Pat Robertson's grip on reality has never been questioned: he simply has none and everyone knows it. His patently preposterous statements (cloaked as pearls of wisdom coming from the sage of the modern era) have long ago ensconced him in history's Motley Fool Hall Of Fame... with laurel wreaths. His penchant for talking about things he knows nothing about - from tattoos to baseball cards (in one sitting of the "Bring It On" section of The 700 Club) - has provided water-cooler humor for the last two generations. Quotes/clips of him have even been featured in The Colbert Report, an honor reserved for the most irrational of conservatives.*



His latest assault on the rational, therefore, comes as no surprise, but it may just put the last nail in the coffin of Robertson's amusing "credibility."



BBC News:

"Controversial television evangelist Pat Robertson has decided that Facebook is in need of a 'vomit' button for pictures of gay people kissing.

Speaking on his Christian show 'The 700 Club', over the weekend, Robertson, 83, also reaffirmed his belief that being gay should be punishable in the same biblical manner as bestiality and incest, by stoning ."

Influence and Entertainment - The Two Things Seem To Go Together



Overblown, cynical prose has its uses: bloggers like yours truly are often chastised for verbally browbeating someone like Robertson simply because they consider him irrelevant. It is akin to beating an old war horse - cruel and unnecessary. But real cruelty lies in past actions for which there is no accountability: a constant stream of demonizing from a Christian Right icon, who continues to demonize in the guise of an addled old man.



And it is no good saying "Who listens to Pat Robertson anymore?". People do. Maybe not the amorphous people who posit ridiculous questions (probably written by The 700 Club staff at Robertson's insistence) but at this very writing there are at least a dozen elderly ladies touching their television screens hoping that the mere mention of Robertson's name will cure their hemorrhoids.



Don't laugh. That's influence. The kind of influence Robertson has always craved and gotten for nearly forty years.



Another reason why people pick up on the ravings of Robertson: entertainment value. Remember: America has made a religion out of entertainment and an entertainment out of religion. Robertson's ramblings are, if nothing else, entertaining. They are the reason why pundits like Stephen Colbert make use of them.



Typical Robertson:

"Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."

"I know this is painful for the ladies to hear, but if you get married, you have accepted the headship of a man, your husband. Christ is the head of the household and the husband is the head of the wife, and that's the way it is, period."

"Maybe we need a very small nuke thrown off on Foggy Bottom to shake things up"

"Like it or not, males have a tendency to wander a little bit. What you want to do is make a home so wonderful that he doesn't want to wander."

''There is no such thing as separation of church and state in the Constitution. It is a lie of the Left and we are not going to take it anymore.''

''I want to say it again, and again, and again: Islam is not a religion, it's a political system meant on -- bent on world domination, not a religion. It masquerades as a religion, but the religion covers a worldwide attempt to exercise power and to subjugate the world into their way of thinking.''

''If you go all the way back to the days just following creation, men lived nine hundred years or more.''

''How can there be peace when drunkards, drug dealers, communists, atheists, New Age worshipers of Satan, secular humanists, oppressive dictators, greedy money changers, revolutionary assassins, adulterers, and homosexuals are on top?''

''I know one man who was impotent who gave AIDS to his wife and the only thing they did was kiss.''

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