Fresh Loaf

Former president Jimmy Carter visited Emory last night for his 28th annual Carter Town Hall meeting for Emory University’s 1,300 freshmen. The freshman are required to attend the yearly ritual, in which Carter responds to seemingly random questions written by the students. This year’s meeting took place against a backdrop of Carter’s comment the previous day, quoted by Fox News, that Congressman Joe Wilson’s outburst during President Obama’s recent speech to Congress was “based on racism.”

The questions at the Emory event said as much about Carter as it did about the students themselves, many of whom spent the Q&A period texting on their cell phones. The opening question of the evening was not about Carter, or his monitoring of 76 international elections, or his thoughts on racism, or Iran but, rather, what he thought of Kanye West’s outburst at the VMA Music awards. Carter responded that he thought it was uncalled for and that West’s punishment was having to appear on the new Jay Leno show.

The following questions inquired about Carter’s favorite perk about living in the White House (going to Camp David), his thoughts on president Obama (most of the family voted for him), whether he always wanted to be president (no), what he thought about a photo of him standing with other former presidents in which he appeared to be the outsider (“When I am standing with a group of men I don’t usually stand touching them”), and how Carter would rate Bush’s time out of office (”Better then his time in office”).

What would he do if he had one day as president now?

“I would put together my best plans for Israel and its neighbors to live in peace.

What was the best moment of his life?

“When my wife told me she would marry me.

Who was the most interesting person he met during his presidency?

Anwar Sadat, whom he called “flexible, bold and courageous.”

Midway through the hour-long session, he took a question about Obama and racism and responded, “When a radical fringe element of demonstrators and others begin to attack the president of the United States as an animal or as a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, or when they wave signs in the air that say that we should have buried Obama with Kennedy, those kind of attacks are beyond the bounds of the way presidents have ever been accepted, even with people who disagree [with them]. I think people who are guilty of that type of personal attack against Obama have been influenced to a major degree by a belief that he should not be president because he is African-American. It’s a racist attitude.”

The final question addressed how he upheld his obligations to  his family when he was president. “My family took care of me,” he responded, and with that he left the stage and immediately went to Rosalynn Carter, his wife of 57 years, took her hand and exited.

Check out more photos from Jimmy Carter’s annual Carter Town Hall Meeting at Emory University.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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Tags: Jimmy Carter Emory, Jimmy-Carter, Joe Wilson.