Comments

  1. Athe the False says

    I can see this lady in a video along the lines of “LEAVE JESUS ALONE!”

    The audio was a bit muffled in the beginning, what was the full context of this raving christard’s nonsense?

  2. LisaJ says

    I saw this the other day, it’s unbelievable. How sad that people live like this. Absolutely ‘religion should be considered a mental illness’.

  5. Hank Fox says

    Well, that was just sad. This poor lady really does seem mentally ill.

    Pat Robertson, Ken Ham, Kent Hovind, abortion protesters, JW doorknockers, preachers, school board yahoos, etc., can all take their lumps because of the aggressive intent of what they do. But this was just one private individual, having a really bad day, and being treated like a zoo animal by the cameraman because of it.

    It turned into true cruelty when the followed her outside. I’m not comfortable with any of this.

  6. Bastian says

    Agreed. Filming her was a pretty jerky thing to do in the first place, the cameraman was clearly trying to antagonize her.

  7. ShellyD says

    I’m with Hank: that struck me as cruel. If she’d just been sitting there talking, like at the beginning, why did the cameraman call her belligerent? It’s too bad, though, that it took a racist turn when she got upset.

  8. Ric says

    Extreme religiosity is often a sign of impending psychosis. You never see a mentally ill person walking around raving about the virtues of skepticism and rationality, now do you?

  9. says

    I would have felt slightly sorry for the woman being filmed when she didn’t want to (though she never asked him, until stepping outside, to stop filming) until she got racist. That’s right, ma’am, the problems of the world can be blamed on those damn Mexicans.

  11. says

    It turned into true cruelty when the followed her outside. I’m not comfortable with any of this.

    Posted by: Hank Fox | January 26, 2008 10:36 AM

    I disagree. I believe the correct course of action is to continue to document the entire episode. Otherwise there’s a problem with context and allegations of editing should she follow up on her claims of criminal misconduct against the other participants. Plus you need to protect against phony “accidents” or claims of false imprisonment against a potential impending civil action.

  13. Adam S says

    That’s in my hometown. Across the street from the coffee shop is Oral Roberts University and about a quarter mile north of that is a Victory Christian School (mentioned by the lady). Even though we have so many churches and religious schools, I personally don’t think Tulsa is that bad.

    Just giving some background information.

  14. June says

    She has been trained to build her whole reality around Jesus as the ‘police’ that will support her and punish the rest of us. Her snarl about ‘you people from Mexico’ is what she got from Sunday school about the Biblical tribes always fighting, with God taking sides and punishing the other side.

    Forgive her, for her brain no longer functions as a rational adult.

  15. lytefoot says

    I don’t know about feeling sorry for her about being filmed. If she’d been filmed SECRETLY it would be different, but it was quite clear that’s what he was doing. If she didn’t want to be seen having a public hissy fit, she should have reconsidered having one. The cameraman was clearly involved before he began filming.

    Maybe if people were more conscious of the fact that other people had cameras, they would refrain from throwing fits in public like that. Note that I’d be upset if she’d been filmed for, say, prurient reasons, or as part of a personal attack on her. The name of the town wasn’t mentioned, nor was any personal information about her (nobody who didn’t know her is likely to be able to find out who she was without considerable effort) nor were any exhortations given to take any action, with regards to her or otherwise. (Compare: her threatening to kill the ‘Mexican’ kid’s family; she clearly considers such behavior appropriate.) Furthermore, she was threatening to call the police. If the police had been called, it would have been to everyone’s advantage to have clear evidence.

    Posting the film on the Internet is somewhat more questionable ethically. I would probably have been inclined to censor her face somehow.

  16. Ryan F Stello says

    This a great case study about what happens to someone who desperately claims to know a truth, but deep down, knows he/she can’t defend it.

    I don’t care what that ‘damn Mexican’ did to set her off, but the results were damn funny.

  17. says

    People can compartmentalize their scientific thinking and rational world-view from their faith. She’s probably a famous physicist who’s having a minor compartmentalization breakdown.

  19. Ryan F Stello says

    Adam (#11) said,

    Across the street from the coffee shop is Oral Roberts University and about a quarter mile north of that is a Victory Christian School (mentioned by the lady).

    That makes a lot of sense, since she didn’t appear to be a customer unless she had walked over from someplace else.

    Moochers, preying on society’s free internet.

  20. Greg N. says

    I don’t know what happened before the video began, but it looked like this lady was minding her own business. Sure, she kind of flew off the handle, and the “Mexican” talk is weird and stupid, but I thought this video on the whole was a little unfair and cheap. Add to that the smarmy, “don’t touch me” comments, and I ended up feeling bad for the lady, not the cameraman or the other patrons (except the Mexican guy).

  21. Madoc says

    When she believes that Jesus helps her by putting all the non-believers in hell, why did she consider calling the police? Call Jeee-sus, call jeeee-sus!

  22. holbach says

    Of course religion is a form of insanity as we all know;
    being insane, they do not know that they are and therefore
    will never reason otherwise. I wish I was there during that
    retard’s tirade. When she said that she is going to call the police, I would have said, “why don’t you call your
    freaking god”? I love her inclusion of the immigrant
    Mexicans as a problem for her pathetic life. Of course,
    she has failed to recognize that their god is the same as
    hers. This is a prime example of pitching right back at
    her insane rantings with all guns blazing. When she threw
    a handful of leaves at the film guy, I would do the same
    thing. As she was fuming away from the fray I would unleash
    a torrent of invective, especially religious in all it’s
    insane drivel. “Are you going to get your jesus?” Never
    back down from this insane crap, but give more than they do. Damn, I wish I had been there!

  23. raven says

    Extreme religiosity is often a sign of impending psychosis.

    That is true. One of my colleagues is evaluating a case brought into involuntary lockup by the police. He believes that the devil has won. All the people around him are now pod-demons who replaced the real people. He refuses to take his medication and is potentially dangerous and probably isn’t getting out soon.

    Psychotics always frame their delusions around something. The religious often frame it around religion, the secular around the US government, their families, or UFO aliens.

    A lot of the more extreme Xian trolls that show up on these threads are IMO, psychotics acting out. The three key symptons; delusions, cognitive deficits, and extreme, endogenous, rage.

  26. Matt says

    I agree with Greg (#18). The video gave me the impression the cameraman and the other two guys were some smartasses giving her shit, and she flipped out. Following her out of the coffee shop was unnecessary, and seemed like harrassment. A mature person would have disengaged as soon as she got so incredibly upset, and just let the employee of the store get her out of there.

    She’s still an ignorant racist.

  27. holbach says

    I wonder if that ranting religious retard will get a
    detachment of the faithful from oral roberts asylum and
    go to that hated coffee shop and pray the hell over it,
    and even try to levitate it and drop it in Mexico.
    Wow, what a sight! A ranting, roaring mob of crazed
    religious rabble instilling the wrath of god and fear into
    that den of atheistic caffeine mongerers! We will turn
    all your coffee into our lord’s blood and urine and have locusts descend and shit all over everything in preparation for the rapture against this evil place.

  28. pough says

    I’m with Hank. The poor woman may have some issues, but the cameraman either shares them or should be ashamed of himself for posting the video, IMO.

  30. Sastra, OM says

    Here is my best guess on what was going on:

    There has been a general conversation on some controversial ethical topic (probably involving a “sin” of which at least some people in the room have said they partake and don’t consider wrong.) The woman has been arguing that, as a Christian, her position is such-and-such and that’s God’s view on the matter. The cameraman then said no, and that’s not even a “Christian” position, because he went to a Christian church where they had a different take on that issue. They were Christians, and they disagreed with her and supported his side.

    This is where the video starts. The woman says “just because they’re in church doesn’t make them Christians.” The cameraman says “they were very nice to me” and he then accuses her of harassing him and the rest of the customers by being judgmental on who is a real Christian (and whatever the original issue was.) Not unreasonably, she points out that all she did was give her opinion on what’s true. Camera pans around and shows that the other people in the coffee shop are amused.

    Cameraman proceeds to push her buttons on how everyone is so upset, she needs to be thrown out of the shop, she’s being disruptive and offensive etc., etc. till the woman finally loses it completely and becomes disruptive and offensive. Big time. On several levels.

    I don’t think the video really shows anything about what religion does to people or what religious people are like in general. It does manage to reveal the rather nasty underbelly of “God’s gonna get you” underneath some versions of Christianity, and the pull it has for some people, who quickly resort to it under stress.

    I think that once the Christian lady started threatening to call the police WHILE she was herself getting violent, it was probably a good idea to keep filming. But the cameraman provoked the whole issue on purpose by deliberately playing the whiny victim card on “your ideas are attacking me.”

    I don’t like that whiny victim card, so I’m not overly impressed on how loony the lady was. When that card is pulled on atheists simply for expressing their opinions — and it is pulled with alarming regularity — I feel like throwing things too. But I don’t.

    Had the issue been reversed — the woman an atheist told repeatedly that telling people there is no God is disruptive and offensive and requires that you now be thrown out of the coffee shop to protect people from your ideas — the subsequent film evidence for “What Atheism Does to People” — as she storms out shouting “fuck your God” — would be seen as a staged cheap shot.

  31. Rub R. D'Key says

    The horror for me is not the lady’s ‘Travis Bickle’ moment or her melt down. What bothers me the most is her insistence that she has the only truth and she has the right to impose her crazy ideas on everyone else. All this because she thinks she has a higher authority behind her. Was the cameraman being cruel to film her leaving? Absolutely not. She would have no conscience having everyone there thrown in jail by a sympathetic cop in the name of Jesus.

    I lived most of my youth surrounded by family much like her and only escaped a life like that myself because of Vietnam. No atheist in a foxhole is a lie. That place produced more nonbelievers than any other place on Earth. When I returned I refused to have anything to do with those people. I left that part of my life behind and never looked back. Folks like her are as dead to me as the dinosaurs. I sometimes miss the dinosaurs.

  32. says

    And in that woman you have the Republican Party: finding you worthless if you’re not christian and annoyed by Mexicans anywhere near them.

  33. holbach says

    Come on # 28, you know we atheists would not enact such
    a scene as the rabid religionists. I am intransigent
    against religion,but I would never go into a ranting tirade
    such as we witnessed and will definitely see again.
    We are not intellectually or emotionally imbalanced, so
    this state, I feel assured, will never occur. I speak for
    myself and for others who seem to express similiar ideas
    on this site. Ranting will never get your message across
    to those you hope to bring around to reason; neither just
    standing by weakly without a retort will leave a favorable
    impression. Always keep a cool but ready head.

  34. LeeLeeOne says

    This vid was so utterly, obviously a fake trying to be real, which makes it fake beyond proportions that it must be somewhat real, but it cannot possibly be real beyond reality, and must surely mean it’s a setup, but in setting up the set-up did they anticipate the reality that was surely to be employed because, because, but, which, why, because, but, can’t, twist, turn…

    This is what undertreated/untreated bipolar illness can do to people.

    From an artistic point of view … what a load of crap! This was set up, this was performed, and it met it’s goal – sensationalism.

    From a on-looker point of view … what a load of crap! This was a set up, this was directed and orchestrated, and it met it’s goal – sensationalism.

    From a therapist point of view … this could have been a very, very, very volatile situation. This was a potentially serious situation – for both on-lookers as well as the woman being filmed, not to mention the danger the employee was forced to put herself in when trying to protect the patrons of the coffee shop.

    Mental illness, in any form, is nothing to “toy” with. This may or may not have been real. However, the danger to this woman, and the danger to the patrons and employees of the coffee shop was portrayed/shown as insidiously real. That’s the scary part. Mental illness is NOT a laughing matter and it is not funny.

  35. chris rattis says

    I don’t think that he should have posted the video. However I do think it was a good idea to follow her out.

    I worked in a bar, and before they had cameras in the parking lot, there was an altercation in the bar like the one in the video (not christian nuttery, but problem with authority). After being thrown out, the people that started the problem proceeded to vandalize the cars in the lot. One guy got out a baseball bat, and started beating on the cars in the parking lot. The other started “bumping” into other cars with his.

    After her violent display and threats, I would want to make sure she didn’t damage my, or anyone elses car, and would want video evidence of it if she did.

  37. Stingray says

    I have to say I’m really surprised at some of the comments that paint the cameraman as the bad guy. Speculating on what happened before the film starts seems largely pointless, but obviously woman was complained about by others present. If I had a camera on me I definitely would have started filming when she started going mental. This is what cameras are for, and this is what happens on the internet now. Deal with it.

    And it is funny.

  38. Candy says

    You all must have better hearing and/or better sound on your comps than I, as I could barely understand one word in ten that she said.

    Apart from that, it did look like she wasn’t melting down until after he started filming. She snapped and revealed a lot of mental instability and social function problems, but she didn’t exactly linger. In fact, she was almost literally running away once she got into the parking lot. I’ve seen lots worse things while riding the bus.

    Not saying she wasn’t crazy, or that he was harassing her. It would be helpful to know what went on before the filming started. I’m guessing she was, indeed, being hateful. I felt most sorry for the barrista.

  40. Michael X says

    Yeah, Candy, that was one of my first thoughts too. Poor girl in the red head scarf. I deal with nutters often enough, but I’d hate to have to deal with them for only minimum wage.

    As for the lady: yes, clearly mentally unstable. As for the camera man: asshole. Seemingly pointless exploitation isn’t very high up on the comedy scale. It’s like kicking a handicapped kid out of his wheelchair and filming him while he curses at you and fumbles back into it. As for any legal or altruistic-documentation thoughts going through this kids head, does anyone really think he was focused on that? Or was he filming a crazy lady so he could post it on the intertubes and giggle?

    Just because you find someone on a lower cognitive level than you does not exempt you from acting like a dipishit.

  41. Sastra, OM says

    holbach #31 wrote:

    Come on # 28, you know we atheists would not enact such a scene as the rabid religionists.

    That we shouldn’t make such a scene — I agree. That we couldn’t make such a scene, in the same sense that we’d be invoking divine retribution and revelation — granted. But if you’re going to say the no atheist would create a full-fledged screaming hissy fit rant against the religious — well, I won’t give you that.

    You and I have probably both been to enough atheist/humanist/skeptic events, conferences, forums, and meetings to realize that, well, yes, some of the people who are “into” not believing in God are also “into” their personal problems. We Reasonable Ones also have our crackpots, combative ideologues, bigots, and mentally ill. That’s not anything to do specifically with atheism itself, it has to do with groups per se — and it probably especially applies to groups which are involved in philosophical ‘intellectual’ matters, or ones which have taken an unpopular stance and have enemies. Some atheists do seem to have a personal ax to grind … and then there are a few who are suspected of maybe even having an actual personal ax, somewhere.

    I knew a guy in Milwaukee — president of a Freethought group — who, a few years back, would go regularly to his local Starbucks and get involved in discussions. He was eventually told by the manager that he was no longer allowed inside the coffee shop. His atheist views were upsetting other customers. When he said fine, I won’t say anything, he was told that by reading books on atheism his customers were being offended. The owner was a Christian, and it upset him also. So, royally pissed, the atheist would drive up, sit outside the Starbucks in his car, and read atheist books. The owner called the cops, who told him he was guilty of “harassment” and he had to move from the public parking lot or be arrested.

    I never spoke to him about the details, but he wrote a few fuming emails for general distribution. I met the guy a few times, and doubt very much that he had anything like the meltdown on the Crazy Christian Lady in the video — but I bet he said a few things. He would not go gently and meekly, I think. And I suspect that his “offensive” behavior which set everything off in the first place was nothing more or less than the sort of hard but rational statements which go on in this blog, said publicly. In a coffee shop. In front of people who are easily hurt by that kind of thing. Victimized by disagreement.

    Awww.

  42. Carlie says

    More interestingly, did anyone watch the “human slinky” video in the link next to that one? Now THAT was disturbing.

  43. Santiago says

    How cute of this woman, smart enough to not say “wetbacks”, dumb enough to keep ranting about those damn Mexicans, she might as well have gone ahead and said damn beaners or something, she couldn’t have come across as more of a racist.

    Besides, Mexico is one of the most religious countries in the world, what the heck was she complaining about?

  44. says

    What I took away from this video was knowledge of the ease with which we ignore the person with the camera. Routinely. We’re so used, with films and the like, with the cameraman being an invisible observer of the action that it’s easy to forget that in real-world cases the cameraman is a person, allowing us to peek into the lives of real people, quite possibly when they should not. Thus it is so easy to focus on the reaction of the subject of the film and not those filming themselves.

    I do agree that this clip is very unfair in the portrayal of this woman. I do not, however, believe she is necessarily suffering from a full-blown mental illness, though she does seem at some level unstable. Whether she is ill or not it is clear to me the cameraman deliberately pushed her towards this reaction and milked it as much as he could. Sadly, the man is invisible, so we cannot expose him to the scorn reserved for the fundamentalist lady.

  45. DiscoveredJoys says

    I generally dislike videos of people losing it, and do not rubberneck at road accidents – mostly because I think it is discourteous.

    Mind you, if the woman had been hit in the parking lot by a block of blue ice from a plane, or run over by an 18 wheeler, that would have been true (but very black) comedy.

  46. mayhempix says

    Mentally ill people are attracted to fundamentalist dogma because it gives them black and white answers in a world that seems to them as completely out of control and out to get them.

    She is clearly ill, unable to cope and was regurgitating racist crap fed to her by wingnut manipulators. It doesn’t have to be “full-blown mental illness” to effectively limit a person’s capabilities. There are many like her.

  47. Thanny says

    Pity the insane woman all you want, but everyone blaming the guy with the camera is way off base. The person who thought it was staged is just clueless.

    This woman was clearly doing something crazy that prompted the guy to take out his camera and start filming (it could even just be his cell phone). Nothing said on camera can be blamed for her subsequent behavior, especially her suddenly turning on the guy with a bit more melanin in his skin, who she called a Mexican. The video showed him doing nothing but silently minding his own business, but she claimed he was irritating her (by his presence?). Any sympathy from me she might have had went out the door with her shrieking, “In the name of Jesus, stop!” at this poor guy.

  48. says

    I’m really surprised by the reaction against the cameraman. He was in a public place, recording what anyone could have heard and seen if they’d been there. What level of anonymity could she have expected (or deserved), throwing such a tanty in such a place?

    Poor persecuted Christians. In the old days, if you commanded someone to do something in the name of Jesus, they’d hop to it! Now they just look at you as if you’d lost it. What’s it all coming to?

    Something different: I remember reading about factor analysis in my psych days. As I understand it, if measures for two different things correlate consistently, we could consider them to be basically the same thing. Could factor analysis be a way to demonstrate that religious belief and mental illness are actually two different manifestations of the same thing? or disprove same?

  49. QrazyQat says

    I don’t know what happened before the video began, but it looked like this lady was minding her own business.

    Of course we don’t see what happened before the video started, but let’s keep in mind the coffee shop owner had gotten complaints about her for whatever had happened then. Also note she was — rather loudly — damning all the members of some (Christian) church to hell. Some other church than hers, of course, which is no doubt the good Christians’ church.

    That’s something to keep in mind, and to remind others of. People like her don’t just hate atheists or gays (or “Mexicans” who look like native-born and raised to me), they hate virtually everybody. Catholics for sure, Jews, you betcha, but even other protestant Christians, even other evangelical Christians. Hate is what they do.

  50. divalent says

    It looks to me like the cameraman was clearly pushing her buttons. At the begining she seems to be alternately absorbed in what she was doing on the computer and speaking calmly when prodded by the cameraman. It was the cameraman who was saying things like “no need for you to be rude” and “you are insulting all the customers” (as he pans the camera over to the two other guys in there, showing the smirks on their faces) and “you are going to get kicked out”.

    He (and his buddies) played her like a fiddle. Shame on them.

  51. Shigella says

    “He (and his buddies) played her like a fiddle. Shame on them.”

    Most reasonable, “calm” people in this woman’s position would quietly get up and ask the manager to intervene, or, if that fails, attempt to turn the situation back on the cameraman by trying to get the sympathy of the other customers, who would most likely tell the douchebag to shut up and get out. I doubt he would have continued filming if the entire coffeeshop was against him doing what he was.

    Instead, she chose to be an out-of-control idiot with the temper of a two-year-old once a few of her buttons got pushed. Hey, unfortunately people like this cameraman exist in the world. Take mommy’s advice and “ignore them,” like you were taught when in first grade. It’s called acting like a civilized adult.

  52. Barn Owl says

    I got the impression that she’s just another angry, paranoid bigot, who is either routinely rewarded for her outbursts, or at least not punished for them in any meaningful way. She seems pretty self-righteous throughout, with both Jesus and the threat of law enforcement intervention on her “side”, and she has the presence of mind to shut the computer down or log out of her e-mail or eBay account or whatever. From the brief video, I just don’t see her as a “victim” of a serious mental illness like bipolar disorder; in fact, the irritability and the paranoia she displays are consistent with methamphetamine abuse, or a garden-variety personality disorder, or plain old wingnut prejudice and resentment.

    I would not have been surprised if she had pulled a handgun out of her sweatshirt and waved it at the “Mexican” kid (who just looked vaguely Hispanic, and totally typical US American college kid). The incoherent “you people” rant made me think that her angry outburst was in part a response to her inability to control the people around her in the real world (in contrast to cyberworld, where she can indulge in fantasies of righteousness and entitlement). The “Mexican” kid irritated her, probably simply because he looks like “those people” that she can’t get rid of in the real world, and so she decides that she’s entitled to threaten him verbally. I hate to think what would have happened to an African-American or Hispanic woman who displayed an identical Jesus-invoking meltdown hissy pissy fit about “crackers” or “gabachos” or “you people”.

  53. says

    I can see where the people who feel uncomfortable about this are coming from. It does feel like a cheap shot and unfair to the woman.

    On the other hand…

    If it’s true that, as a previous commenter said, this coffee shop is right across the street from Oral Roberts University, I could imagine that more rational regular patrons of this particular shop might be more than a little tired of what one assumes would be regular fundamentalist obnoxiousness. This woman may have even been a repeat offender. It does look like they were pushing her buttons, but given the location of this shop, I’d be hesitant to take this particular case as an isolated incident of irreverent young people going after the poor Christian lady without provocation (notice how when the barista stepped in she only went after the woman, not the cameraman). And if it is normal for Christians to go into this coffee shop and go crazy in a very public manner, I can certainly see wanting video documentation.

  54. says

    It’s clear she’s mentally ill and it’s equally clear that the jerk with a camara was trying to antagonize her.

    I’m just not impressed with clowns who think they’re morally superior because they can get mentally ill people to flip out.

    btw, I live right down the road from Tulsa and we have plenty of christian nutcases who’ll pretty much leave you alone if you leave them alone.

  55. antaresrichard says

    This may not be fair, given no one can predict how a situation can change, but I can’t help wondering how the cameraperson would have handled the his engagement and the video documentation had the “belligerent” customer been a large burly man.

  56. MIchael X says

    How wonderful it is that Gary put into such simple terms the very heart of the matter.

    This whole thing has little to do with whether the lady was a nutter before or not. If she is or was then fine. She’s unstable. As is perfectly clear. But for the guy to be antagonistic, still hasn’t been explained in any satisfactory way. Nor can I imagine any situation in which such a response would be prudent. Nor do I think there can be. The guy was a douche, no matter how nutty the lady was.

    In the end it’s a video showing a jerk guy taping a nutty lady. OOOooo, great fun!

  57. Luna_the_cat says

    What Gary Carson and Michael X said, exactly. She was, quite clearly, mentally ill. And she quite clearly didn’t have full control over her behavior. This being the case, the posters saying “she shouldn’t have behaved that way in public” are off target; there is no reason to believe she actually had a “normal” level of self-control available to her.

    But the boy filming her WAS sane, and had full control over his actions…and although we don’t see the beginning of this, from where it started it seems clear that every time she starts to settle down a bit, he prods her, just to get her going again. He’s entertained by getting the crazy lady going. And visibly filming her, and following her, is also provocation. He’s not treating her like a human being, he’s treating her like a sideshow, and obviously forgetting that if he does manage to goad her into violence, there are other innocent people in that shop as well who she could attack. That’s self-centered and aggressive, as well as irresponsible.

    This left a bad taste in my mouth, as does the whole “let’s mock the mentally ill lady because she’s a religious racist!” thing here. We have absolutely no idea why she is the way she is, however unsavory the way she is might be. Does she have schizophrenia? Did she lose 5 members of her family in a horrendous accident? Would it be ok to mock her if you knew that, say, she *did* have schizophrenia?

  58. says

    Whether it was a problem with the sound or the American accent i couldn’t understand a word she was saying- could somebody post a transcript please?

    Is this usual over there? they would get told to f*** off over here – in no uncertain terms – and banned from ever coming back again/

  59. Gregory Kusnick says

    could somebody post a transcript please?

    Here it is as best I can decipher it. I hope it doesn’t get held up for moderation.

    Church Lady: We have 11,000 churches, and all these people go to church. They don’t act like Christians. That doesn’t mean they’re Christians. They’re just showing up in a church and sitting there.

    Camera Guy: Ma’am, everyone’s being very nice to you. There’s really no reason for you to be rude.

    CL: What, because I’m telling a truth?

    CG: Ahh, I don’t think you… I think…

    CL: I am telling the truth, OK?

    CG: You’re being belligerent. You’re harrassing…

    CL: I’m not being belligerent, I’m telling the truth.

    CG: You’re harrassing the customers here. (Pan to smirking customer.)

    CL: I’m not harrassing customers. You’re… I’m going to call the police in about five more minutes on you.

    CG: I…

    CL: (Standing) Who are you? Do you own this building?

    CG: I think you should call the police.

    CL: Do you own this building?

    CG: No, but, ah, you’re about to get kicked out, ma’am.

    CL: OK, who are you? Do you work here? Do you work in this building? Are you a person that, a person that works here?

    CG: You need…

    CL: (To Barrista) This guy is harrassing me. I don’t want him to harrass me anymore.

    CG: I’m not harrassing you.

    Barrista: (To Church Lady) I’ve gotten a few complaints… (turns away from camera mumbling)

    CL: From who?

    B: I can’t tell you.

    CL: (Losing it) No! You can tell me! I’m calling the police right now, because I’m not doing anything wrong! (Logs off computer and picks up coat.) OK? You people are the ones that are doing something wrong! OK? This Mexican kid is irritating me —

    B: No.

    CL: — and I want him away from me. (Pushing past Barrista to follow Mexican kid as he moves away.) Excuse me. (To Mexican kid.) In the name of Jesus, stop it!

    B: Ma’am…

    CL: In the name of Jesus!

    B: Ma’am…

    CL: OK? You want to irritate somebody? I’m gonna — your family might get killed! All right? You people from Mexico, you will not stop with the whole thing! At Victory Christian Center, that Sherry(?) Doherty(?), making fun of people. This is not a funny story. It’s not funny anymore! OK? People from Victory Christian Center are going to Hell! It’s not a game! (Smacks Camera Guy.) Stop it!

    CG: Don’t touch me.

    B: Ma’am, you must…

    CL: I’m calling the police right now about this story. (Exits cafe.) I am, I’m calling the police — (Turns and sees Camera Guy still following.) STOP IT! (Smacks Camera Guy.)

    CG: Don’t touch me.

    CL: STOP IT!

    CG: Don’t touch me.

    CL: (Uproots plant and flings it at Camera Guy.)

    CG: Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me.

    CL: (Marches off into the distance.)

    And by the way, the Camera Guy is not completely invisible, as some here have said. At the very end he turns the camera around for a reaction shot of his own face.

  60. Steve_C says

    Alot of people are unstable… does that mean you have to listen to them when they’re being loud and abusive in a coffee shop?

    I think alot of religious people are unstable, religion feeds some need for them. Religion doesn’t make them any more stable that’s for sure. I think he can have the opposite effect.

    I bet the worse they said to her was calm down. They weren’t egging her on… she just couldn’t deal with an opposing view point.

    She’s the equivalent of religious nutters coming here and posting in comic sans all caps.

    I don’t feel sorry for her. And the video made me laugh.

  61. Gregory Kusnick says

    As a footnote to the above transcript, I will say that having watched and listened closely several times in a row, I’m less inclined to buy the “clearly mentally ill” armchair diagnoses being touted here. I’m not a psychologist, but my take is that she’s a garden-variety self-righteous conservative white Christian with a short fuse, who’s pissed off that “her” country is being “taken over” by atheists and immigrants. Any feelings of persecution she has most likely come from Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh, and not from any cognitive pathology. I base this conclusion on the fact that the thing that really sends her over the edge is being scapegoated (as she sees it) for someone else’s bad behavior.

  64. Grand Moff Texan says

    She’s not acting like a victim, more like someone who’s confused as to why people aren’t intimidated by her triumphalist rhetoric.

    Humiliation is the only sane response to such people.
    .

  65. Grand Moff Texan says

    Alot of people are unstable… does that mean you have to listen to them when they’re being loud and abusive in a coffee shop?

    You do if you work there. For my two or three years of being a barrista, I saw the crazies as a fringe benefit.
    .

  66. Jon says

    That wasn’t a rant of a Christian feeling somehow persecuted for her religious beliefs. She was shouting racist shit in a coffee shop, singled out a customer who was moving away from her, got in his face, and screamed at him FOR BEING MEXICAN. Anyone here feeling sorry for the woman should really be feeling more sympathy for that guy. That was some ugly, hateful shit.

  67. Luna_the_cat says

    Her being a hateful bigot is officially NOT OK. I think we’re all clear on that one. But every time she just about winds down, the boy filming her speaks to her and gets her going again. Sane people don’t act like she does, and responsible people don’t act like this kid does.

    He is entertained by the woman, and following her too closely. I really don’t think she would have continued with the outbursts if he had simply stopped talking to her.

    And I speak as someone who used to volunteer with the homeless and has first hand experience of a lot of unstable types. (No, I am not in any way implying she was homeless; just, I *recognise* that instability.)