I had just finished a long few weeks on the road for the Leadership Institute, and I was giving a workshop in Morris, Minnesota with the fabulous group from the Counterweight. The publications workshops were 4 hours long at least, so we were going through it. Now, as was often common, too few students showed up, so I had four to work with.

I was driving around with LI field representative Ryan Nichols, whom I would later work with in the office when he became the Director of the Youth Leadership School.

The Morris crew is higher caliber than normal, and several long-term friends like Joe Basel and Emily Loehr were in attendence. I worked with them for a while, and when it came time to go over story ideas, they said that nothing ever happens on their campus.

Now this is a common refrain, that their campus is "the most apathetic ever" and I "have no idea" that "there is nothing to do around here." They then proceeded to tell me, that of all people, ACLU President Nadine Strossen was speaking later that evening.

So, we went to her speech, which was introduced by a very... masculine looking woman.

I took some pictures that are displayed below, and listened to her presentation. There was a little bit less than a crowd. I would estimate 75-100 students at most.

She spoke against the Patriot Act, during a time that it was much more popular than it is today. It wasn't a very impressive speech, her skills as a popular speaker weren't bad, but weren't impressive either.

Strossen brought out a thong to appeal to college students. It had a logo on it of Total Information Awareness or something similar to that, and she thought it was kitchy. It was odd, pathetic and sad that a grown woman had so little respect for herself and the audience that she relied on a base appeal to baser instincts.

This should come as little surprise I suppose coming from Strossen, whose main passion is defending pornography as a first amendment issue.

Joe and Emily had contacts in the student government, so we knew of her after-speech event talking to the administration and student government aristocrats.

We went, and I looked like hell. I had been travelling for LI for quite a while, was out of razors, and just looked awful.

They had free cookies, which was great. They even had my personal favorite, oatmeal raisin. I took several, and then noticed that there were virtually no students there, and not many others, so I took some more cookies.

I then moved over to listen to Nadine. She was speaking with two professors, and two student lesbians. I decided just to listen in, as one of the professors asked why the ACLU hadn't been more involved with the recent gay marriage struggle. They said they felt if the ACLU had done more, at least a few states would have legal gay marriage.

Strossen then scanned the room before giving an answer, sized me up looking me up and down and must have decided that I was no threat, and then proceeded to say that the ACLU had done the polling, and they knew that if they only waited a few more years, between 5-10, that gay marriage will pass easily. They feared that to push it now would only cause a reaction in the form of a constitutional amendment. So, they were waiting for the political clout of an amendment to pass, then press on in the future.

Quite revealing.

My question was somewhat different.

I said that if one were to concede that everything she said is correct, that she was speaking about the Patriot Act affecting all of us. Meaning that she, as the ACLU President was truly going after an issue that affected all Americans, 300 million of us. And I said that was quite laudable and a good thing. But then I asked her, why would an organization that sees so many problems on a national level affecting so many people, care about whether a small town in Nebraska displays a cross? Why would it matter if they display their religious nature, how does that matter to people half a country away?

Strossen replied that Martin Luther King said that an "injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere" and that you have to care about both the big things and the small things.

I replied, and questioned whether she could adequetely set priorities if that were the case. Certainly that sentiment is true in the abstract, and as a matter of principle it is true, but in practice money and time are finite. You have to pick your battles.

And next was the coup de grace, I kicked into high gear and asked her, "is it because it makes you popular at parties and cocktails in Manhattan? Do you enjoy sitting around with your secular friends in Greenwich and showing the hash marks from all the little people in middle America whom you got to tell how to live, and correct their conceptions about what America is, and how they get to live their lives and raise their children?"

At this point she muttered something about liberty, and flagged an administrator to let her out. She hurried out, and left me to continue my assault on the oatmeal cookies.

One last crazy thing about Nadine Strossen. No one believes me when I say this, at least not initially. She has these dead gray eyes with no pupils. Now, there are eye diseases where you have no iris, and only a pupil, but I have run across none that say you have no pupils, only an iris, and that they are completely gray. It was freaky.

Honestly, it made me think of biblical references about those with scales over their eyes, or demon possession, I'm not sure. I offer no definitive answer why, biologically or spiritually, I can only attest to what I saw. Immediately after, I found one website that mentioned her having an eye disease, and I've noticed that many public pics of her seem to be photoshopped to have a pupil. I imagine that with her wealth and stature that you could get some special contacts of some sort, but if she has them, she wasn't wearing them that day.

You can somewhat tell this in the picture where I'm shaking her hand. Which, full disclosure, she came up to me and grabbed my hand as they took my pic, which you can kind of tell by my hand being so close to me. She was super aggressive with the handshake.

She's creepy.