Chambers: I found God -- Tom Osborne

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By NANCY HICKS / Lincoln Journal Star

Omaha State Sen. Ernie Chambers contends he has found God in Nebraska — disguised as a humble athletic director.

In  a second chapter to his lawsuit against God, Chambers last week served official notice on  “God (a.k.a. “Tom Osborne”), as the defendant.

In it, Chambers moves his political-satire-as-lawsuit from organized religion to Nebraska’s Husker Hysteria.  

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Ernie Chambers

Ernie Chambers

The notice, officially served by certified mail to Osborne, is all about Nebraskans’ response to Osborne being named athletic director during the turmoil of a faltering football team.

“The defendant’s cover has been blown, perhaps unwittingly by the simple folks of Nebraska,” Chambers writes in the notice, which has a King James flavor.

“In recent days it came to pass that there has been a type of prostration, adulation, adoration, veneration, thanks-giving, worshipful gushings and heart-felt outpourings of hosannas and hallelujahs throughout the land — appropriate only to one bearing the status, purported traits and powers of Defendant; that is to say, a deity.”  

Last month, Chambers sued the Almighty in Douglas County District Court to show that anybody can file a lawsuit against anybody.

That, he said, was illustrated by a federal lawsuit filed by a former University of Nebraska-Lincoln student against a judge presiding over a sexual assault case. Tory Bowen sued Lancaster County District Judge Jeffre Cheuvront for violating her rights to free speech. Cheuvront barred the words “rape” and “victim,” among other terms, in the trial of Pamir Safi, who Bowen says sexually assaulted her.

Chambers said Bowen’s lawsuit was inappropriate because the Nebraska Supreme Court already considered the case and federal courts follow the decisions of state supreme courts on state matters.

In his lawsuit, Chambers said he was seeking a permanent injunction against God, whom Chambers said has made “terroristic threats against him and his constituents, inspired fear and caused widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants.”

The suit received international news attention, and the senator was interviewed by dozens of reporters in the U.S. and abroad.

In his notice by certified mail to Osborne, Chambers pointed to headlines and language in the media that “lend credence” to the contention that Defendant (God) “is on the scene.”

“The headline, “ The Legend Returns” smacks of a reference to “the Second Coming,” Chambers wrote.  “The Doctor is in the House” headline can be taken as a reference to “The Great Physician.”

Osborne did not return a message left on his phone.

In an interview, Chambers said,  “I’ve been telling people, I’ve discovered God in Nebraska, and I’m going to serve him.”

Then he turned serious and talked about Husker fans’ verbal abuse of players  last weekend.

“Football in Nebraska is a religion. It is a false religion.

“These people need to grow up and be full-fledged adults and stop playing in the sandbox like little children.

“They shouldn’t take out their sense of nonworth or nonbeing on these players.”

“I am so disgusted by this.”

By the way, Chambers has confidence God is playing by “Earthly rules — no miracle or anything else smacking of supernatural intervention.”

Otherwise, Chambers said in a letter accompanying the official notice, God would have spared “his Nebraska Cornhuskers the humiliating defeat suffered at the hands of Texas A&M.”

Reach Nancy Hicks at 473-7250 or nhicks@journalstar.com.