[CanYoAssDigIt] Hey Pat, put that cross down this minute, you'll poke somebody in the eye with it!

Since the subject was raised about Pat Robertson (by somebody else
rather than me - I'd much rather talk about movies and comic books,
and I will soon have something to say about "Lost in Translation") I'm
attaching the following which I think is better than the other piece I
forwarded.

Pat Robertson is indeed a jihadist and a terrorist - but he won't be
punished. this writer is another poor sucker who actually believed
what he was told in civics class, rather than understanding (as Ronald
Reagan did) that "facts are stupid things."

Fortunately for him, he wised up in his twilight years. It's still
early evening for me, so I can join the fun, casting principle and
silly notions about rights and dignity aside, and root like a rapid
pig in the trough along with everybody else.

Yippee!

August 24, 2005

The Rev. Pat and Posada Carriles, Bush's Kind of Killers
Why Pat Robertson Isn't Treated as a Terrorist
By JOHN CHUCKMAN

America's fundamentalist carnival includes many fascinating acts. Pay
your money, and you can watch preachers weeping and screaming,
dismissing whole segments of humanity as evil, threatening murder,
shaking down congregations for extra donations to
named-after-themselves projects, or hitting people in the head to heal
cancer. You will also see some monsters finally caught after years of
molesting children or hear others advocating crimes against humanity
such as using nuclear weapons.

Pat Robertson is one of the Christian Sideshow's longer-running acts,
periodically adding some new nightmare to his grim repertoire. Oddly,
Pat regards himself as a kind statesman-preacher, a latter-day
boondocks version of Talleyrand, Talleyrand having started his
remarkable and utterly unprincipled career as a Bishop. Pat regularly
mixes the tax-free benefits of religion with the promotion of nasty
politics. He has run for President, started quasi-religious
organizations to promote his political ambitions, and freely offers
his uninformed advice on national and world affairs.

Talleyrand had his various church properties and offices to support
him in princely fashion while he worked at politics. Pat supports his
public-minded work on resources gathered through one of America's
greatest money-changer-in-the-temple careers. The fortune generated
through decades of his appeals to unhappy, lonely people watching
television gives him access to a genuine commercial empire, from
so-called Christian broadcasting to oil refining.

A key difference between Talleyrand and Pat is that Talleyrand was
frightfully clever and was a breathtaking success at politics. I put
the difference, in part, down to style. Talleyrand in person might
remind one of the late Archbishop Sheen, snapping and twirling his
scarlet cape and watching his listeners with penetrating eyes - to all
that would added something of Lord Byron's fascinating stench of
corruption. Robertson has never quite escaped the
Jesus-on-the-dashboard flavor of his early career. Pat is pure Super
Duper Auto Parts, Aisle Six, smiling salesman for mud flaps and
sequined sets of big dice, but with enough animal cunning to have
risen to running every Aisle Six on the continent.

Pat recently announced on national television that America should
murder the elected leader of another country, President Chavez of
Venezuela. Previously Pat restricted himself to insulting the religion
of a billion people, Islam, or insulting the victims of natural
disasters in the United States. After a hurricane in which old men,
women, and children died, Pat blamed the victims for their fate by
claiming God was punishing America's immorality. His latest effort
breaks new ground, being, by any meaningful definition, public
advocacy of terror.

Why won't Pat Robertson be treated as a terrorist? Believe me, if you
said what he said about any of America's current leaders, you would be
arrested quickly under the Patriot Act and locked away. Why will Pat
Robertson's broadcasting empire not be classified as an organization
supporting terrorist activities? Perfectly legitimate organizations in
other parts of the world have been declared outlaw in the United
States for having less direct association with terrorist hate-speech.
Several bloodthirsty-sounding Muslim clerics, completely
unrepresentative of their faith, have been jailed recently for speech
closely resembling Robertson's.

At the very least, Robertson should be charged under hate-speech laws.
But such laws are weak in the United States, and many Americans fear
the idea of hate-speech laws. So radio and television broadcasters
continue spewing hate and dishonest claims in the exalted name of free
speech.

We really do know why Pat Robertson won't be treated as a terrorist.
It's for the same reason Bush's former Attorney General of the United
States could tell a group of decent, honest, hard-working American
Muslims that they should count themselves lucky they weren't being
treated the way Japanese Americans were during World War II. It's for
the same reason that Bush protects a mass murderer named Luis Posada
Carriles from extradition and trial. It's for the same reason that
American troops have made a horror of the lives of millions of
innocent Iraqis. It's for the same reason a distraught mother who lost
her son in Iraq is vilified by Right Wing savages. It's the same
reason why the morally-contemptible Bush is President.

The reason is the worship of power and greed. While it's true that a
great deal of America's history has to do with worshipping power and
greed, never in my memory has it been so openly expressed, so
contemptuously embraced as it is today. It is a sad to reflect in my
twilight years that almost everything I was taught as a boy has proved
to be wrong. I don't mean subjects like math or English. I mean
values. Most of the evidence of my adult life tends to support the
opposite of every moral lesson of my youth, certainly as they apply to
the land of my birth, a place where power and greed now trump
everything.

I was taught murder always is wrong. I was taught lying always is
wrong. I was taught that lusting after money and power is wrong. I was
taught that good men prevailed and evil men sooner or later paid for
their acts. These lessons came from a ferociously-honest and brave
mother who alone raised two boys on the South Side of Chicago. They
came also from the church I attended. And they came from some
wonderful books and stories I read.

The success of vicious Pat Robertson and his even more vicious
President, George Bush, provide almost perfect allegories for the
soul-dead thing America has become.

Religion, politics, journalism, and even academics serve the American
worship of power and greed. I had a brief exchange recently with an
exalted fellow from one of America's many well-financed propaganda
mills tarted up to resemble research organizations. This exalted
fellow had been on a national radio interview, interestingly enough on
the same subject of Venezuela. Apart from inaccurate claims about a
new broadcast network established in Venezuela while he made a case
for American interference, when reminded that Mr. Chavez was
democratically elected, he chimed in with, "So was Hitler!"

Hitler, despite huge expenditures and desperately hard campaigns,
never received more than just over a third of votes. He was appointed
Chancellor, after a long series of backroom manipulations, by the
Republic's ancient and exhausted President von Hindenburg. Hitler's
rise more closely resembles that of some of America's favorite shady
men in Iraq and Pakistan than it does that of a man whose election was
closely scrutinized and declared fair by international watchers.

I couldn't let such an inaccurate claim stand and looked up his outfit
on the Internet. There, on a page resembling something from a
university or research center, was a large quote from Rush Limbaugh
about the tremendous job they were doing. What kind of a research
institution quotes Rush Limbaugh? There were also, importantly, links
for bequests and gifts. And there was an e-mail link to the man on the
Venezuela case.

My particular exalted fellow answered at length, accepting the truth
of my correction, but making a mighty effort to turn someone's getting
one-third of the vote into a de facto election. There were paragraphs
of labored reasoning larded with unnecessary facts, perhaps from a
history text quickly consulted before replying. He missed the point
entirely of respecting a genuinely democratic decision. Here is the
kind of analysis being touted across America in an effort to influence
the world. And these people do influence the world.

The same people helped bring you the murderous disaster in Iraq.

John Chuckman lives in Canada.

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