Oh, for the love of god. Nightline? Really?

There isn't anything more important for ABC News to concentrate on than some Forever 21 medievalists? And let's congratulate Dan Harris and his producers here, too, for turning preposterous nonsense into something that the script crew at Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers would have rejected as being too juvenile for their audience:

"We're just normal girls who do something extraordinary for God," Brynne said. "After seeing an actual exorcism in person, led by us, you will walk away with no doubt, whatsoever." Brynne, 17, is the leader of the pack, the one the others call the "enforcer." She is home-schooled and a regular on the beauty pageant circuit. Savannah, 20, is known as the "compassionate one," a college student who likes to shop. Finally, there's Tess, "the middle man" because the others say this 17-year-old can play both good and bad cop. She also performs in local musicals.

One is home-schooled and a pageant regular, another one like to shop, and the third one's into show tunes. This is like the Malleus Malificarum, if it were written by Judy Blume. (And didn't Joss Whedon do this whole thing better with Buffy, anyway?) So we have the local teen queens battling the Forces Of Darkness and selling the magic beans to a major news operation because it's Easter Week or something. It's Mean Girls vs. Lucifer, and this... time... it's... personal.

Their teacher is Brynne's father, the Rev. Bob Larson, who says he has performed more than 10,000 exorcisms in the last 30 years.

"Hi, I'm Reverend Bob, your aspiring cult leader. May I cast out your demons?"

"The Christian life is risky," he said. "Ministry is risky. Taking on the devil is risky. What's riskier? Saying no to God. Say no to God and the Devil's gonna get you."

I liked this better when Jerry Lee Lewis rocked it on the pianny.

Nonetheless, there are very serious questions about the safety and morality of what the girls are doing for others, especially those who might need mental health care.

Really? Ya think? Eighteenth goddamn paragraph of the story, too. After the karate and the show tunes, and one of the girl's saying that a sign of possession is, "reciting historical facts he wouldn't know otherwise," something I suspect the members of Aqua Teen Jesus Force never have had a problem with.

One woman, a grandmother who flew in from Dallas for an exorcism with the girls, told "Nightline" that she has demons who have physically hurt and raped her. She insisted she is not mentally ill, but admitted she had been on anti-depressants and had suicidal thoughts in the past. During the exorcism, the woman said her father sexually abused her as a child.

Did this suddenly become one of those exposes of lucrative frauds that Nightline used to do, back when it was an actual news show?

When asked if she thought the exorcisms could be making people with mental illness worse, Brynne disagreed. "We do this under Dad's supervision. We never do it alone," she said. "He's been doing it for 30 years. He would know if something was going wrong." However, Bob Larson has been accused of fraud and taking advantage of vulnerable people who are either desperate or prone to suggestion.

Today's reading is from the Book Of Larceny, Chapter V, Verses, 1-5. Also, back in the day that last sentence would have piqued Nightline's interest just a tad.

What's more, Larson and the girls' exorcism sessions are not free...

No kidding. I'm shocked, SHOCKED!

... and he insists that one session almost never does the trick. "We have to fund what we do," he said.

And Jesus said unto them, "Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men and finders of great suckers."

Larson is currently weighing several offers for new reality shows starring Brynne, Tess and Savannah.

Perfect. Absolutely fking perfect. THE POWER OF BRAVO COMPELS YOU!

Nice work, ABC. Really.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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