Guest Post by Morbo
It’s a shame I wasn’t around last week and thus missed all of the fun surrounding one of my favorite right-wing nutcases, Pat Robertson.
No one has ever managed to combine religious fundamentalism, kook-right politics and sheer insanity like Robertson. Far from being a burden to him, this potent cocktail has served the Virginia Beach TV preacher very well. Robertson came from wealth and has kept his money. It’s a good thing too. Were it not for his riches, Robertson would have been put in a padded cell a long time ago. The man is as mad as a hatter.
The Carpetbagger quite nicely summarized the furor that erupted after Robertson suggested that the U.S. government assassinate Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela. I won’t rehash that here, but I did want to comment on Robertson in a more general way.
I’m sorry, but I just can’t help myself. I have this weird fascination with TV preachers. It’s like driving by an auto accident. You know you shouldn’t look, but you usually do anyway.
So, as someone who has followed Rev. Pat’s checkered career on and off since 1980, I just want to touch on some of his greatest hits over the years that you might have missed.
Check them out:
Sleazy business deals: Pat’s got ’em in spades! His Family Channel came into existence only because Robertson needed some filler to wrap around his daily dose of religio-political insanity called “The 700 Club.” He bought the rights to some old TV shows and started airing them. The old shows were much more popular than Pat’s “700 Club,” and before he knew it, money was pouring in. Pat spun off the Family Channel from his Christian Broadcasting Network and later sold it that paragon of virtue Rupert Murdoch for a big pot of money.
What’s wrong with that? Well, basically Robertson took donations intended for a non-profit ministry, plowed them into what became a for-profit cable channel and made a gajillion dollars in the process. Nice move. One would think the IRS would have something to say about it.
In 1990, Robertson launched American Benefits Plus, an Amway-type multi-level marketing scheme that promised people great riches. Originally, the business plan was for “distributors” to sell discount coupons for local businesses. Robertson ditched that for a line of vitamins and cosmetics. (My favorite was “Sea of Galilee” skin cream.) Distributors were told they could make up to $20,000 per month. No one did, and the entire operation soon went belly up. Robertson eventually decided to cut his losses, selling Kalo Vita to an unnamed individual for one dollar. His investors were not so lucky. Many lost their shirts.
Most recently, Pat’s hometown newspaper, the Virginian-Pilot, reported on how he spent years flogging a weight-loss drink he invented on the “700 Club.” Robertson gave the recipe away for free for many years, but has since cut a deal with General Nutrition Corp. You can now buy “Dr. Pat Robertson’s Diet Shake” in GNC stores. He continues to use his tax-exempt ministry to promote a separate, for-profit venture on the air. (By the way, Robertson is not a medical doctor. He holds a juris doctor, a law degree, from Yale University. He never passed the bar.)
Snuggling up to evil dictators: Pat was great friends with Mobutu Sese Seko, the former dictator of Zaire, for many years. The good reverend was willing to overlook Mobutu’s abominable record on human rights and his plundering of the nation’s wealth because he had business interests there. Robertson formed a company called African Development Company to engage in diamond mining and forestry. These ventures collapsed when Mobutu was overthrown in 1997, despite Robertson’s efforts to save them by sucking up to the country’s new president, Laurent Kabila.
Other Robertson ex-dictator pals include Charles Taylor of Liberia, perhaps the biggest scumbag ever to curse the African continent; Jorge Serrano of Guatemala, a protégé of Efriam Rios Montt, a dictator who presided over the executions of numerous political enemies and Frederick Chiluba of Zambia, whose officially “Christian” state banned all abortions and instilled fundamentalist Christianity in the public schools, much to the chagrin of the nation’s Muslim, Hindu and animist minorities.
Anti-Semitism and kook conspiracy theories: In 1991, Robertson wrote an entire book full of nutty conspiracy theories about “international bankers” and “Europeans bankers” engineering world wars and political assassinations to enrich themselves. The Illuminati and the Masons were said to be involved. Some readers saw the book, The New World Order, as anti-Semitic, and it’s easy to see why. Writers Michael Lind and Jacob Heilbrunn dissected the tome in The New York Review of Books and noted that it was based on a host of anti-Semitic tomes from the 1920s.
Wacky faith healing: Robertson claims to be able to heal people of all sorts of ailments, from cancer to heart trouble. He says you can even get healed when you aren’t watching the show as long as someone else is and sends the healing your way. He once tried to raise a girl from the dead. (It didn’t work.)
All-around kookiness: Robertson holds views that are just plain goofy. He once opined that Hindus worship Satan. He claims his prayers have diverted hurricanes from Virginia Beach. He has attacked Halloween as a satanic plot. He despises public education and has attacked government spending on social programs. In November of 1989, he rejected feminism, telling viewers men and women are different. His evidence was that there has never been a woman grand chess master. At that the time Robertson made that comment, there were two.
I could go on, but no one has that much time. Suffice it to say, Robertson is a loon. But that has not stopped him from being welcomed with open arms by the Republican Party. The GOP power structure will not cut him loose, no matter what he says. Two days after Sept. 11, 2001, Robertson went on the air with Jerry Falwell and mused about how America deserved what it got. They blamed not the terrorists but liberals for the attack. If that didn’t make Robertson an outcast in GOPland, nothing will.