Pat Robertson’s Ministery of Disinformation

There, now.  That’s over—the annual American Festival of Family Dysfunction that we like to call “Thanksgiving.”  The day when American families of all sizes and backgrounds come together, whether they like it or not, to reaffirm their understanding that democracy, even at the lowest common denominator—the Family Unit—is a colorfully messy and overwrought business that leads to gorging and pathological excesses.

Our national holiday for giving thanks has necessarily turned into a four day Jamboree of Capitalism and Retail Mania signifying just how damned exceptional Americans truly are.  Here’s hoping that all of you Thankful drank hearty, ate huge American over-sized portions of traditional-food-that-is-bad-for-you-unless-you’re-a-cowboy-or-farm-hand-or Michael Phelps-who-burns-12K-calories/day and are now prepared for the traditional Black Friday hangover cure of standing in long lines in the fresh air outside Big Box stores, for the opportunity to scarf up retailer-rigged bargains on junk from China (just don’t cross that Walmart picket line).

One of the less talked about benefits of Thanksgiving reunions is, of course, the chance to catch-up with that notorious experiment-in-genetics-gone-horribly-wrong that every family harbors (come on, admit it) and usually welcomes back to its bosom ONCE per year.  This is the relative who shows up with a battery-operated dancing roast turkey on his/her head, an already opened litre of vodka in a brown bag and who arrives demented and/or drunk or gets there remarkably quickly.  This is also the guest who is not too lily-livered to broach the subjects of politics, religion, race, queers or family history hot buttons to get the conversational ball rolling.

Trust me, this is all going somewhere relevant, because the very first thing that I read this morning, Black Friday 2012, was a bit about Crazy Uncle Pat Robertson admitting he got a few things wrong about this years predictions after his January Summit Meeting with The Lord.  My first reaction to reading that item was “how long will this monstrous chucklehead receive national media attention for his racist, bigoted, xenophobic chats with God and his Magic 8 Ball? 

But then it dawned on me: he’s the embarrassing deranged relative at the national dinner table and we’ll all go on humoring him, pretending that his pronouncements are somehow important until the day he croaks, whereupon he will become a “family” legend.  We also put up with him for the same reason that many American families break bread with the demented:  Uncle Pat is very successful and very wealthy despite his manifest social deficiencies.  Uncle Pat’s a billionaire because he’s a smooth-talking global exploiter who, for example, got in on the African Blood Diamond trade at just the right moment.  And when Uncle Pat’s “doing deals” his Christian scruples don’t interfere, they usually only kick in when Uncle Pat needs to keep the rabble from his door.

At any rate, compliments of RightWingWatch, here’s what’s on Robertson’s mind since his prediction about President Obama being transported by the “hand of God” to a distant galaxy went spectacularly wrong . . .

In January, Uncle Pat said that God told him: 

Your president holds a radical view of the direction of your country which is at odds with the majority, expect chaos and paralysis.

Nothing ambiguous about that. 

So many of us miss God, I won’t get into great detail about elections but I sure did miss it, I thought I heard from God, I thought I had heard clearly from God, what happened? What intervenes? Why? You ask God, how did I miss it?  Well, we all do and I’ve had a lot of practice.

Understatement, much?  Uncle Pat is 82 and these little birds have been chirping in his head for decades, now.  This is the same guy that God told to spread the word about “Bush in a Landslide in 2004.”  Anyone else might start to wonder why God was using him for his Disinformation Program.  Maybe God doesn’t like you all that much, Pat.  Maybe He figures if you get enough egg on your face you’ll go away, hmmmm?

I guess it hasn’t occurred to Pat that perhaps God rather likes “radical views”?  Maybe when he said “your president” he really meant your presidential candidate, meaning Willard? his view of the “direction of the country” certainly was at “odds with the majority.”  Maybe when he said “expect chaos and paralysis” it was a Health Bulletin for Uncle Pat?  Who knows . . . ?

But Pat’s not quite done with us yet because there was still a little prognostication left about “economic collapse that would devastate the country, the result of which would be a new president.”

“But I’m not supposed to talk about that,” he said.

Uncle Pat, you naughty boy, trying to keep the impending impeachment all to your self!

For those of you who aren’t up to speed on Uncle Pat here are a few bon mots from his Treasure Chest of Homespun Weirdness:

Very recently, on an episode of “The 700 Club,” Robertson answered a question from a viewer named Michael about how to repair his marriage to a woman who “has no respect for me as the head of the house.”

Robertson: “Well, you could become a Muslim and you could beat her.”

That’s a two-bagger!  Here’s more:

Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians! It’s no different! It is the same thing! It is happening all over again! It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians! Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today! More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history! ... And it is happening here and now! Same thing, but directed against Christians by the liberal government and media! Send money today or these liberals will be putting Christians like you and me in concentration camps!

The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.” - 1992 Iowa fundraising letter opposing a state equal-rights amendment

Planned Parenthood “is teaching kids to fornicate, teaching people to have adultery, every kind of bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism – everything that the Bible condemns.” (The 700 Club, variously dated as 9 Apr. 1991 or 14 Jan. 1991).

The Islamic people, the Arabs, were the ones who captured Africans, put them in slavery, and sent them to America as slaves. Why would the people in America want to embrace the religion of slavers.

You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if [President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela] thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don’t think any oil shipments will stop. [...] We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don’t need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It’s a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.”—22 August 2005, in a broadcast of his Christian Broadcasting Network’s program, The 700 Club

Presbyterians are the spirit of the Antichrist.

What is this “mac and cheese”? Is that a black thing?

They were under the heel of the French, you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the prince.’ True story. And so the devil said, ‘Ok it’s a deal.’ And they kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another.”—Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, January 13, 2010, discussing the 12 Jan 2010 7.0 earthquake in Haiti

Less than two weeks after Hurricane Katrina killed 1,836 people, Robertson implied on the September 12th broadcast of The 700 Club that the storm was God’s punishment in response to America’s abortion policy. He suggested that September 11 and the disaster in New Orleans could… be connected in some way.

And that’s only the tip of Uncle Pat’s Iceberg of Insanity . . . stay tuned.

Here’s a nice little mashup of Uncle Pat doing “These Are a Few of My Favorite (Demonic) Things.”

(h/t Crooks and Liars)

Posted by Bette Noir on 11/23/12 at 09:07 AM • Permalink

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