I can totally understand what it must be like. You're an elderly woman in the middle of the prairie. The flat, flat, flat, endless, goes on mile after monotonous mile of prairie. To your east, 57 miles away is Omaha, Nebraska, whose biggest tourist attraction is the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge, a footbridge crossing Missouri River between Omaha and Council Bluffs, Iowa.
To the west along I-80 is more prairie. Mind numbing hundreds of miles of unchanging prairie that makes you want to endlessly stick a fork in your thigh to keep from falling asleep as your driving it. (yeah, I've made this drive)
You are in the middle of nothing. Big city problems and issues are far away. You have your pretty much unchanging neighborhood, living on your pretty much unchanging street, in the middle of your unchanging prarie. You go to church every Sunday and see the same people (who mostly agree with you) every day, and the rest of the world is brought to you via cable, FoxNews, the 20 gazillion Christian cable channels, your Christian radio station and right wing talk radio.
Change is scary. A brave new world is scary. All your friends, your church, your Christian cable channels, Fox News and the right wing media tell you it's scary. So when your town (Lincoln, Nebraska) begins debating ordinances protecting people from discrimination for being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, you sit right down at your kitchen table determined to do something about it to stop change.
You write and you write everything you have been told, or read in some Christian or right wing publication some where. . . you want to impart your knowledge and truths to those who don't know, who need guidance.
And when you're done and you think it sounds pretty good, you pull on your huge white hat (the good guys always wear a white hat, especially for rescues) and march down to city hall and speak . . .
. . .YouTube user aksarbent has been uploading videos of some of the more interesting moments from hearings on the issue.
-Mediaite
Aksarbent titled it "Best in Show" and it is quite possibly the funniest thing you will see all weekend.
You know what’s not funny? Hate. You know what’s also not funny? People going on hate-filled rants. However, you know what is funny, people going on hate-filled rants that make so little sense that they sound like someone took the worst comments from a political message board, mixed all the words around, translated them to Japanese, and then translated them back. And that’s what happened at a council meeting in Lincoln, Nebraska and it resulted in one of the craziest videos you’ll see this week.
-Mediaite
Among the many things Jane Svoboda wants us to know about teh gays and becoming gay is (what I can make any sense to):
being naked in a bathtub makes you gay
any corpse found without clothes has a partner who did away with them
anus licking causes sepsis, if not given antibiotics with a half hour they [anus lickers] perish
college students need single rooms to avoid going gay (like Hillary Clinton did)
college women are seduced by rohipnol to become Lesbians, otherwise they find it abhorrent
AIDs is a candida fungus disease
Gays cus after coupling
bisexuals always become insane
Jesus was kissed by Judas Ahomo (I didn't know Judas had a last name)
there's more, a lot more ... but the gravy is watching the guy behind Ms. Svoboda react.
Yes Ms. Svoboda, I understand, change is scary, but you (and the kids) will really be all right.
Special thanks to lineatus for telling me that Charlie Pierce also wrote about this. The first comment by Matthew Weedman, maybe the only transcript of what she said that exists (brave man).
Also thanks to cardinal for this note:
I'll note that Lincoln is a relatively liberal college town (notice they were laughing at her, not applauding) and Omaha gave its electoral vote to Obama.
I agree. My comments about Nebraska are because I've made the drive through on I-80 several times and through Kansas on I-70 more times then I can count -- I've first hand experience with the people - my parents are both from Kansas and I have aunts, uncles and cousins there still.
Update: Sat May 12, 2012 at 6:55 AM PT:
More about Jane Svoboda or Crazy Blue Protesting Lady
The books she's referring to are:
The Accursed Share, by Georges Bataille
and
The Solar Anus, by Georges Bataille (yes there really is a text by that name)
The Solar Anus is a short Surrealist text by the French writer Georges Bataille.
Albeit elliptically, its aphorisms refer to decay, death, vegetation, natural disasters, impotence, frustration, ennui and excrement. It makes ironic reference to the sun, which, although it brings life to the Earth, can also result in death from its unrestrained energies. Moreover, the anus may be seen as a symbol of the inevitability of residual waste due to its role in excretion.
- wikipedia
Thanks to
T100R for the tip.
Some kossaks have questioned her mental state, I must admit I find this somewhat normal, "eccentric," wierd, etc. But I grew up with people sounding this way, from my "crazy religious uncle" to the woman in my parent's church who said to be me once, "we KNOW that germs can't live on man made objects!"
I told my parents that it seems that every time I meet up with this woman I end up biting my tongue. They gave me a "welcome to our world" laugh.