Beware the Communists!

One does get bored of the normal. The humdrum. The same-ol' same-ol'. Who hasn't had a fit of the blahs? Hollyweird hasn't coughed up anything interesting lately, unless you count Madonna's birthday riding accident (which I don't). And the news has been a succession of plane crashes, casualties in Iraq, but thankfully (in recent days) there haven't been any more additions to the freakish number of electrocuted or lightning zapped Boy Scouts.

Reading the news the other day, I was slogging through the endless reports of examples of presidential stupidity, fact-fudging, and avoidance (meet with Cindy already, jackass!). When (Go tell it on the Mountain!), I came across an article worth a refined snigger. Nay, a chortle. Oh, hell, I'll be honest, I'm talking about a full out belly-laugh that had me crying from the sheer lunacy of it all. Ask my co-workers. They'll tell you. They looked at me as if I was a loon.

"What," you say, "is this silly ass rambling on about now?"

The other day, that prime example of a crepuscular old fart, Pat Robertson, slithered out of whatever whited sepulcher he lurks in and made one of his bizarre, inappropriate, and uneducated comments for which he is known - in addition to leading that fine, upstanding bunch of bigots, dumbfucks, hypocrites, and morons who are the Christian Coalition.

For those of you who mayn't remember, Robertson proclaimed that God (yeah, right) told him that he was going to clear out the Supreme Court a few years back, and due to Disney having Gay Days at Disney World, God was going to send hurricanes, earthquakes, plagues of locusts, etc. to terrorize the United States into reform. Oh, and he said that feminism causes women to a) kill their children, b) practice witchcraft, and c) become lesbians. If feminism does that to women, what does it do to feminist men? P'raps Ol' Robertson could take a page from Cotton Mather's book on how to deal with these alarming things.

Of course, as Robertson actually believes these things, he's an ardent supporter of the Gombeen-in-Chief. He's rallied the troops of the God Squad and helped get Bush elected since Bush shares his belief in asinine things like a flat Earth and Creationism.

But I digress.

The other day, Robertson started in on a fresh tangent. Using his 700 Club program on the Christian Broadcast Network, Robertson called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Let me give you a quote:

If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go
ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. 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 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. - Pat Robertson, “The 700 Club”, 8/22/05

Naturally, this was a comment given off the cuff and, as with all of Robertson’s comments, with very little thought. Apparently, Robertson’s biggest concern regarding President Chavez is that he’s a “leftist” and is, according to Robertson, a “terrific danger” and likely to start importing Communism and Islamic extremism to the Americas.

Hmm.

I didn’t realize that we were still fighting the Cold War. Sure, we’ve got China being quietly Communist while absorbing capitalist trends and that whack job with the birth-control glasses and bad hair in North Korea being weird and alarming, but The Great Red Menace of McCarthy’s day and Emperor Ronnie’s time is gone.

Also, I can’t really see the Islamic extremists like Osama bin Laden really buying into Communist theory.

Aside from those colossal howlers, there is the plain fact that he just did like Osama bin Laden and called for the assassination of someone with whom he disagreed politically. Rather frightening that.

Onward to Wednesday…

After several indignant responses from the Vice President of Venezuela and their Ambassador to the United States, the State Department and Department of Defense distanced themselves from Robertson. Additionally, several of Robertson’s more prominent fundie cronies scrambled in utter bug-fuck panic to distance themselves from such lunacy. Finally, today, Robertson claims he was misunderstood.

And now for his new statement:

I didn't say 'assassination.' I said our special forces should 'take him out.'
And 'take him out' can be a number of things, including kidnapping; there are a
number of ways to take out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was
misinterpreted by the AP [Associated Press], but that happens all the time. -
Pat Robertson, “The 700 Club”, 8/24/05

Go ahead and scroll back up to his earlier comment.

Thanks, Pat. I needed a good laugh. Never mind that you actually did imply that we ought to assassinate President Chavez (which isn’t a particularly Christian thing to do, you old devout follower of Christ you), but kidnapping dictators isn’t exactly the best way to conduct our foreign affairs.

Dear old Bob Dole even weighed in and called Robertson’s comments “ludicrous” and “stupid”. And you wonder why you lost the nomination in ’88, old cock?

What a classic gaffe this is! First, Robertson says something monumentally stupid and then disappears for a day while his keepers scramble to come up with a response and then he feeps out again to pronounce his apology and clarification. A clarification that is a prize example of someone trying to dodge the truth and place the blame on the media – apparently Robertson forgot that his deranged comments were broadcast on television to approximately a million homes and has been preserved for posterity.

The Moral: Think prior to speaking. Especially on national television.