or Winston S. Churchill III. But I was pleasantly surprised with hugs from Sister Toldjah and Lorie Byrd, but that didn’t seem unusual at all, given the conviviality and familiarity of everyone involved. Perhaps Dan Rather would characterize it a pajama party.
Oh, and Jon Ham’s daughter, who I take it is some neophyte bloggress whose appearance was solely for the purpose of blatant nepotism, called me a weirdo. But then she called us all weirdos — in the sense of following politics so closely, etc., as opposed perhaps to football, the pursuit of which occupied the remainder of my weekend outside of church.
All the aforementioned bloggers’ reviews of the conference share the enjoyment of each other’s opinions and the thought that this conference is something we should do again. I heartily agree on both counts.
