Orange Juice Girl Who Hated Gays Dies at 84

[Mark Jeffries]

Former Miss Oklahoma Anita Bryant had a steady career with some hit records (notably "Paper Roses"), regular appearances on TV variety hours and lots of commercials (most notably for the Florida Citrus Commission)--and then in 1977 when Dade County, FL (where she lived) enacted a law prohibiting discrimination against gays, she objected loudly and started an organization called Save Our Children (which started that trope about LGBTQs), thereby pretty much killing her career outside of "The 700 Club" and other TV religious shows--on Dec. 16 in Edmond, OK of cancer:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/09/arts/music/anita-bryant-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.oE4.qwO6.VHyL562lsgew&smid=url-share

[Kevin M.]

I suspect Meta will create an AI version of her on their social media 

Kevin M. (RPCV)

On Fri, Jan 10, 2025 at 10:21 AM Mark Jeffries <spotl...@gmail.com> wrote:

Former Miss Oklahoma Anita Bryant had a steady career with some hit records (notably "Paper Roses"), regular appearances on TV variety hours and lots of commercials (most notably for the Florida Citrus Commission)--and then in 1977 when Dade County, FL (where she lived) enacted a law prohibiting discrimination against gays, she objected loudly and started an organization called Save Our Children (which started that trope about LGBTQs), thereby pretty much killing her career outside of "The 700 Club" and other TV religious shows--on Dec. 16 in Edmond, OK of cancer:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/09/arts/music/anita-bryant-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.oE4.qwO6.VHyL562lsgew&smid=url-share

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[PGage]

I try not to say bad things about people on the day they die, but will make an exception for Bryant, who was the worst.

Always like this incident, not so much because I approve of assaulting people with banana cream pies, but for how it shows how hateful, programmed and stilted was her so called religiosity.

https://youtu.be/kC__Q0yhDkk?si=cHwVzSZTULrkn607

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[Marti Lawrence]

I bet she was surprised as hell when St. Peter turned her away from the pearly gates for her homophobia.

"I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."

Often misattributed to Mark Twain, but apparently actually a quote from Clarence Darrow.

Sums up my feelings about her precisely.

~Marti

[Diner]

Oddly enough, I am now in the middle of rereading a book I haven't read since 1988 - "Looking for Rachel Wallace," a 1980 novel in the Spenser mystery series by Robert B. Parker. The tough but cerebral Boston P.I. is working as a bodyguard for an outspoken lesbian feminist author, and in one scene, clearly based on the similar event from Bryant's life, the author is attacked at a book signing by two men wielding a chocolate cream pie. Spenser subdues the attackers but is unable to prevent the pie from hitting her in the chest.

 

I'm sure I noted the similarity back in '88, but to read the passage again so soon after Bryant's death seems especially fitting.

[Kevin M.]

Rachel Wallace was less of a douche-nozzle than Bryant, though she and Spenser butted heads as she made occasional cameos throughout run of the series. 

Have you read any of the Ace Atkins penned Spenser novels? To me, Atkins doesn’t quite turn a phrase or play with characters as well as Parker, but they are good stories. 

Kevin M. (RPCV)

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[Diner]

Yeah, I just read the photographic essay book "Spenser's Boston," and the centerpiece of it is a short story in which Spenser and Susan escort Rachel Wallace around town, showing her the sights.

I read (or rather, listened to the audiobooks of) the first five or six of Atkins' Spenser novels, and I agree with you about them. I do recall that one of them (maybe "Slow Burn") had a passage that turned to horror, which to me seemed very out of place in a Spenser novel.

Last year, after I finished reading/rereading the Nero Wolfe novels, I decided to do the same with Spenser. I started buying first editions from The Mysterious Bookshop, but had to stop because they were costing me WAY too much money. The later, more popular novels are fairly cheap - they'll run you $20 or $25, even for autographed copies - but some of the rare early novels from the seventies and early eighties cost hundreds of dollars. The copy of "Rachel Wallace" I'm reading now cost me $2.50 back in the eighties, and it'll do fine.