posted by Sam Richards
Believe me when I say that I don’t need another reason for wishing that Pat Robertson’s “savior” would just go ahead and call him home. And so why am I talking about this man who is posing as preacher who is posing as an asylum escapee? (Or is it the other way around?)
Here’s what he said about Haiti:
(CNN) — Pat Robertson, the evangelical Christian and host of the “700 Club,” says a “pact to the devil” brought on the devastating earthquake in Haiti.
Robertson blamed the tragedy on something that “happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it.” The Haitians “were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever,” Robertson said on his broadcast Wednesday. “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 French.’ True story. And so, the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’ “
As lame as it may seem, my excuse for bring this up is that I want to make a point about the dangers of living in world of good and evil, black and white while remaining completely surrounded by others who see things just as we do. Seriously. I’ll admit that when I first read Robertson’s words I wanted to go for the jugular. Thumbs to windpipe. But then so many others have done taken up the cause that I decided that I just needed to make a sociological point.
Here’s Olbermann. Ouch. I don’t have to keep up in the ratings and so I don’t need to be so vicious. But truthfully, I can’t say that I’m offended by Olbermann’s attack on a “man of the cloth.” But those are not my thoughts.
Thinking that the “country of Haiti” made a pact with the Devil two centuries ago is probably a pretty good indication that Robertson is mentally ill. Did they actually sign something with ink and a quill? Was there some sort of referendum in which the entire Haitian population participated or was it just a single Haitian leader? I mean really, was the devil hanging out in the Carribean a couple of hundred years ago searching for an unwitting victim in the form of an entire country?
If you encountered someone on the street who told you that the devil is making a pact with, let’s say, Detroit to bring back the auto industry, you wouldn’t give them the time of day. You’d assume that they had gone off their meds and you’d probably be correct. But here’s a guy with a viewing audience in the millions who is saying a similar thing and nobody seems to be changing the channels. Moreover, Robertson himself is not saying that he was wrong in making such statements. This is largely because he doesn’t have people around him to challenge his thinking. The most dangerous position a person can be in, by the way, is that of embracing a black and white ideology of good and bad, right and wrong and not having people around us who think differently than we do and who can reflect alternative ideas back to us.
That the media put a voice to mentally ill people clearly says something about how the rest of us want to see ourselves as superior others or, in this case, be entertained by our own self-righteous indignation. Be clear that few Christians would agree with Robertson and, in fact, I can’t say that I know of any. But when he refuses to take his meds and makes his outlandish comments, then the rest of can feel better about ourselves and so we keep tuning in. “Well, now that guy really is a nut.” Sure, there are a million or so of us who listen to the guy on a regular basis, but even most of these people likely write off these sorts of nutty ideas as a slip of the tongue.
This all goes to say that Olbermann gives Robertson way too much credibility by responding as though the guy is living with a full deck. Let’s just move on.
As a final caveat, the crazy thing is that when I read Robertson’s comments for the first time I actually thought to myself, “Hey, I don’t remember reading this.” Seriously. I got suckered into the man’s insanity for a brief moment. LOL.
In case anyone is interested, here is Jon Stewart discussing these knuckleheads (and Rachel Maddow).
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It’s unfortunate that this story is written only with examples of liberals not being able to convince conservatives because the latter are not thinking straight. There are an equal number of examples of conservatives not being able to get through to the “misguided liberals” because such purportedly progressive thinkers can’t get outside their locked mental cages of short-sighted intellect.
