Kicking & Screaming: Journo Dragged From Near AF1
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Reporter-Dragged-Kicking-and-Screaming-From-Near-Air-Force-One-.html
A reporter for a small newspaper was forcibly removed from a press area near Air Force One shortly before President Barack Obama arrived at Los Angeles International Airport to depart California early Thursday.
Airport security officers carried the woman away by the feet and arms as she protested her removal.
"I said, 'I'll take my chances if (the president) comes by here,'" said Lee, who identified herself as a Roman Catholic priestess who lives in Anaheim, Calif.
You can't make this stuff up.
It gets better. Lack of insight is a hilarious thing.
A self-proclaimed Catholic priestess from Anaheim was removed from a press holding area at Los Angeles International Airport Thursday morning minutes before President Barack Obama was scheduled to arrive.
Brenda Lee, 58, of Anaheim, was carried off by airport security after she refused to leave the area, saying that she wanted to hand the president a letter denouncing the California Supreme Court for deciding Tuesday not to annul gay marriages in the state.
Lee was dressed in a cassock.
In a phone interview, Lee said that she is a Catholic priestess "with St. Juliana's in Fullerton," and that there are 60 other Catholic priestesses worldwide.
Father Paul Gins of St. Juliana's said that Lee is a member of the parish and a "well-meaning person," but that "she does not represent the church. We do not recognize women priests, and haven't for 2,000 years."
Lee said that her duties as a minister involve consecrating the host, and ministering to the disabled and elderly in convalescent homes.
She called the White House to request credentials for Obama's arrival, citing her involvement with the Georgia Informer, an independent black newspaper in Macon, Georgia.
At LAX this morning, Lee asked a Secret Service agent to take her letter to President Obama after learning that the president wasn't scheduled to take any questions at the appearance.
The staffer came and asked to see the letter. "He said his name was Worly but I doubt that was his real name," Lee said.
After "Worly" gave Lee the letter back, another staffer asked to see it, Lee said. Lee said that she'd rather give it to Obama herself when he walked by.
"'I assure you, he's not going to come by here,'" Lee recounted the man saying. "'I don't want you to yell his name. I don't want you to do anything disruptive.'"
When Lee refused to surrender the letter, the man had security remove her, Lee said.
Lee said she yelled at reporters for not sticking up for her, saying "…you did nothing. What kind of reporting is this?"
Lee said she thinks she was being discriminated against for being a priestess, and that a priest wouldn't have received the same treatment.
She said she was discriminated against because her stand for traditional marriage offended the staffer.
"The person who came to get the letter was, in my opinion, gay," Lee said. That's why he acted that way, she said, because, "why would a person jeopardize his job for craziness."
Outside the terminal, a police officer chided Lee for making a scene, she said.
"'This could've been much worse,'" she said the officer told her. "We could have cuffed you, put you in a black-and-white, and held you for 72 hours.'"
Lee - whose sister worked in a mental hospital, she said - understood the reference to the holding period for mental illness cases.
As she tearfully recounted this afternoon, she had one thing to tell the officer: "Are you trying to imply that there's something mentally wrong with me?"
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/lee-letter-president-2431911-obama-staffer
