KEEP IT SIMPLE
Want to derail Ron Paul? Ask him about pop culture
BY MIKE ZIGLER

Mike Zigler is editor of Liberty Watch: The Magazine. After serving as news editor at Las Vegas CityLife and editor-in-chief at the UNLV Rebel Yell, he currently directs internal communications on the Las Vegas Strip. Feel free to reach him at mikezigler@cox.net  Other stories by Mike Zigler

Ron Paul doesn’t easily mesh with the world of pop culture. And pop culture doesn’t exactly mesh with him. Earlier this year, I learned he likely wouldn’t connect the Huxtables to “The Cosby Show,” nor would he be able to identify any musical hack in the Top 40 or which network hosts “Desperate Housewives.”

Paul is a simple man. Just scroll through an article The American Conservative published in June describing the Texas Libertarian in Washington. At first glance, Paul looks like every other congressman. His suit is dark. His tie is striped. He is friendly with his colleagues, who genuinely like him. But there is something different.

He is easy to overlook. He takes the stairs. He does not have an entourage. Unlike most lawmakers wearing black or cordovan leather shoes, you can’t hear Paul coming because he’s wearing plain black tennis shoes. In a bag he carries a can of soup that he heats for himself in the microwave in his office. Beneath pictures of Austrian economists Frederick Von Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises, he eats his lunch alone and in peace.

Like his principles and message, Paul is cut and dry.

So it was no surprise to see Paul arrive at his Las Vegas press conference last month in a dark green Dodge minivan. As if in Washington, he wore a dark suit, striped tie and black tennis shoes. He even handled his own suitcase.

With this in mind, I wasn’t embarrassed when Paul seemed confused with one of my questions, which involved a hint of pop culture. Rapper Jay-Z made headlines in November for flashing Euros versus American dollars in his new video. 

With the recent fall of the U.S. dollar (60 percent since January 2001) against multiple currencies, including the Euro, Jay-Z is publicly betting that the U.S. dollar will continue to fall. He emphasizes his financial perspective in his video, “Blue Magic,” in which he drives a Rolls Royce convertible through a surreal Times Square nightscape and counts several stacks of 500 Euros before placing them back into his Euro-stuffed briefcase.

I wondered if Paul thought this might reinforce his message with American youth, an audience magnetized to Paul, that the dollar is in serious decline and the Federal Reserve should be destroyed. The mention of Jay-Z threw him off.

“I’m not so sure I understand that whole thing,” Paul responded. “But I did understand the question at the end on whether or not the Federal Reserve should be destroyed.” He then talked about how the system serves the interests of the military industrial complex, the banking industry, big government and politicians rather than the American individual.

“All I want to do is legalize competition, let the Constitution work, and allow gold and silver to circulate parallel to paper money,” Paul shared. “Paper money is the silliest thing you could conceive of. You entrust it to the government, allow them to spend as much as they want, and when they come up short, they print more? It’s really an amazing thing we’ve allowed our government to do.”

Think of all the money that’s flashed on MTV, VH1 and BET. Think of how it’s embedded in pop culture. Greenbacks are good. No greenbacks are bad. Now consider how popular Paul’s next statement would be in terms of this lifestyle: “All paper money ends, and it always ends badly.” 

Paul’s message, appearance and background don’t indicate a modern-day pop president. Dubya is no Bill Clinton, but has managed to inspire mockery on Saturday Night Live and pull-string dolls with a wealth of mind-flattening soundbites. With Paul, there’s nothing for Hollywood, Mattel or SNL to bite into. Even the pre-speech video his campaign rolls to jazz up his audiences is long and choppy.

Rather, his message invites and requires one to think in order to effectively understand what he’s saying. There are no “read my lips” snippets from RP. Nope, he’s a principled educator. And in these times, when reinventing yourself with the trends is as common as IED explosions in Iraq, he’s a misfit. 

But a misfit is what we need — one who strays from rhetoric and the plentiful bread-and-circus material on television. If Paul is out of touch with America’s most common pop-culture trivia, then I’m confident he’s in touch with what matters most to this country. And, contrary to what most Americans think, it has nothing to do with “Desperate Housewives.”